It could take a year.....

When we first started trying to have a baby I really only told our immediate families. And this is what I'd always say "but I know it could take a year!".

I was so realistic. Honestly! So many people are sooooo disapointed after their first, second, third month of not getting pg. That wasn't me. I fully expected it to take a year. So I thought I was safe by assuming the worst!

Lol... well I never thought that 2+ years later we'd still not be pregnant... and we'd still not have a baby in our home :-( It's just crazy how I thought I was being so careful by assuming it could take a year.

Anyways, that was random. I was just thinking about that this morning. Me with my ever realistic expectations.

But aside from all that, have a great halloween!!

How cute are these?

These are the L.O.V.E.S of our lives!!! Is it any wonder why we want to be parents so bad?


















ps. notice the trend? 1 girl and four boys (and another boy on the way!!?) I guess that means we need a girl :-) Lol!

We're approved!!!!!!

Praise God, our home equity loan was finally approved!! After our problems before I've had a lot of fear about this! So it was a huge relief to know that from this point forward, we have the money we need for our adoption!!!!

Wedding Pictures!!!!

In case any of you want to see pictures from Joey's twin sister's wedding last weekend! We had a fabulous time!!!

Jenny and Danny

How could I be more blessed?

One of my favorite things to do is go to my myspace page and listen to the music I have on there and look at the slideshows of my life. Of my and wonderful husband, my beautiful family, my amazing friends.. and I just sigh. God is good. He has given me SO much more than I could have ever imagined...

Never in a million years did I think I would find someone as amazing as Joey. I guess I always thought I'd settle... but I didn't even know how good it could be: life, marriage, happiness. All of it!

I miss Joey, he's at work till late tonight and I just can't wait for him to be home. We're going on our fourth anniversary (insane!) and I couldn't love him more! I honestly love him more everyday... and I praise God for the man He has given me to spend my life with!

I spend a lot of my days wishing for more, a baby, a family, the life I hope to have some day. But the days like these, where I am just amazed at all I have been given... I must cherish.

Letting go of pride....

This is a hard thing to do…and I no doubt will be dealing with it for a long time. But it's something I know I need to do. Let go of my pride.

I have had a lot of pride involved with infertility. I have found myself thinking about how I tried to have a baby for 2+ years and might never get pregnant… surely I must get a medal or something. And now I have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to bring a child into our home and know that he/she will still have another mother. After all this don't I get something? An award of some sorts?

I am aware that couldn't be more wrong. And in my spirit, I know it… but in my flesh, I want to hold tight to what is "owed to me"....

And when it comes down to it, all I really want is to be a mother, no matter how that happens, and no cost is too great for that. But most importantly I do believe that this was God's plan for our family to begin... I do believe that we're in HIS path. Therefore, I truly have NO RIGHTS to claim for this battle I've fought...

So I'm letting go of the pride I've held. I don't want to have a beautiful child in my arms and still fight bitterness against those with them in their wombs. So I'm letting go.

Pray for me in this process. It's a necessary but hard thing to do... and I'm praying that God will give me the strength to be freed from this bondage.

More from God!!! Our wonderful agency...

So anyone following our journey knows how much we think of our agency and Debbie (the director) at our agency. Well this is the card we got from her today in the mail! In Joey's words "I kind of feel guiltly for all the time God's spending on us this week!" :-)


Isn't that just wonderful?

Just got $1000 in the mail!

Okay so this is not something I have blogged much about; the financial side of our adoption. We hadn't been very concerned about the actual funding of the adoption, we knew we'd take out the money against our home and we knew we had the equity for what we needed. We have no debt aside from our house (and Joey's deferred student loans), a good income and great credit scores. So we were not concerned.

Well we got a call from our financial institution last week saying we had been denied our loan because of Joey's deferred student loans. Ones we likely won't start paying off until 2011!!! So we were very frustrated as this was a surprise to us (and them!!! It was their underwriting companies new rule that they didn't even know about!) and we were starting to feel trapped.

Well we are still able to move forward with our home equity loan through another financial institution that we're members of, but we can't borrow as much as we'd hoped for... we were going to be a few thousand dollars short.

So we've been weighing taking an additional loan out on our car, or possibly asking for a loan from Joey's dad... and all in all it's been more stressful than I'd like. But all the while we have fully believed that God would provide and take care of our family! We know this and we believe this!

