I'm an Auntie again!

My brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Ashlee, had their fourth baby on Tuesday, making me an Auntie of a newborn all over again!  No one knew the gender except for Ashlee's mom, so we all got to find out when we went to the hospital.  They had a beautiful girl making their family wonderfully complete with three girls and one boy.

Aunt Vanessa and sweet Charlotte!

She is so beautiful!

Uncle Mike and Charlotte

The biggest sister with the baby sister.

Abijah's turn with her baby sister.

Charlotte's sweet and precious toes.

I got to spend my lunch break on Wednesday just snuggling the sweet girl!

It's so much fun having another niece to love and spoil!  I, of course, love her tons already.  I am very blessed to be an auntie of so many sweet kids!

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And here's just a quick little bit of info on where we're at with adoption...  Over the past month I have been in contact with a private adoption agency a lot.  We even had a phone interview with them and went over a lot of information on getting started with their program.  But, without going into every single detail, I will just say that we are once again looking into DHS adoption or fostering-to-adopt.  It seems like we (aka, ME!) have been trying so hard to ignore this option, but God has been putting it in our paths on almost a weekly basis.  It's getting a little hard to continue to ignore. ;)  So that's where we're at.  We are praying a lot about it since, honestly, it really scares us (again, aka, just ME).  We are trying to decide between just adopting or doing foster-to-adopt.  I'll let you know anything new when we know!

Back To Square One

Well, like I said in the previous post, nothing ever seems to be 100% with adoption, and things have already changed.

We received an email from Catholic Charities today saying that our pre-application was approved when it shouldn't have been.  Apparently we do not meet the age requirements or the requirements for length of marriage.  Crushed and devestated are the first two words that come to mind to describe how I feel right now.  I was just so excited to finally have a true direction that we were taking.  And now we're back to nothing.

Please be praying for us as we try to figure out what path we are supposed to be taking.

Progress

I actually have an update to share!  We are making some progress.  It's happening slowly, but we truly are getting somewhere!

For now (because nothing is ever 100% certain with all of this in my book) we have decided to pursue our adoption through Catholic Charities.  (And no, you don't have to be Catholic to adopt through them.)  We have had several friends mention them to us, so we finally decided to check it out.  We liked everything we saw, so we decided to get started!  And the best thing about them is that their fees are based off of income, therefore they are the cheapest agency we've found.

We have already filled out their pre-application and were approved to work with them.  The next step in the process is to attend an adoption seminar that they put on.  We will go to that on October 28th.

It's so exciting to just finally have a specific direction we're taking!  This is a very long journey we have ahead of us now, so please continue to keep us in your prayers.  I will put updates on here for every step of the way!

Not Much To Say...

Well, I don't have much to say.  I desperately wish I had tons to share.  But for now, I will just give you the little progress we have.

Stressed is the theme of life right now.  I thought it was a big enough decision to finally figure out that we wanted to adopt.  But now we have to figure out how to go about adopting.  Domestic adoption, international adoption, adoption through an agency, adoption through an attorney, or adoption through DHS.  There's so many variables!

We have settled on domestic adoption through an agency or attorney, but that just brings up even more variables of actually finding someone to work with!  We have contacted a local agency and attorney, but neither one have returned any of our calls.  There's an agency about an hour and a half away from us that we have been in contact with, but then there's the issue of expenses.  Adoption is expensive enough on its own.  Not sure if we want to pile on the added cost of traveling back and forth there a lot.  Our latest pursuit has been to contact another local attorney company to talk to them about their process, fees, etc.

So that's it.  That's all there is to say...and it's driving me crazy!  My head and heart are moving forward so much faster than this process actually is!  Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we try to figure out our finances for this journey and try to find the right path to take.

I'll leave you with a video of a great song by Steven Curtis Chapman about adoption.


When Love Takes You In
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Happy Birthday to the Hubs!

