In God's hands....

Yesterday was a fun day! My good friend Taylor needed to register for her upcoming baby shower and asked if I could go with her and do some registering as well. I felt a little weird registering for my invisible baby but as Taylor said, "It could happen any minute....and I might as well be prepared." I wasn't sure how the day would go and was a little worried that I might have a break down registering for all this cute baby stuff but I honestly did have a good time. Taylor and I pretty much registered for the same type of stuff but had a blast trying to figure out which brand of bottles was best and which brand of car seats was best etc. :) It was also fun trying to dodge a stalker type worker at Babies R Us who kept asking us if we were sisters or best friends or cousins.....and then she preceded to tell us all about her kids and her sister's kids. If we saw her down an aisle we wanted to go down, we quickly walked by and went down a different aisle. B ut all in all, it was a fun day and Taylor was so supportive. Thanks Taylor!!!!! Once we find out when we are getting our baby and find out the sex, I may go back and change some stuff to make it more girly or boyish but for now, I have the essentials. And one day we will have some type of party/shower that the registry will come in handy for. But for now it's all in God's hands.
Please continue to pray for us as we wait. The adoption agency said waiting can be the hardest part but after waiting for almost 4 years....we are pretty used to it. Prayers that can be lifted up are 1. praying for this process to run smoothly, 2. praying that it will happen in a way that I can be home with the baby for the first few months, and 3. pray for our birth mom and her decision that she is facing.
Thank you for your love and support through this process.
And Jen T......if you're reading this....maybe you should start a blog too! :) Love you girl!

We are certified!!

Sorry it's been a few weeks since I've written. Darryl and I have been super busy, sick, and just plain old TIRED! And yes....I know....that will all get worse once we actually have children. But like Charlie Sheen says, "BRING IT!" Hahahahaha. :) Darryl and I had our home visit a few Monday's ago which also included a week of cleaning, baby proofing, and buying some much needed decorations for our new wall. Thank you to everyone who came and helped prepare our house. My best friend Emmy was literally on her hands and knees scrubbing everything from our refrigerator to our trash can! Love you girl!
Our social worker showed up right on time and really liked our house. She was able to check everything off and after meeting with us for 30 minutes or so, she happily told us that we were certified! Yay!!! To keep up our certification, we need to do 12 hours of adoption classes, meetings, or read any books on the subject. We have a year to do this, so I'm not too worried. We are already signed up for 2 classes. :) And my friend Kristina wrote me today to tell me our adoption letter is now on the Bethany website! Here is the link if you are interested.

http://www.bethany.org/A55798/bethanyWWW.nsf/0/4B8CD7825ECB7E7685257849005EA1E3

And I wish we could post the whole 24 page portfolio because it is soooooooo amazing! :) Thanks again Anthony! And again thank you for all the prayers. For now Darryl and I are going to relax, live life to the fullest, and enjoy our time together. We will keep you all updated!

2 down, 2 to go...

Darryl and I both completed our second meeting. I had mine on Monday and Darryl's was on Tuesday. We were both nervous about it but Jamie is so understanding and does a good job of asking the right questions to get us talking. (Darryl and I are both pretty quiet at times....and being nervous doesn't help that) She asked a lot of questions about our childhood and related those to how we would raise our future children. So now, we are working on our letter to the birth mom which will go in our portfolio. There is so much I want to say to her but don't know how to get it all on paper and in the right words. I don't want to sound too needy and I don't want to seem like it's an easy decision for her either. But as I sat here listening to the Joshua Radin channel on Pandora on my new Iphone (yay) I began to think how much God has blessed us and how I feel like he is guiding us through this process with one hand on our back. And I found this verse which I think I will include in our letter...

“In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” Ephesians 1:5

I don't know....maybe it's too cheesy but I like that it mentioned adoption and how he knew we would be part of his family from the very beginning. Kind of cool. Well....thank you again for all the prayers and please keep thinking about us as we are remodeling part of the house....(I know....perfect timing right?), attending these meetings, and baby proofing our entire house for our February 21st meeting. We can't wait for the day our family will be Darryl and Jen plus 1....or 2....or 3! :) Thank you for the prayers! xoxo

1 down, 3 to go...