Well today I had a big sob session with my sister, and exchanged some emails with someone at our church about prayer in this dept.. and after a while I was praying and I knew in my heart it would be okay, and my heart started to settle.

About 1/2 hour later I went out to the mailbox and there was a lone card in there (normally tons of junk mail would accompany!) And someone in our family had sent us $1000 for our adoption!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it.. I just started bawling and praising God for this money. I talked to her about an hour later and I am just so humbled and honored and grateful and excited and all that rolled into one! And God is amazing! He is the one that prompted them to send the money! And He is the one that is in control of all of this!

So after that I talked to my sister and realized that even more money was coming in from the fundraiser, we are up to the EXACT place we need to be for the adoption! The loan that we will qualify for, that was originally a few thousand dollars short, will end up being the perfect amount to finish it up!

I will NEVER cease to be amazed by God's goodness and perfect timing! Today was the day that I needed to get that money, today was the day that I needed to be humbled to my knees in prayer, and today was the day that I needed to be reminded of exactly who was in charge!

PRAISE GOD!

Awesome slideshow from fundraiser :-)

One of my beautiful friends (who I met because she hired me to film her wedding video!) was apart of our fundraiser!! Her picture are up and they are ALL too cute! So I wanted to share :-)

Tony & Leah

No wonder we didn't feel he was our baby!

The first couple chosen decided to go through with the placement! So there is a reason why God steered us elsewhere! There's no doubt that he wasn't meant to be our baby... clearly! He has other parents.

I love how God works. I know it would have been harder if we said yes we feel this is our baby and then the first couple went through with it!

I'm doing fine.

Sorry I haven't updated all weekend, I appreciate all the comments and wonderful words of encouragement. Thank you also for all the prayers!

I had a crazy jammed packed weekend filled with work, and I'm exhausted from it, but it kept my mind off things.

We are doing okay... we were sad, but we know that it is what it is and we're moving forward, still believing God's perfect timing will come forward and He'll take care of us in beautiful ways.

That being said, I still have a crazy week ahead of me and should keep working, but just wanted to update!

****** Oh and here is a slideshow of some quick pictures my sister took of us at the fundraiser before people came!

www.momentsintimemn.com/raeandjoe

We said no. To a baby.

The bmom we've been waiting to hear if we matched with had her baby. We've known about her since the beginning, she wanted a dr for an aparent, we knew we were a potential match and we've been waiting to hear. Well apparently she was off on her due date (by a month!). She had a half white, half Hispanic 6 lb 9 oz baby boy.

After she had the baby she admitted to having been on Methadone, a narcotic that helps drug abusers to work through withdrawals. The baby was born addicted and will be in the hospital for a few weeks.

Well we weren't her chosen couple, but we were #2... so the #1 couple is deciding what they are going to do, but we felt we had to make our decision before we were presented with it, as we knew it would be much harder to make. Plus we'll find out tomorrow and I have
a wedding both tomorrow and Sat and didn't want to be crazy with making this decision.

So after MUCH prayer, we knew that this baby wasn't meant for us. I can't describe how it feels to turn away something that we have wept and prayed and longed for for so long, it's gut wrenching. But it was still the right thing to do. We KNOW in our hearts this baby wasn't
meant for us. And honestly it wasn't just the drugs, every single ounce of this situation felt wrong. And yet we still wanted to say yes.....

Anyways, we're praying that this #1 couple knows with all their heart that he is their son and he will have a beautiful family to take him home.

All that aside, we're eating our sad food tonight, Chinese. We've cried a lot.

Fundraiser yesterday!

We had the first date of the fundraiser yesterday and it was so much fun! Everyone was laughing and just seemed to truly be enjoying their family photo session! And it was so much fun to see good friends and some family too!

There's another date for next week and my SIL is doing 6 sessions, so that'll be great too!

I just can't believe how much work my sister and SIL are doing for us and my other SIL and mom came to help out with signing people in, downloading pictures and my mom video taped! It was just such a beautiful day! (and I don't mean weather wise! lol.. poured all day!)

I have a ticker!!

I finally figured out how to get a ticker on my blog :-) It's at the bottom of the page!

Painfully yucky in my spirit...

Today I feel yucky inside. I won't lie, it's because of some things I read on blogs. Blogs about adoption.

Sometimes I want to know so badly how things work, and other times I am painfully aware of how nice it would be to remain naive.

I am becoming aware of times that I should stay close to home in the blogworld, and other times I am strong enough to venture out.. today I should have stayed home... maybe even in bed!

