IT'S A BOY!!!!!

Yes we finally have the news we were waiting on.....a sweet baby boy was placed with us and that is all that I am allowed to post online at this point due to legal risks etc until finalization! We are beyond excited and feel incredibly blessed. More details to come but it probably won't be for a while. A huge thank you to all of our family and friends who journeyed along with us on this!!!! It all worked out in Gods timing and in His way.

Beach Trip

   Maylena and I just returned from a trip to the Outer Banks beach to see my Grandad. We were able to go from Wednesday through Sunday with my parents(Billy couldn't come due to his college classes). If you watched the weather at all you know we were there during the hurricane weather!! Thankfully it didn't come all the way up to our coast but I feel terrible for the people in the Bahamas where it stayed for days. We had bad enough weather up here. It was rainy and big gusts of wind all the days we were there except one. However, Maylena didn't complain at all and was a trooper. She LOVED being out on the beach in the rain with soaking wet clothes on and just played as though nothing was happening out of the ordinary. I was so proud of her! My dad acted as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on as well when he took brief ocean swims despite the ridiculous waves and undertow and the No Swimming flags flying up and down the beach. We took a daily trip to a very nice pier called Jeanette's Pier, Maylena is sitting on a turtle that is located on the pier in the photo above. We saw a huge red drum caught and it was around 35lbs probably and about Maylena's height in it's length. It was definitely the largest fish I had ever seen brought up on a pier. The next day a guy was fighting something for about 45 minutes with his pole and when it breached the surface of the water it snapped the line but my mom saw that it was about a 10' shark (we have no way to verify the length...just have to take her word for it!) but after hearing that Maylena put two and two together that sharks live in the ocean and she acted deathly afraid that one would get her if she put her feet in the 1" water that comes up as the waves goes back. Its ok because it wasn't good swimming water anyway this trip!
   We still have no current updates on the adoption or a lead time on our wait so I am trying to be true to my word and just give tid bits about our family in the meantime. We will be attending the fall workshop through our agency for the adoptive families. It is required for you to attend at least 1 spring and 1 fall course while awaiting placement and we have already done that. But since we are still waiting placement and we learn so much at these meetings we wanted to go again anyway. It will be an all day Saturday class coming up in early November.
   I had to make a decision recently to give my notice at my nanny job so I could have more time with my family. It seems my hours continued to grow and I was getting home later and working all full days which was very different from when I first started. I will be continuing my work at the animal hospital since I never gave that up in the last year and a half I just worked there when I could and on the weekends. I will be able to have much more flexibility with my schedule and have more evenings home with my family so I know I made the right choice although it was a tough one.
   That's probably all the updates I have for now....until next time....we still wait!!!

Let the Good Times Roll

Here we are in September and I really don't have any adoption updates much so I guess I can just update you on our family : )! The only thing to mention about our adoption is that we have been trying since April to compile some video clips of us doing stiff as a family and get photos of us together to make a short slide show film for our agency website. That way the birth mom can see us a little more in detail than just our shutterfly album. She can see how we interact and what things we like to do. I really wanted to make one right away but it took time and then we just let it go by the way side a bit. The week before last I mentioned to Billy and my mom that I noticed about 3 other couples went in and added videos to their pages so we needed to buckle down and get it done. The next day a lady from the adoption agency emailed me saying it was time to take our website to the next level and update it with a video. I laughed as I emailed her back saying I had literally just said that the day before. I told her we would get it over within the week and I handed the project fully over to Billy because I have no idea how to begin something that requires technology to put it together...haha. Billy stayed up many late nights and made an awesome video of our family. I would love for you to check it out at christianadopt.org, click on waiting families and then scroll down to our photo and click on us. It loads at the top of our page. Yay! I really hopes this helps us reach out to just the right birth mom and give her a glimpse into our lives
  Again in the meantime we are waiting and trying to stay busy as a family heading here and there having fun all the while! The photo above was from a local petting zoo out in Monroe we spent a few hours there last Sunday. And the weekend before that we headed up to the Museum of Life and Science in Durham for a daytrip. I had won some tickets back in the spring at Maylena's preschool silent auction. However when it came time to go even though I knew exactly where I had put the tickets, they were not to be found. After searching over an hour myself and having Billy check behind me we had to let it go, they weren't going to turn up. Frustrating to say the least, but since we had already talked it up to Maylena that we were going the next morning, lost tickets were not holding us back. Once we got there it was hour of fun and learning. They had everything from a dinosaur trail with a fossil dig site (yes we got to bring home 3 sharks teeth Billy found), a train ride on real tracks, butterfly atrium to walk through, a petting zoo and wildlife area and so much more! It was too cool. If it were closer by we would have bought a membership right then. I know we will go back one day though.
  Maylena started preschool early September and really likes her teacher again this year. There were no tears at drop off the first day and when it was time for pick up she didn't want to go home because she wasn't ready to leave, that's always a good sign! We are excited about what is in store for the rest of this year and hope that a baby brother is right around the corner.

