So Close Now

Yesterday we had our last home study!! We still have a few things in the paperwork department that have to get finished & we will be done with those on Friday! I am off today to have my fingerprints done, Brian has his physical on Friday afternoon & Brian & Alexa will go to have their fingerprints done on Friday! I can't believe we are almost to the end of our homestudy. We still have lots of paperwork to do with our agency & a profile book to make yet. But at least we will have 1 major thing to cross off our list.

1 big distraction is certainly this nice weather! The kids are begging to wear shorts to school but I've had to be the bad mom & tell them to wait! It's still pretty chilly in the mornings yet when they get on the bus. We are looking forward to having Easter break with the kids & there will be lots to accomplish!

State AAU Volleyball 2010

What a day it has been! We've spent the last 2 days in Newton with Alexa at the state AAU volleyball tournament for the 9th graders. It started out with 16 teams who had qualified for this tournament usually by placing either 1st or 2nd in a particular tournament. Alexa's team came out of pool play in 2nd & proceeded to play 2 extremely tough matches to make it to the semi-finals. There they met our other 9th grade Tri-County team. It was so close & went to 3 games & Alexa's team ended up losing in that final game 14 to 16. The other 9th grade team went on to win the championship!! All the girls played so hard & we couldn't have been prouder of all the girls today! Way to go Tri-County Gold for a 4th place finish in the state tournament (and Tri-County Maroon for your 1st place finish)!!

New Favorite Song

In all my running around today, every time I seemed to get in the car, this song was playing on Life 96.5. I had never heard it before & it has become a fast favorite of mine & I could wait to find it online. What a wonderful description of God's grace for us. Enjoy!

Click here

Remember to pause the music at the bottom!

All worked out

Thanks for all the prayers. Like I said yesterday, it wasn't a major thing but just something we hadn't talked about. I talked with our agency today to discuss these things & we feel better about them now.

I have stated before that we were pretty sure that we would specify boy. We have found out that with this agency, we cannot specify gender. While at first, we didn't know how this would work in our house, we sat back & talked about how this would all work. It's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things & we just needed to think about this logically. God is in control & God decides what is best for both this child & for us. He just needed to make it clear to us that what might be the most convenient for us, is not necessarily what we need. (And what woman would ever turn down the opportunity to buy all the cute girly things out there!) So we will now just wait & see what God has in store for us.

There have been some awesome posts by some other bloggers out there that I hope to post the links to. I have truly been blessed by numerous people on different journeys of adoptions that have said so many things that I needed to hear at just the right times. I have sat with pits in my stomach knowing that God was using some specific posts to change my heart & my attitude toward different things.

Well, the weather is just too nice to stay inside!! I'm off to enjoy it with my kids!!

And the Ride Begins

The roller coaster has begun. Nothing too major but there are some things that have brought to our attention about certain things that our agency wants us to commit to that we are unsure of. We totally understand why they do & we are positive it is all for the greater good but we just weren't prepared for it. So Brian & I need to talk & pray about how we will handle this & then proceed. We also are looking at having our profile sent it to at least 1 more agency but we are unsure yet of which one it will be. Just keep us in your prayers as we face this small hurdle! Thanks!

Another step done

We had our 3rd homestudy done this past Monday. Only 1 more to go!! We won't have our final homestudy til March 29. We got through quite a few things & really only have a couple things left to discuss. Things really are moving along quickly & it makes me excited & nervous all at the same time! We also are down to only needing a few things left to hand in for our home study.
1. Doctor's forms(which we both needed physicals updated)
2. House plans with room dimension
-Disaster plans for fire, tornado & blizzard with this
3. Fingerprints for our criminal background checks for Brian, me & Alexa

So, typically we left the most unpleasant for last!! After our homestudy, we will need to send an approved copy along with our application to the adoption agency. From there, we will have some things to complete on that end. I know that since we are out of state, we will have to complete a class that is on DVD & do some "homework" in regards to that. We will then have an adoption support person from the agency help us with getting our profile book together.


At the same time, we are filling out several grant applications. I'm still doing some research to see which ones we even qualify to send in for. We are just praying for at least 1 of these to come through but there is never a guarantee that any of them will. We know that with the economy, many places that give these grants run on donations & have been struggling. We will just trust that God knows exactly where we will get the remainder of the money to complete this adoption & He has never let us down yet!

