Two years.

So, two years as a family of four??

I know you hear people say it all the time, but I honestly can't imagine life without the boys.  On one hand, the process of adoption is one of the hardest, emotionally taxing things you can put your family through.  The waiting.  The trusting others for things you have no control over.  Trusting GOD for perfect timing, finances and all the tiny details. 

And the flip side of that is sharing the rest of forever with your family that God picked out before you were ever even a thought.

You know all those years you have prior to being a grown up that you spend wondering and planning out how your life will look?  How perfect things will be with your smoking hot hubby and your 2.5 kids and your white picket fence?  Ok, so I have the smoking hot hubby, but I never hoped for the 2.5 kids or the fence.  Having half a kid would just be creepy. 

But having two kids from Ethiopia never really crossed my mind.  Adoption crossed my mind, but I hadn't really ever played it out.  Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine just how blessed I would be by two little boys from a tiny village in Eastern Africa.  The lessons they would teach me about patience, about faith, about falling in love with someone that you've only seen in a picture.  Lessons about life itself.  Lessons about how blessed and spoiled we are as Americans. 

I've heard stories over the past two years that have shocked me.  Stories that make my heart hurt knowing that they aren't just sad tales, but real life experiences that I haven't been able to protect my children from.  Experiences that have shaped their little hearts and personalities and will forever be a part of their history.

But their history also includes an amazing story of God providing a way when all we saw were obstacles.  Their history includes a family.  A family that may be crazy and at times dysfunctional, but one who loves them with no reservations.  A family determined to make those tales that are recounted in the years to come, happy stories.

It's been two years.  They haven't been perfect.  They haven't always been easy.  And sometimes they have been down right hilarious.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I wouldn't change a second of it.

Here's to two as four.  Who knows what the next two hold.....

Looking at pictures from their time in Ethiopia.  Laughing at each other.  And their bad haircuts.  Can you say mohawk?