Today my wonderful husband turns 25 years-old!! I know that may sound young to some of you, but we sure do feel like we're getting old!! lol But anyway... We love birthdays here in the Thomas household! The birthday person pretty much gets to do whatever they want for an entire weekend. We gotta take advantage of stuff like this while we still don't have kids!

Yesterday we went to IHOP for breakfast, spent the afternoon in his home town, had lunch with his parents, did a little geocaching, and then we had some fro yo for dinner at Orange Leaf. Today we will be getting our traditional Target-brand birthday cupcakes (they're so yummy!!), go out to lunch together, and later go out to dinner with some great friends. Who knows what tomorrow holds, but it will be whatever he wants!

And since there's a day in the year dedicated just to the hubs (because I'm sure there's no one else with a birthday today!), I have to use just a few sentences to brag on him a little bit... This man truly, truly is my best friend. I'm just lucky enough that I also happen to be in love with him and he romances me every day. He is so dang funny and is always doing crazy things to make me laugh (as you can tell from the picture posted.) He is caring, loving, giving, and considerate. The past two years of marriage and infertility have been an emotional whirlwind. I have truly only survived it through the grace of God and the love and humor of the hubs. He is an amazing man and I am so blessed to get to walk through this life hand-in-hand with him! Happy Birthday, Hubs!

An Anniversary of Sorts

Two years ago today the hubs and I began our long and exhausting journey to try and become parents. Two stinkin' years. I get emotional if I let myself think about that for too long.

After two years of infertility I am truly amazed by the idea of deciding you want to get pregnant and then it simply happening. Or even being able to become parents for free! That is such a foreign concept to me and yet it is what's natural. That's how it's supposed to happen. Sometimes that makes me feel like a freak...that I can't accomplish what's so natural to do.

Infertility is just such a long and frustrating journey. Sometimes I feel like we're not any closer to becoming parents today than we were two years ago. We currently have about three or four different avenues we could pursue for adoption, but we haven't really felt led to any specific one. It also seems like God isn't really opening doors for any of those avenues for us to really feel certain about what direction we should be taking. We just feel stuck at a deadend and it's frustrating. So very, very frustrating.

I usually try to remain upbeat and optimistic throughout all of this. I have my hope and faith in the Lord and know that He has an amazing plan in the works for us. But right now the journey to get there is just so overwhelming and has been really getting me down. Life will carry on and eventually we will reach our intended destination, but for now I just have the "blah's".

An Update...Sorta

Well, I haven't written anything on here in 3 weeks now. There's two reasons for that. 1: We've been crazy busy lately. I can't even tell you anything specific we've been doing. But we've definitely been busy! 2: The biggest reason...I just feel like I don't have any updates to give.

We're at a frustrating standstill right now. Which is especially frustrating because really, we haven't even been able to do anything to truly get started yet. A while back I mentioned that one of the doctor's I work with adopted his daughter several years ago. He recently gave me a phone number for a local adoption attorney and encouraged me to give her a call. He did warn me, however, not to call her unless we were really ready to move forward with all of this. He said most people get a baby through her in about 2 months and he's even seen someone get a baby in 48 hours!

As you can imagine, I was thrilled to get her number! I couldn't wait for the next open opportunity I had to give her a call. But, that was about 4 weeks ago and we have yet to call her. Simply because we cannot figure out if we can afford to do this or not. We can afford to have a baby, yes. But we cannot afford to buy a baby. At 23 and 24 years-old we are trying to figure out how to spend $10,000+ and possibly go into major debt, all so we can become parents. It's a little stressful, to say the least.

So we're taking some time right now to just rest. And think. And count our pennies. And pray. It's been so, so hard to be in this stage of things. It drives me crazy feeling like I'm doing nothing proactive right now for this long journey we've been on to become parents. But I must learn to rest in the Lord and His timing. I know that everything will turn out perfectly because of Him, but the process is very frustrating right now. Prayers from all of our friends would be much appreciated.