Well, off to my domestic duties! I was hoping to stall enough to talk myself out of doing the bathrooms but it must be done! Where's a maid when you need one?? haha!

Thinking about her

There is another post by Julie, another blogger who is going through the same agency as we are, that got me really thinking about our future birthmom. Sure, we've talked about the fact that there will be a birthmom but lately it's becoming extremely real what this whole adoption will entail. It will involve heartache, loss & a huge sacrifice by this courageous woman. This past weekend we were riding through a not so great part of Des Moines & as we were stopped at a stoplight, I looked to my right & there, with a huge sign in the window, was a woman's clinic offering "birth right services". I couldn't help but wonder who the person was that placed this clinic in such a "convenient" low income area. Then the thoughts drifted to our future birthmom & I started wondering. Who is she? What is she doing right now? Did she just find out she is pregnant or is she further along & still not sure of what to do? Has she contemplated aborting this child & visited a place similar to this? What living conditions is she in? Does she know Jesus & all that His unfailing love & ultimate sacrifice can do for her?

Knowing what it's like to find yourself young & unexpectedly pregnant, I feel for her. It can be a very scary, lonely time, especially without the support of the father. Life as you know it will forever be changed. I pray to God that He gives this birthmother the strength to give her child life. For her to know that she will forever be a blessing to this child, even if she chooses not to parent. I hope that at some point, we will be able to meet her & tell her what she means to us & to this child. I hope that if we do get a chance to meet her, that she can know the love of God through us. I know that some of this sounds like a fairy tale but it is my wish & my hope to be a blessing to her too, for her to know that her child will be well cared for & loved like our own, even if he may not look like us. We want to raise this child to become a good Christian man, as this is our first goal with all our children.

So if you would, please join me in praying for our future birthmom & for all the future & past birthmoms out there. So that they may know that there is a better choice for her & for these children & that God will give them the strength they need to make this loving, selfless choice.

Things are moving along

We had our 2nd homestudy this past Tuesday & we will have another one this coming Monday. We are still working on getting our list of paperwork done. I had hoped to have the majority of it done by now but I guess with life being busy, slow & steady will have to do. I'm hoping this week to have a little bit of time to get the rest of the paperwork done so we can cross that off our list.

We have also been working on getting the wood for the bunk beds prepped & the crib redone. I will have to admit, I'm not all that good at the woodwork stuff & would much rather have a paint brush in my hand. The crib needed to be redone since our 3 youngest decided to use it as their teething ring when they were babies so we decided to sand it down & paint it. Some may ask why we are working so hard at getting the room set up since placement times can vary so much. Well, we need to have a profile book sent in for the birth families to look at & it is nice to put pictures in the book of the room the baby will be in. It will also be nice to just have it done in case of a quick placement so we won't be having to work on that once we bring our child home.

Aside from all the adoption stuff, we've enjoyed the past couple of days in Des Moines watching the Wolfpack boys win the state basketball championship! Brian made a point of working some of the time while he was down there so this trip wasn't all fun & games for him but we had a good time. Taking Jackson was a little interesting but he actually did fairly well except for Thursday when the game was right during nap time. He fell asleep at the beginning of the game & I thought I was going to have it made! WRONG! About 1/2 way through the 2nd quarter, the Wolfpack made a good run & all the cheering(myself included) woke him up & that did not sit well with my little man, who doesn't tend to wake up nicely, even when he has had enough sleep. So Brian & I took turns out in the hallway to finish watching that game. We took the kids to Chuck E Cheese yesterday to kill some time since I was NOT going to take 3 kids shopping in a mall by myself when I really don't like shopping all that much anyway.(I know, I know! Sounds weird coming from a woman!) They had a blast & we had fun watching them have that fun. After getting home around 2 this morning, today will hopefully be more low key. Well, maybe. Alexa has volleyball this afternoon so maybe after that!

Can't wait to update more soon!

I'll try again!

http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy.html

Love this post!

Here is a post by another soon to be adoptive mom that I feel addresses a really good point! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-dont-want-my-children-to-be-happy.html

OOPS! This isn't working! I'll try to figure this out!

Donate button

We have now added a donate button to our sidebar that is hooked to a paypal account designated for our adoption fund to make it easier for those wishing to help us out. You may still feel free to go through our church but we wanted another way for people to reach us that may not be from around our area & want to still help us out! Thanks!