I wish that adoption didn't have to be so complicated, but when there are two mothers involved, how can it not be? When one woman is dying inside because of her ache, while another fights with the feelings of pure joy and heartbreak for another... it's bound to result in complications.

Sometimes I can see the benefit (for all) in a closed adoption... other times an open adoption doesn't seem so bad. I suppose it's hardly ever perfect, whatever is decided.

And again I find myself back to praying for our birthmom, whoever she is, wherever she is... she is on my mind.

ahh sadness... I haven't seen you in a while.

Today was a good day, but I was apparently emotional! Maybe it's because I'm tired, or my husband is out of town till monday night (with no cell service), or maybe it's because I saw my cousin and her beautiful new baby at church, or because yet another person announced their unplanned but completely wanted pregnancy, or maybe it's because that's just how life goes.

I teared up twice during church today... once during the song "blessed be your name" during the:

"Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name"

Boy does that ring true...

And I can't even remember the other time. But I wish Joey was here to hold me as I fall asleep. Because I just feel sad. I guess simply because I don't have a baby and I should have had one a long time ago. And yes there is so much hope in adoption, but tonight I can't feel it because there is also so much unknown and so much scariness in adoption.

Adoption is like Organ donating.

To start this post I will say this: I don't know who our Bmom is, where she is, what she is doing or why she is placing her baby. But I know this: I love her. From the bottom of my heart, I love her.

Now, onto why I have decided that I think adoption is like organ donating. When you recieve a new organ, you have to consider all the parties involved, like adoption.

If you're waiting desperately for a new heart, then in a sense you're waiting for someone else to die. I know it's not exactly like that, but you know that when you receive your complete happiness, someone else will be in their deepest despair.

And you can't completely celebrate your happiness without taking into consideration the sadness that another family is going through. It's bittersweet, for everyone.

This is how I view adoption.

There is a woman out there that knows she can't/shouldn't keep her baby. And so her baby will become ours. But if I left the situation without understanding (I use that term very lightly) and respecting the grief that she will face. I would be a selfish person.

I have prayed for our Bmom everyday since we decided to adopt.. and I can only imagine that will continue for the rest of my life. Maybe it will eventually stop being daily, but I know that it will be forever. Because she will be a part of our lives and our hearts forever, even if we were never to see her again.

Another one matched!!!!!!!!!!!

A girl from my T-TTC forum decided to adopt after 5 failed IVFS, and after just three months of waiting they've been matched!!!! (different agency). Her baby is due 10/31!!! I am so elated for her, congrats Libby!!!!! :-)

What if I got pregnant?

It's so strange, but for two straight years all I've thought about, hoped for, prayed for was getting pregnant. And now that we're adopting, it's almost like it's a foreign thought to me.

And even though I have prayed that someday I might get to experience pregnancy, without having to try for it (medically).. it's not really apart of my thinking.

Well yesterday out of no where, I realized I could one day just be late and actually find out I'm pregnant (the old fashioned way!!)

It's almost like when you're infertile, you think that can't ever happen anymore. And for most people it doesn't because they push on with treatments until they get pregnant.. and then there's no surprise in it.

And certainly I'm not expecting anything, or honestly even hoping for it... but I just realized that could possibly happen to us. It's probably not likely (with our new MF DX), but I guess I have just felt like that part of our life was over.... being that we're deemed infertile.

Just an interesting realization.

a month and a half?

It's been over a month and a half since we decided to adopt. I know that's not much time but I can't believe how fast it's flown! I hope the rest of the process proves to do the same!

Also we're beginning the countdown to my SIL's wedding. Less than a month! I guess this day has a lot of significance to me (more than just the wedding that is). I remember when they got engaged fully expecting to have a newborn at the wedding. Then I wondered if I'd be due at the wedding. Then I'd be 7 months pg and 6 mos and so on and so on.. you know the drill.

It had been over a year for us of ttc when they got engaged and I remember saying to my SIL that if I wasn't pregnant by her wedding, I thought I would die.... because that was a year away. And never in my wildest dreams did I actually think I wouldn't be pg!

Well here I am, still VERY MUCH childless. Although I certainly have a different hope now that have decided to adopt. But I still can't believe that I made that statement almost a year ago.. and how much time truly does fly!

I hope that when 10/13 comes all I think about is being there to support my beautiful SIL and not the fact that I am still childless....