Its a BOY!!!

Its been a whirlwind of a day but here is our story in a nutshell...

We were officially approved to be waiting last wednesday. Within a few minutes we were called by our agency asking if we wanted to be presented for a situation. They mailed our profile (and others) to the birth mom who recieved them on Friday. The agency called us today to tell us that she picked us to parent her child! AND...

She is being induced on THURSDAY!!! Holy cow! So we started our planning, drive or fly etc...

So the plan is that we will do a conference call with the birthmom tomorrow late afternoon and then we will leave by car to Missouri where we will stay at a friends house for the night. Then onto the second leg of the trip which will take us to Alabama! We are taking Miss Addy with us so that will add another dimension to the trip (along with numerous elmo videos, good thing we got that minivan with a DVD player!).

Once the baby is born, the birthmom will sign about 2 days later at which point we will take custody. We will remain in AL for 1-2 weeks while our paper work clears that will let us bring him home.

There is always a chance that the birthmom would decide not to do an adoption plan and choose to parent and although this would be very hard on us, we want her to do what is best for her and her child. This is an extremely emotional time for everyone involved and we completely respect her decisions.

So hopefully everything goes smoothly! Jared's dad will be flying down on Thursday for 2-3 days until the baby is out of the hospital. That way we wont have to worry about keeping miss AJ entertained and out of trouble while the baby is in the hospital but will still be able to be with her.

Thank you to all of you who helped me get things in order today and to those of you helping while we are gone.

We plan on posting updates while we are gone and will post pictures after the birth mom signs her papers.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! We are excited and nervous at the same time!

Familiversary!

Although Friday was our official familiversary, we celebrated today with friends and family. With 14 little ones running around it was kind of crazy! It was a fun time and we feel truly blessed to have such wonderful friends and family to celebrate our special day with us.

The girls doing arts and crafts, making butterfly ornaments!

Addy checking out the babes!

Attempts at a photo op with a bunch of toddlers and infants... not easy!

Kiddie buffet, no one eats from their own plate! At least they share their food nicely!

Town Festival Fun!

Our town had its summer festival this past week so we joined in some of the festivities! Be sure to scroll to the end for a video!

Parade with Alden... We only made it for the first 1 1/2 hours and that was only half the parade! Addy sure liked the marching bands and any float that had music playing!

Kiddie disco with Sophia and Kina! The girls have moves! They were supposed to dress up so Addy wore her little tutu! She was SO cute spinning, dancing, and jumping.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The Big W

Adoption update:

We are officially WAITING!!!
What exactly does this mean? It means that we are all approved by our agency to have a baby placed in our care. It means that the agency will start showing our profile to potential birth mothers. It means that our family is one step closer to being complete!

A few questions you may have:
How long until we match? Could be anywhere from a day to a year to never. We anticipate matching fairly quickly in the next few months because our agency has quite a few situations that they need families for.

What is a match? A match is when a birth mother (or birthparents) have selected us to parent the baby they are making an adoption plan for. A match does not guarentee that the baby will be ours. The birth parents could still decide to parent after the match is made or after the baby is born. The birth parents do get a lot of counseling through our agency so when they match they are sure of their decision but anything can change and this is a very emotional process for everyone involved. We could match with a birth mom who already has a baby born (as in Addy's situation) or one is pregnant and could have a few months left before delivery.

We will keep you updated on our process! Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and support as we start our wait and as we move forward with our adoption process!

Fun in the sun!

An impromtu pool party on Monday evening! Addy was such a fish and loved the beachball sprinkler too!

Girls Weekend!

We started an annual tradition this past weekend. A girls weekend, just Addy, my mom, sister, and me. A fun weekend where Addy gets to pick what we do! It typically will be near her birthday but because of my parents surgery, we post poned it until now.

So what did Addy choose this time??? The Childrens Museum and swimming!

And her favorite part of the museum.... BUBBLES!

Thank you grandma for painting both of us!

Aunt Robyn, the turtle!

