When I Knew

I've told this story to some people, but I love it so much and it's so close to my heart that I want EVERYONE to know it. This is the story of when I knew adoption was for us.

People used to ask us if we had thought about adopting. The truth is that we had thought about it, but it just didn't feel right for us at that point, so it was never really at the front of my mind. I had never had anything against it, I just thought we'd start our family the traditional way.

We absolutely love our ward here in Eugene and we have been called as the Cub Scout leaders. But, on the side, we've been substituting in Primary for almost a year now. :) We don't mind it at all because we love our primary. On January 18 (I believe), we were sitting in Primary and one of the classes was doing Sharing Time. It was crazy and hectic and the kids were pretty wired. My friend Brenley, who I actually didn't know at the time, was the teacher of this class that was presenting. The theme was about families. It was hard to pay close attention to the lesson with everything going on, but I heard something at the very end that she said that really caught my attention. She mentioned that through adoption, they had been blessed with their little boy that they are now sealed to.

Now, to fully appreciate this story, it goes back a little bit further. After telling Brenley my story, she added to it. Tell me if I get anything wrong, Brenley, but I belive this is what you told me. Brenley had been preparing her lesson and had gone back and forth about whether or not to talk about the adoption. She didn't know if it fit well or if it would work into the lesson. Ultimately, she decided not to talk about it. Even during her lesson, she wasn't planning on it, but at the end, she felt impressed to say something about it and it was the thing that struck me that day.

I didn't talk to her after her lesson and we were gone the next Sunday, so on February 1, I caught Brenley after church and just mentioned that I was curious about adoption. Poor Brenley had ler little one year old that did not want to be sitting there anymore and was trying everything to get away, and she still talked to me for a few minutes. We exchanged email addresses and I got an amazing email from her later that night talking about their journey with adoption. She also mentioned that she wanted to come over in the next couple of days to give me something. So she came over on the 3rd and brought me the greatest book, From God's Arms to my Arms to Yours. We talked for about an hour, with her giving me so much information and answering all of my questions.

When she left, I immediately opened the book and started reading. By the time I got to about the third page, I was completely filled with the spirit so strongly, that I just started sobbing, much like I am now and much like I do every time I tell this story or even think about it. I knew without a doubt that adoption is for us and this is how we will be blessed with the beginning of our family.

I know in my heart that this is what we're supposed to be doing right now. There are so many reasons we were led to Eugene, to this ward. I know Brenley is one of those reasons. She has helped so much and has helped get me to this point. I am so grateful for her and for the spirit prompting her to say those short, simple words in Primary that day for my ears to hear. This has been so amazing and I hope I never forget how I feel right now whenever I think about how blessed we are to be a part of this. I absolutely love adoption and I love love love these sweet, amazing birth mothers that are so full of selflessness and love!!

APPROVED!

Yesterday was a fun, fun day for us. After a few phone calls with Brent (our caseworker, to make sure they had all of our information), we got the fun phone call saying we're approved and our profile is online!! Brent is so great and has been so helpful every step of the way. He spend most of yesterday working on our profile - getting everything ready to go online and making sure he had everything from us. So, now we're official!! It actually doesn't feel like we've had to wait too long to get to this point, even though it's been 6 months. I loved putting our profile together - figuring out which pictures to use and writing our letter to the birth parents. It was interesting to see how we felt inspired to put certain pictures in or what descriptions to write. Writing our letter was especially interesting. I really thought it was going to come out different that it did, but we had prayed right before that we would know what to write, and I know we wrote the things that we needed to.

Our profile is open for the public to view. You can see it here. So now all we do is wait for our sweet birth parents to find us and for us to find them. This is such an inspired process, I know everything will work out how it's supposed to!

Almost There...

I got great news yesterday! I was swimming and had a voicemail on my phone from a Portland phone number. I figured it had to be LDSFS with hopefully good news, but didn't want to get my hopes up too high. It was Pauletta (I just love her - she's so great) from LDSFS letting us know that our background checks came back and everything looked good!! I was bouncing because I was so excited. It just feels so REAL now. Now pretty much everything's done! We're so close. I talked to our caseworker, Brent, today to see what to do now. He's meeting with the board on July 6 to go over all of our information (home study, pictures, letter, everything) and will know that day if we've been approved!! That's in a week and a half!! Assuming everything goes well, we should have our profile up online then.

Even though this last part has taken so long, I have still loved every single part of this process and wouldn't change it for the world. I know this is how everything has needed to work for us. I know we've had so many prayers offered in our behalf, and again, I'm so grateful for them. Thank you all so much for being so supportive and excited! It makes all the difference in the world to be surrounded by such great, loving people!