Yay! We are done with our first meeting! We were both a little nervous but our social worker Jamie was and is awesome! She's very understanding and knew that we would both be a little nervous. We had to answer a bunch of questions about how we met (hee hee), when we decided we wanted children, and all about our fertility journey. I was very happy that I only cried once. She asked what the hardest thing for me was during all of this. And I told her it was watching friends around me get pregnant with no problem. As soon as those words came out of my mouth I started crying. She asked if I had a lot of anger towards them and I said no, of course not...just very jealous sometimes. (even of those who have had really hard pregnancies.....I would trade them in a heartbeat) But I do want to thank all of my friends especially those really close to me who have never complained in front of me. I know that pregnancy isn't always hearts and rainbows but I really do appreciate how loving they all have been. I know it's not easy for them either. They feel bad telling me about it and they shouldn't. I am so happy for all of my pregnant friends and those who have had babies. And me bursting into tears when I hear your good news has just come to be a normal reaction. I seriously have no control over it but I'm hoping with children of our own that it will get much easier for me.
But anyhoo, on that note, :) we were able to plan our next 3 meetings. We have one a week and our last one will be on February 21st! So we may even be on the list sooner that what we thought! :) These next few weeks are going to be filled with cleaning, cleaning, and baby proofing the house for our home visit. Please continue to keep us in your prayers over these next few weeks. Our next meeting with Jamie is going to be one on one...so she will talk with Darryl and I separately. They do this to make sure the husband and wife are both on the same page with their thoughts about adoption and about their marriage. I'm hoping again that she will see us for who we are and realize how ready we are for this. :) Thanks again for all those prayers. They are definitely helping! xoxo

Our first home study meeting!

Well tomorrow is the big day! We have our first home study meeting with a counselor at Bethany. We are so excited to get this going but I'm also nervous because we've been told there's lots of crying that normally happens during the first meeting. We will be asked to talk about our fertility journey and why we decided to choose adoption so I'm just praying that I won't be too much of an emotional wreck. We hope that she sees us as the loving and caring people that we are and how much we want a family of our own.
I'm also handing off our pictures to my brother tomorrow so he can start our portfolio. It was fun going through years of pictures and picking the ones that will represent our lives the best. I can't wait to see what my brother will be able to do with all of them. Our last assignment will be to write a letter to the birth mom and add that to the portfolio as well. I really want to spend a lot of time on this since it will be the first thing the birth mom will read from us.
Please keep us in your prayers as we go through these next 4 meetings. We are hoping to get one in a week so we can be done by March. Pray that they go smoothly and that God is preparing the perfect baby for our family. Thank you all! And I'll let you know how tomorrow goes. xoxo

Done and Done!

We finally turned in all our adoption paperwork! Yay!!!! We turned it in last Thursday and are now waiting for our counseling appointments to be set up or.... for Bethany to call us and let us know if we are missing anything. If all our paperwork is complete, our next step will be to attend 4 counseling sessions. However, one of those will be individual appointments so I guess it's really 5 sessions. We are hoping this will only take a month or so and that we can be on the list by mid February. Darryl and I are so excited and today we received our first baby shower present!

We need a place for our newborn to sleep and have to have it by our fifth counseling session or home study as they call it. So my parents and my grandma pitched in and got us our co-sleeper! It's tan and polka dot so it could be for a boy or girl. My sister in laws both have one and love it! Thanks Mom and Dad and Grandma! And thank you everyone for being so supportive through this. Please continue to pray that this will be a smooth process and that Darryl and I can bring the baby that was meant for us all along home very soon. Also, please pray for our baby's birth mom.....she could be pregnant right now and in the middle of making a very tough but loving and responsible decision. (ooooo....gives me goosebumps!) :)
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and wish you a happy new year! We are praying this year will be the best one ever!

Almost ready...

So over the past month or so, Darryl and I have been filling out the piles of countless paperwork and making appointments at the Doctor for physicals, going to Quest for blood tests/urine tests, taking CPR and first aid courses, and still need to make the appointment for the DMV to pick up driving records and finish our self evaluations. It's amazing how much some people have to go through to have a baby added to their family. If the state made every parent go through this before getting pregnant, there would definitely be a lot less unwanted children in this world.
We hope to get all our paperwork done and turned in by January 1st (my birthday...Yay!) and hope to get our home study and portfolio done by February 1st. My brother Anthony is an amazing artist and computer graphics designer who is planning on doing our portfolio for us which is awesome!!!!! All I have to do is send him the pictures and he's going to lay them all out in a book format. (for those of you that don't know already, our portfolio is what Bethany shows to birth moms who are planning on placing their children.) And Darryl and I have also learned that the term "putting up for adoption" is no longer correct. "Placing" is the correct term now. :) When a birth mom decides to place her child, she tells Bethany what she expects and what type of parents she would like her child to have. From there, Bethany picks four families and lets the birth mom view their portfolios. The birth mom can then pick from those families who were best suited for her needs or ask to see more.
The office we are going through is also known for their "surprise babies" which means once we are on the list, we could get a call at any time letting us know that there is a baby waiting for us and we need to go pick him/her up immediately. For this reason, we do need to have some baby items ready and waiting. (somewhere for the baby to sleep, car seat, bottles, diapers, and a few outfits)
I will get much more into the details of all this once we are going through it....but there is much more to it. :)
In the meantime, please pray for our unborn baby (our birth mom could be pregnant with him/her as I write this....scary and exciting thought) :), pray that this experience goes smoothly and that we don't end up in an adoption nightmare that ends up with us losing the one thing that we've wanted for so long, and pray for us to continue to trust God and his planning. We are excited and can't wait for the blog where we get to share our good news!!!! We love you all and thank you for your continuous prayers.