Saturday, December 18, 2010
Christmas is Almost Here!!
We are so excited that Christmas is literally right around the corner. We are excited to be close to family for the holiday, and we are looking forward to going to New England. It has been 5 years since we had Christmas in New England! The last time we were their for the holiday, Paul and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary (of dating). That was December 26, 2005. We had recently bought our first home, and Paul and Donnie had officially been Florida residents for six months. Now, five years later, we have gotten married, been foster parents, sold our home, moved into the home my inlaws purchased in Florida as a future retirement home, adopted our son, and purchased our second home. We hope to be in this home for a long time! Most recently, we had family pictures done. My friend Teresa did them for us. She is a really good photographer and has a small photog business on the side (she daylights as a nurse). Here is a sneak peak at some of the pictures we had done. We had them done at Lake Mirror in downtown Lakeland!
Monday, December 6, 2010
Our Journey Thus Far...
It has taken me quite sometime to get to the point where I felt comfortable posting about our journey to add to our family. It is not something that I felt we should blog about openly, but with so many of our family and friends supporting us and following our trials and tribulations, I felt that maybe it would be helpful and therapeutic for me, as well as my family, if I opened up about it more on this blog. I mean, this blog has been such a wonderful place to document our lives so far. So, why not? You have watched us get married, and adopt our darling son Isaiah. Why not discuss our journey trying to add to our family of three?
Let me backtrack a little. Paul and I made the conscious decision to try to expand our family in July of 2009. We thought the answer was simple...try and you shall succeed. Well, it was a very busy time...I was getting ready to start my new job as a guidance counselor, and we were getting ready to close on our house. We were also awaiting the date for our adoption finalization on Isaiah. So, when we did not succeed in getting pregnant right away, it was okay. We did not think much about it. But, as the months rolled by, we started to question whether or not we were able to HAVE kids. So, we both ended up getting testing done. I won't go into all of the details, but it was about mid September 2010 when we finally found out that we were infertile.
So, the question loomed...how do we proceed? Many people take IVF as the next course of action. For us, we talked long and hard about it. We really felt that putting thousands of dollars into IVF was not where we wanted to go with our money. It had no guarantees, and we really didn't want to go down another road that would only bring heartache and unanswered questions...so we took a hard look at our current situation. Didn't God bless us with an amazing son? Did it matter that he was not biologically ours? We finally realized that we felt we were meant to expand our family in the form of adoption. Now that the decision was made, we were not quite sure how to proceed.
I turned to a friend of a friend. She is an adoption counselor at one of the local adoption agencies. I had gotten to know her pretty well, and felt comfortable confiding in her about our current struggle. She offered to meet with Paul and I, and give us all the information we needed in order to consider adopting through the agency she worked for. Everything sounded wonderful, and it was something we really wanted to do, but there was one huge problem. The money involved. It was a hefty charge to do what needed to be done in order to adopt a newborn baby, and we were not sure we could actually put all of that money together. At least, not without some serious work at it. So, with heavy hearts, we told her that we did not think we could work with her agency, and explained our reasons why. She was so understanding about it. She gave us lots of resources, and wished us well. We decided to look into other areas of adoption.
We thought it would be easy. We even considered fostering again, so that God may bless us with another child like he did with Isaiah. We did not anticipate hitting road blocks with this as well. We found out that foster parents were only being licensed to do just that...foster. So, if you ended up wanting to adopt the child you were fostering, it was not an easy task. The state was now transitioning children in care for over a year or more to adoptive homes. With the number of adoptive homes wanting babies and toddlers, they would not even license us again as an adoptive home because they were only taking applications for adoptive families interested in adopting older children....and by older children, I mean 10 years old and up. So, yet again another door was closed in our face.
You would think by now the process would FINALLY get easier. But, we looked into agency after agency, and either they wanted WAY too much money to do the paperwork and legal aspects of adopting a baby, or they would not even work with us because we were not of a certain religious faith. So. We find ourselves back at square one.
Most recently, I began researching adoption grants. You cannot apply for any of these grants until you have an approved home study completed by the agency you have decided to work with, so until then we cannot apply, but at least there *might* be some reprieve out their. I have also attempted to get back into contact with the social worker we ORIGINALLY met with. It feels right to us now, to reach out to her again and get the process going through them. We will just have to keep our fingers crossed that, a. our baby finds us, and b. that God blesses us with the means of financially doing this! So, until then we are waiting. Waiting for her to get back with us and let us know that we are on board to work with her and her agency. Waiting for the information we need in order to move forward.
Phew! I did not intend for this initial post to be SO long, but now that I have gotten you up to speed on everything, the rest should fall into place!! God Bless.
Love, Us!