What Background Check?

So I've been thinking my next post would be the one where I say something exciting about our background checks coming back approved and being so excited about it. Guess that one's gonna have to wait. I checked in with our caseworker a couple of weeks ago to see if he'd heard anything since we'd been waiting about 6 or so weeks. He let me know he hadn't and Utah is currently taking up to 8 to 12 weeks to do theirs. So I get an email from a lady in the LDSFS office saying if I haven't heard from them in the next week, to email her again and she'll check on them for us. So I get a call from her the next week before I've had a chance to call her. You'd think that'd be a good thing. I knew in my gut it wasn't. Apparently, whoever they send the background checks to (I'm assuming the state...) never got our paperwork. Hmmmm... So she says it could still possibly be on someone's desk in a pile, but to be safe, she wants us to redo our paperwork. I totally agree. So on Tuesday, we get to go back down to the courthouse, wait awhile, get our fingerprints done again, and mail our information back to them, which they will put a note on it that says "expedite." I wonder how well that'll work.

Now, you'd think I'd be freaking out, mad at the world. I'm not. I'm totally calm. How odd for me. Our personal information is floating around somewhere and I don't even care. I think our caseworker and Paulette at LDSFS have done a fantastic job. They didn't lose the paperwork, so they don't get the blame. I actually blame myself and Dan. :) We were too dang fast getting all our other paperwork in and it's just moving too fast. I know from the very depths of my heart that every single thing that has happened with this adoption has happened for a reason. This included. If every single thing went through as quickly as it has, we wouldn't get the right baby. So I figure, this is Heavenly Father's way of getting the right baby to us. It'll all work out how it's supposed to. In the meantime, I'm enjoying life, hanging out with Dan (who at this moment is entertaining me with some awesome dance moves to Beyonce's "Single Ladies"), and just being patient (for once) and letting everything fall into place. It's taken me a long, long time to learn patience, but I think I may just be starting to learn it. It's a good feeling.

Home Study

Today we had our home study! I've been so anxious and excited for this day because this is our last formal meeting, which means we're almost approved! It went so well. It was so much easier than I could've ever imagined. I was so worried - wondering if our smoke detectors were in the right places, wondering if I had to baby-proof anything yet, etc. Our caseworker was so great. He stuck his head in the rooms and that was it. He just made sure we had smoke detectors (which were just fine) and a fire extinguisher. The rest of the time was spent watching a great video he brought. ABC had done a special a while ago that followed birthmothers along their path of placing their babies for adoption. It was so neat to watch. I have gained such a huge respect and love for these special girls that are in these situations. I can't even imagine what they have to go through. I now know that they are such an important part in Heavenly Father's plan to help families grow and I am so grateful for them and their selfless choice to do what they feel is best for their child. I can't wait to meet our birthmother - I already feel such an amazing love for her and her family. I've learned (especially from this video) that this isn't just hard for the birthmothers, but also their families. I feel like I've been so self-involved that I hadn't even started thinking about how hard this is for all those involved. This has been such an amazing growing experience for me - I can't believe how much I've learned in such a short time and how much I continue to learn about Heavenly Father's plan.

So our next step is to get our profile together while we wait for our background checks to come back. We still need to write our birthparent letter and figure our which pictures we're going to use. :) So exciting!!

Pictures

Today we had our friend Brenley take some pictures of us for our adoption profile. We went down to the U of O campus and found some really great spots to take pictures. She did such an amazing job! She was so fun to work with and had great ideas. She has only edited a few so far and I LOVE the ones I've seen. I'll post a few of my very favorites.

This last one is my very favorite! Thank you so much again Brenley!!!

First Purchase

My sister, Jodi, and her kids have been visiting us since last Friday. So Jodi and I thought it would be fun to go on my first baby shopping trip! It was so much fun, but also so surreal. I've been buying baby stuff for the last almost 12 years, ever since Jodi had her first baby. But it's always been things I've given away as presents. I've never bought anything like this for myself. It was so weird to think I got to take it all home and keep it! I'll admit, it was very overwhelming at first. :) I knew there was so much to get, but I felt like I was walking in circles, not really being able to take everything in. :) It's a good thing I had Jodi (who is very wise :) and helpful) there to help me! Once I picked out the first thing, which was a monitor, it was a cakewalk. Here's a picture of all the fun things I got! Thanks again, Jodi!! I had SO much fun!!