She Chose Us!

I first want to say, in spite of the difficulty of adoption, or more accurately, because of the difficulty, God has really taken a hold of our hearts (and minds, and affections, and desires, and on and on and on) and has refined our faith. Not a faith that adoption will "just work out eventually" (though we have had great hope for that), but more specifically, a faith in God as a good Father in whose hands we are kept and loved. I guess our eternal perspective is what has changed the most.

With this being said, last night we were notified by our adoption agency here that a birth mom selected us! We are beyond happy at this news. Our birth mom is young. She is caucasian and the birth father is bi-racial.  She lives not too far from us actually and plans to deliver at a hospital here locally . She is due February 26th (so close!) The baby had a healthy, strong heart beat. She having a sonogram next week, so we might know the sex of the baby then. We are set to meet her for the first time next Thursday.

Please pray for our birth mom. Pray that God would comfort her throughout this process and protect her from doubts and lies. Her parents are very supportive, though it's more difficult for her. Pray that the baby is healthy and mama is healthy and that the delivery goes well.

And pray for us. Pray that we continue to trust in God throughout this process and that we walk along side of our birth mom in a loving, sympathetic, compassionate way. And pray for anything else you can think of :-)

Long Overdue Adoption Update

I haven't written this post for several reasons...I didn't know quite what to say. I was afraid of sharing too much or too little. I was afraid of my thoughts being on the world wide web for anyone and everyone to see. I cared too much what people thought of me. I didn't know how to tell our story without writing a novel.

But I want to try. We halted our adoption when we found out we were pregnant with our second back in 2011. Fast forward to today and we have a beautiful 3 and 5 year old and started our adoption journey again 14 months ago. We have been waiting 14 months to adopt a baby. That's hard to say and it's been very hard to walk through. When we started the process again in December 2013 we were a bit naive. We are open to the race of our baby, gender, different medical conditions and thought we might have a quick match. But that is not what God had planned for us.

God has grown and challenged our faith in significant ways as we wait to bring our third child home. 2014 was a big year of waiting in anticipation, waiting for God to move and wondering if he had forgotten. There have been moments I have been very overwhelmed with God's goodness in all of this and moments I've been overwhelmed with fear and confusion.

We are adopting domestically and are waiting to be matched with a birth mom right now. Our profile book has been shown several times to moms, but we have never been chosen. I'm not even sure how many times we've exactly been shown, but I know it's much more that I would like. We are very used to the phrase, "She chose another family" right now. It has happened so much, I began to ask, "What's wrong with us?" And then God gently reminds me through a friend or his Word that he is working. That I need to trust him. That he has a plan for our little family and he has used the past 14 months to grow our faith in ways we couldn't imagine.

As our family walks through this we have again and again been given the verses in Isaiah 26 "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock."

Pray our hearts would trust Jesus and his timing. Pray we would find our hope in him alone, and not in adding another child to our family. Pray he would provide emotionally, physically and financially as we walk through this for HE IS TRUSTWORHTY.

is there anything cuter?

happy 22 months sweet baby girl. 

you are a great blessing and we are so thankful for you. 

love, 

mommy and daddy.

happy thanksgiving...

"happy thanksgiving..."

"happy thanksgiving back. "

one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite fall movies, "You've Got Mail." 

i know i'm almost two months late with posting thanksgiving images, but i wanted to be sure and document some of them before time got away too much. 

we spent the first part of thanksgiving week on the Porter Farm and we came back to Kansas City for the actual day. we were blessed to spend the day in company of some good friends, the Parsons. they opened up their home to us and we enjoyed a bountiful Thanksgiving meal together. 

here are some images from our day...(mostly taken by my sweet husband)

my sweet babes is sick and long forgotten Halloween.

our sweet little babes is sick again. 

man, I hate it when they're sick. 

london came down with a BAD stomach bug two weeks ago.

vomiting, dehydration, the works. we took her to the pediatrician one day, urgent care a couple days later and then they told us to get our butts to the ER (in so many words) 

she was so dehydrated she had to be admitted to the hospital overnight. :( 

needless to say, those few days at our house my heart was broken over and over.

to watch your sweet baby be sick is SO HARD. 

i felt so helpless. so sad for her. so worried. 

after she got on IV fluids at the hospital she was back to her self in no time though. 

THANK GOD FOR MODERN MEDICINE. 

then, it was just time to catch up on our sleep :) 

BUT barely two weeks later the poor babes is sick again with croup like symptoms ...oh man. 

we battled croup last winter 3 times when she was smaller and even though i feel like we know "what to do" better this winter, it's still hard to know she isn't feeling great. plus none of us are getting the sleep we need. 

we would love your prayers for a good recovery for London, and strength to walk through difficult times like this as her parents. 

we are SO thankful for her overall health and it's times like these where we realize what we really do take for granted...

(transition sentence here)

on a completley different note, i found some photos this week i had forgotten about from London's first trick or treating Halloween, so wanted to post them now. better late than never right? 

 happy halloween. very late...