Let me backtrack a little. Paul and I made the conscious decision to try to expand our family in July of 2009. We thought the answer was simple...try and you shall succeed. Well, it was a very busy time...I was getting ready to start my new job as a guidance counselor, and we were getting ready to close on our house. We were also awaiting the date for our adoption finalization on Isaiah. So, when we did not succeed in getting pregnant right away, it was okay. We did not think much about it. But, as the months rolled by, we started to question whether or not we were able to HAVE kids. So, we both ended up getting testing done. I won't go into all of the details, but it was about mid September 2010 when we finally found out that we were infertile.
So, the question loomed...how do we proceed? Many people take IVF as the next course of action. For us, we talked long and hard about it. We really felt that putting thousands of dollars into IVF was not where we wanted to go with our money. It had no guarantees, and we really didn't want to go down another road that would only bring heartache and unanswered questions...so we took a hard look at our current situation. Didn't God bless us with an amazing son? Did it matter that he was not biologically ours? We finally realized that we felt we were meant to expand our family in the form of adoption. Now that the decision was made, we were not quite sure how to proceed.
I turned to a friend of a friend. She is an adoption counselor at one of the local adoption agencies. I had gotten to know her pretty well, and felt comfortable confiding in her about our current struggle. She offered to meet with Paul and I, and give us all the information we needed in order to consider adopting through the agency she worked for. Everything sounded wonderful, and it was something we really wanted to do, but there was one huge problem. The money involved. It was a hefty charge to do what needed to be done in order to adopt a newborn baby, and we were not sure we could actually put all of that money together. At least, not without some serious work at it. So, with heavy hearts, we told her that we did not think we could work with her agency, and explained our reasons why. She was so understanding about it. She gave us lots of resources, and wished us well. We decided to look into other areas of adoption.
We thought it would be easy. We even considered fostering again, so that God may bless us with another child like he did with Isaiah. We did not anticipate hitting road blocks with this as well. We found out that foster parents were only being licensed to do just that...foster. So, if you ended up wanting to adopt the child you were fostering, it was not an easy task. The state was now transitioning children in care for over a year or more to adoptive homes. With the number of adoptive homes wanting babies and toddlers, they would not even license us again as an adoptive home because they were only taking applications for adoptive families interested in adopting older children....and by older children, I mean 10 years old and up. So, yet again another door was closed in our face.
You would think by now the process would FINALLY get easier. But, we looked into agency after agency, and either they wanted WAY too much money to do the paperwork and legal aspects of adopting a baby, or they would not even work with us because we were not of a certain religious faith. So. We find ourselves back at square one.
Most recently, I began researching adoption grants. You cannot apply for any of these grants until you have an approved home study completed by the agency you have decided to work with, so until then we cannot apply, but at least there *might* be some reprieve out their. I have also attempted to get back into contact with the social worker we ORIGINALLY met with. It feels right to us now, to reach out to her again and get the process going through them. We will just have to keep our fingers crossed that, a. our baby finds us, and b. that God blesses us with the means of financially doing this! So, until then we are waiting. Waiting for her to get back with us and let us know that we are on board to work with her and her agency. Waiting for the information we need in order to move forward.
Phew! I did not intend for this initial post to be SO long, but now that I have gotten you up to speed on everything, the rest should fall into place!! God Bless.
Love, Us!
Deck the Halls!
Isaiah is still overjoyed for the holidays! It is so funny to watch him get excited for Christmas, and the soon arrival of Santa! In fact, we have been trying to teach him that Santa watches over and sees when he makes good choices and bad choices, and that he then decides if he should get his presents or not. So, I also invested in the "Elf on the Shelf." So cute. It is a little elf that comes to your home and sits and watches you to see if you are behaving. You read this whole story on the elf together as a family, and then you name your Elf. Each night, while you are sleeping, the elf goes and flies off to Santa and reports on your behavior. He then shows back up to your house, and when you wake up he is in another spot. So fun for him to look for his elf. Isaiah named ours Elfabet.
We finally have all of our holidays decorations up, and now we just need to sit back and wait for the holidays to arrive!
Merry Christmas!
Love, Us!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Thanksgiving Cheer
Happy Turkey Day! I hope your holiday was cheery and bright! We had a wild and crazy week, but it was fun to be with family. My in laws flew into town on Monday, and Isaiah and I were off for the week from school. Monday and Tuesday were spent getting ready for the big turkey feast known as Thanksgiving! We had a great holiday and boy did the week go by fast! Before I knew it, we were back at school on Monday. Now, we are counting down to our 2 week vacation from school for Christmas, and our upcoming trip to New England! YAY! Here are some turkey day pics!!
Love, Us!
Love, Us!
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