God's Goodness

   Hope everyone has had a great summer! It has completely flown by for us and I can not believe it's time for school and holidays are right around the corner. Maylena will be starting back school soon and Billy started some college courses as well this fall to work towards a degree. Our family will for sure be busy and there will be many things to coordinate with work and school schedules but it is exciting at the same time.
  The week before last was an encouraging week as we still continue this period of waiting. On Saturday I opened the mail to find a letter from the second grant agency we applied for and Families Outreach had awarded us a very generous grant as well. Even though we had not heard anything from them since applying back in May and figured we probably wouldn't be receiving one from their organization we were taken by suprise to get that awesome letter in the mail. They appologized for the delaying in replying to us and said they have had an overwhelming amount of applications come through and it took time to figure out which ones they could award. That just made me feel even more tremendously blessed that we were selected from an organization in Arkansas that people from all over the US had applied for and they chose us!! God has had his hand in this all. That same week I received a handwritten note in the mail from our adoption agency letting us know they are still thinking about us and they know that the waiting is hard and they shared a verse in Psalms with us that spoke about how the Lord will Preserve us in the wait. I was so appreciative to be on the receiving end of those words of encouragment. Very needed. That same night was the monthly meeting for the adoption support group I attend in waxhaw and I learned so much and also got to listen to others stories of adoption and share about where we are at. Billy came with me and it was our second outing just as a couple in 1 week which was refreshing as well. It's nice to be able to discuss adoption along the way and be around others who have already completed their adoptions, some recently and others have adopted children who are graduating high school. It's a diverse group with a lot of good insight and advice if needed.
   My sisters wedding was wonderful and each thing we celebrate at the moment helps to pass time until our family is selected by a birth mom. I served in the nursery at church on Sunday and that was so much fun revisiting the baby stage of life. I enjoyed all the smiles and cuddles and I can't wait to share that with a little one in our family again!

Puzzle Completion....

    For those of you who have been following our blog since starting it last year, you probably remember the beginning of our puzzle fundraiser that we started in September 2014. We have completely finished it with the help of so many friends and family. We sold all 1,000 pieces and it looks so cool! Since starting it in September this puzzle has been out on my dining room table for 10 months and I will be very glad to glue it and frame it on the wall of the nursery to have a dining room table again. There were some very fun times and frustrating as well getting the puzzle from start to finish, but what a great keepsake that was made. Thank you so much to each and every person who participated in our puzzle fundraiser!!
   There haven't been any additional updates about the adoption for us. We are just waiting. I have been looking at the agency website of the "waiting families" who are available right now and have not been matched with a birth mom yet. When I counted last night there are only 11 families available through our agency right now that the birth moms pick from. So I keep telling myself maybe it will be soon. However, there is nothing I can do to speed it up, its all in God's timing. In the meantime I was able to attend a second meeting at the Adoption Journey Support group who meets in Waxhaw monthly. It is always such a blessing to go to this meeting and hear everyone share about their life experiences with an adopted child. I know this support group will provide so much needed advice and suggestions in the years to come after our adoption has been finalized. I have been learning already and its nice to be in an environment where adoption is being discussed because it makes the waiting process a little bit easier.
   Also I was so fortunate to hear about a book a friend of a friend wrote called "Groanings" by Cindy Ketron. Her son was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 19 and they spent a year at St. Jude's hospital for his treatments. This book is compiled from her daily blog she kept about their time at St. Jude hospital. The way Cindy writes she brings each day back to God and how he was able to help direct her paths and get her through each day. I have had many days where I have felt alone and had heavy burdens throughout this adoption process and just life itself but every day I read her book God has used it to uplift me and it seems like exactly what I read is what I needed to hear that particular day. It is such a powerful book and gives really great insight to the very cool set up of St. Jude hospital and how amazing their ministry is there. If you like to read at all this would be a wonderful book to add to your library and share with others!!
   That's all the information I have to share right now. We are on a 2 week count down to my sister getting married...can't wait!!! We are all in the wedding and Maylena is looking forward to being a flower girl and dressing fancy with rings, a necklace and having a pretty dress on. She is starting to get more and more girly with wanting to dress up and play with jewelry on.

Wonderful News

 