Little birdy in a nest!

Pool.... or fountain!

18 month photo shoot

Sneak Peak

I am having some technical issues with uploading pictures so here is a sneak peak of her 18 month pictures. Stay tuned later this week for more pictures from the weekend and her 18 month photo shoot!

Twist Out!

Two weeks of tiny Senegalese two stranded twists (which were adorable), gave us this adorable hair do for the next couple days (depending on how long it stays nice). Addy got all dressed up for her 18 month pictures today so I took a few of her looking cute before we left.

When we get the pictures back, I will of course post those too!

Weekend of Fun!!!

This past Friday was Jared and my 5th wedding anniversary so we thought we would do something fun. Unfortunately Jared had his graduate classes all weekend so Addy and I traveled with him and got a hotel room.

Saturday Addy and I went to a rummage sale, visited a Childrens museum, had lunch, took a nap and then met up with Jared for dinner, Walmart, swimming, and disc golf. We packed a ton of stuff in!

Sunday we went to breakfast, stopped and met Jareds class, then Addy and I headed home, went to the park and spent some nice time out in the wonderful weather!

Adoption update: our home study came in the mail and so we sent our stuff into our placement agency today!!! So once they recieve it, they will review it and let us know when we are approved! Then our official wait starts!!!

Ninga or Dancer??? & Adoption Update

Jared had Miss AJ in a long sleeve black onesie and black stretchy pants and thought she looked like a cute little ninga... I thought she looked like a cute little dancer! Either way she was running, jumping, and spinning which lead to a little ninga dancer nap!

Adoption update.... If you read back a couple posts there was a list of 8 things we needed to do to officially be waiting and we are getting closer.

1. review draft and make edits CHECK
2. get proof of education from our previous agency (you have to do many hours of adoption related education for your homestudy and since our previous homestudy wasn't too long ago it still counts!) CHECK
3. have our placement agency review our homestudy for any other information they need added (each state has their own requirements for a homestudy and since we are using a nationwide agency, we need to be sure we are covering our bases) CHECK
4. send all feedback to the homestudy agency CHECK
5. homestudy agency makes changes and finalizes homestudy CHECK!!! so we now have another step.. 5 1/2: Wait for homestudy agency to mail us copies of our homestudy and supporting documents.
6. SEND HOMESTUDY AND PAPERWORK AND PROFILES to placement agency!
7. Wait for approval
8. Enter the much anticipated waiting process!!!

So we only have a few more steps left! Hopefully we will get our homestudies early next week and mail our stuff in to the placement agency by the end of next week and be officially waiting a week later! Keep checking back for updates!!!

Priceless

1 bubble gun.... $5
2 double A batteries....$2.50
1 bottle of bubbles.....$0.99
20 minutes of fun, 3 million bubbles, & 1 happy little peanut... Priceless

Picnic and Adoption Update

Future firefighter???

A couple of the local adoption groups had a picnic this past weekend and some of our fun little friends were there. Addy, Miles, and Sophia enjoyed playing in a huge play room with tons of toys! They play very nicely together, share toys, and share snacks!

Adoption update.... One tiny step closer to being waiting! We got our homestudy draft tonight. So next steps:

1. review draft and make edits
2. get proof of education from our previous agency (you have to do many hours of adoption related education for your homestudy and since our previous homestudy wasn't too long ago it still counts!)
3. have our placement agency review our homestudy for any other information they need added (each state has their own requirements for a homestudy and since we are using a nationwide agency, we need to be sure we are covering our bases)
4. send all feedback to the homestudy agency
5. homestudy agency makes changes and finalizes homestudy
6. SEND HOMESTUDY AND PAPERWORK AND PROFILES to placement agency!
7. Wait for approval
8. Enter the much anticipated waiting process!!!

So we are hoping to be to step 6 in the next couple weeks. We will forsure keep you all updated on our progress. Although it feels like it is going slowly, we have made quite a bit of progress in 2 1/2 months!