How we got here

For some, this news may have come as quite a suprise & others may have known this has been a long time coming. The journey to get where we are at has been nothing short of a miracle with it's many twists & turns. The hand of God is so evident on this path that I look back with amazement & awe at how He has placed certain things in our lives to get us here with complete submission to His will. Well, maybe not fully complete because I guess if I look back I can still see the claw marks of trying to get ourselves out of jumping into something that will cause us to get out of our comfort zone. But God doesn't really care about our comfort. He cares about our character.

Before we were married, we had said adoption was something that we'd love to someday but we had other things we'd like to do first. The first time it was brought up in our marriage was by Brian. I know he'd cringe at the thought now knowing what he started!! ha! It was when Wyatt was a 1 1/2 & there were 2 boys in foster care that we had heard about that were close to Wyatt's age. Brian mentioned it to me & I honestly had to think about it. We decided to look a little closer into it & after a couple weeks, we felt God closing those doors. We decided to have 1 more biological child, in which we thought would be our last. We then were blessed with Dawson Bradley, who was given to us for only 2 short weeks. Oh what our son taught us in that short amount of time! We left the hospital unsure of the risks of having any more biological children & discussed adoption again. After meeting with a geneticist, we decided the risk of having another child with the same syndrome would be small. We were blessed with another pregnancy very soon after. 5 months to the day of saying goodbye to Dawson, we said goodbye to yet another child as I had miscarried that baby. We picked ourselves up & tried again, being reassured that it was just a fluke. We were blessed again to be expecting very soon after. At 8 1/2 weeks, we were again experiencing some complications and were told to expect another miscarriage. That night, we had decided that enough was enough & after some time passed, we would proceed with the adoption route. We were scheduled for an ultrasound the next morning & to our suprise, there was a healthy baby with a strong beating heart. That little baby who we never thought would be here is now our Jackson Bradley. His name means "God is gracious" and he holds that name very well & we thank God for Him everyday.

After Jackson was born, we decided we were done & proceeded to get rid of all our baby stuff. Why not?? We were done, right? I think God had a good laugh about that! About a year & a half ago, I had started seeing the need for families for african american babies. I mentioned it to Brian & he quickly said "no". I pretty much knew he would say that but I had to try. Our living conditions weren't the most ideal in that house so I told him I was going to do lots of research & just see what all goes into it. That brought me to some blogs that I decided to follow. I thought it was neat to read but never really thought it would turn into us proceeding with it. As life would have it, some twists & turns happened with us moving into a different home & deciding not to build that we see all as His plan. About 6 weeks ago, Brian & I sat down to talk about it some more & decided on what needed to happen for us to actually proceed on the adoption process. I felt good about it & thought that at least we had a plan now. We were guessing it would take a few months for all those things to fall into place but I was okay with that. God had other plans. It only took 1 week for them all to fall into place! How could we deny what God was telling us then?? We both knew it but for another week I think we were in denial & just didn't bring it up. We both had our fears & reasons not to do it. None of them trumped the fact that God was calling us to do this & that none of them was a good enough excuse to leave a child without a mother & a father. So here we are! We hope that this gives a little insight into how this has been a long process to even get to this point & this decision has not been made lightly. We know God will equip us with what we need to go through this & He will only use it for our good!

1st Homestudy Done!!

YAY!! First homestudy is now done. It was basically a run down of all the information that we need to get in place. Wow! I just keep telling myself that the end result will be so worth & I know that it will. At least I know where most of the stuff is that we need. Here is a list of what we need in place:

Photo of our family
everyone's birth certificates & social security cards
Any diplomas that Brian & I have earned
Most recent income tax filings
Proof of Car insurance
Proof of Health insurance
Proof of Home owners insurance
Floor plan of our house with measurements
Disaster plan: 1) Fire
2) Tornado
3) Blizzard
Shot records for the dog
Dr. Health forms

We have our next homestudy this coming Tuesday & we are hoping to have the majority of this stuff done, except the dr's forms since she didn't have them with her this time. We are looking forward to crossing some stuff off of our list of things to do. Right now Brian is building bunkbeds for the boys so that we have more room up here. Thank goodness for a really large bedroom on the main floor! Well, I'm off to fill out forms!! Wish me luck!