As you read the title of my post you may have thought "Oh my goodness, is there news on a baby?"...I will start off by saying we are still waiting. A little over a month ago I worked very hard on applying to 3 different grant agencies to see if we could get approved for an adoption grant of ANY amount. The awesome thing about grants is its money you could be awarded that isn't a loan or due back in any way. I knew before I started that it was going to be very involved and lots of application paperwork, very detailed budgeting information, essays to be written similiar to ones we wrote for the adoption agency, etc. I had also heard from the adoption agency and other adoptive couples and the grant websites that very few grants are award but LOTS of people apply therefore it is no garauntee that if you work very hard on the paperwork portion you will for sure get a grant. It was toss up to me for a long time as to whether I had the time to allocate for getting the grants applied for. Though I knew if we were awarded one the work that it took would pay off as "free money" so that's not easy to pass up and seemed a little irresponsible not to at least try for it. They also required our references to write another letter of recommendation on our behalf for each grant had specific questions for their purposes to be answered so it wouldn't be a generalized letter. The pastor, and 2 very good friends pulled through the application process with me and helped meet the deadlines for each grant. It wasn't easy and I fully appreciate the time they spent as well helping make it possible, that part was completely out of my hands. The information was emailed direct to my references and they had to send it directly back to the grant agencies....I had no idea what questions were even being asked about us. I heard from 2 of the couples that the questions were very in depth. After all needed documents were gathered and completed we began another waiting process, this time to hear about the grant results. Boy I have never had so much patience testing in my life as these waiting periods we have been going through and to say the least it really never leaves your mind...you wouldn't forget for 1 day that you are in the adoption process and could get a call any day about being matched with a birth mom and now in the grant process waiting to get notified as to whether you were approved or not. However the 3 agencies I applied for I heard about from 2 different families that had already gone through the adoption process and they were awarded grants from them so I felt like instead of trying to apply to 10 or so initially I would apply to these 3, Families Outreach, Gift of Adoption, and JSC Foundation.
    We submitted our applications a little over a month ago and I knew some were a 30-45 day review period, some say you will only hear a response if you were awarded a grant because so many apply at one time, etc. A week or so after we submitted the one to JSC Foundation I got an email asking for additional information to be provided and I answered their questions that night by email. This additional information request got me excited because I told Billy if they had looked at the initial information we sent along with all the other applicants for that grant period and ours didn't seem like as big a need as another applicant they probably would have already said no and wouldn't need anymore information. They thanked me for the update and said our application was ready to go in for review. I tried not to get my hopes up too high but I still did. Last week was the 1 month mark and I knew it to the date on my calendar and I had been anticipating an email of any sort to give us the news, but none came. I had to tell myself that we had up to 45 days though. Then yesterday I was at work when an email popped up on my phone, I had been busy all day but somehow it caught my attention right then and I immediately saw it was from JSC Foundation, I couldn't open it fast enough and my eyes were reading it so fast and I got to the part that said we had been awarded a VERY generous grant!!! I was so excited, I felt like jumping up and down and crying tears of joy all at the same time. Obviously I didn't because I was working and my office has a wall of windows. But I had goosebumps stand up on my arms that wouldn't go down for like half an hour because I felt so overwhelmed by the perfect provision of God, it was once again a huge affirmation that we are not alone in this process and He has the whole thing figured out especially the finances of it. I am fortunate to work with my sister and she was there on shift so I ran to find her and the words came spilling out. I told other co-workers and called my husband at work and we were all celebrating the blessing of it! This organization is actually in Colorado so that's the other amazing part, we weren't just in a pool of people from NC that applied, it was people all over the nation probably and who knows out of how many applications ours was chosen. So many people do a lot of work applying for these grants and don't hear anything back and are never awarded anything but only by the grace of God we applied for 3 and with the tremendous blessing on the first grant we were awarded I feel blessed beyond words. The JSC Foundation specifically asked for us to not disclose the amount of the grant we were awarded on social media sites, blogs, etc because they are a private organization and I will respect their wishes for that. But I did still want to share with you that we were indeed awarded 1 of the 3 grants and we still have yet to hear from the other 2 which could mean there is more blessing to come. :)
    The last thing that Billy and I want to complete for CAS but have had trouble finding the time to get it together is a 2 minute video of our family so that the birth mom can have a better idea of what we are like in personalities than just the words on our website page and the photos. I think it is an excellent idea and I have been wanting to get this completed for over a month now. We have been working on clips of video here and there of us doing things with Maylena and now we just need some of us around the house all together. That's been the hardest part. If we can successfully complete it I will let you know to check us out on their website again so you can see what we put together. I still try my best not to check the "waiting families" daily on the website to see who has been put On Hold or who has received placement and whether they had a Boy or Girl. Its really hard not to keep looking at it. There for a month or so it could be like 2 families every week to week and a half put on On Hold. Then there weren't any updates and now last week another family was put On Hold and each time I see it was a family that had put a video on the website I feel like we really need to get ours done. I know that there is a certain baby out there for us and nothing can really speed that process up but I know too that the video could help the right birth mom connect with us. So pray we have time to finish that portion up.
    We are still staying incredibly busy through work and fun summer activities to go and do. Also my sister is engaged and getting married August 2nd, only 6 weeks away. There is a lot of activity and things to plan and get done for the wedding (we are all 3 in it and Maylena can't wait to be a flower girl) but I know without a doubt if a baby came right now I would be thrilled!!! Thank you for all your continued support and encouragement to our family. We appreciate our awesome friends and family.

Incredible Night

 

As many of you know we had a Spagetti Benefit dinner at Silent Auction yesterday at the Wesley Chapel fire dept. We had no idea exactly how many to expect we just knew it could be somewhere around 200 people and so that is what we planned for. The night was a huge success.....between 5-7pm we raised over $2,500 and there is more to come to be added to that figure because several people who couldn't make it are mailing a check straight to the agency on our behalf!! How amazing! I had hoped we would raise around $1,000 that night but turns out it was more than doubled. God is good and we felt so humbled by everyone pouring out their love on us and our family. We had the help of so many wonderful friends and family that volunteered and it took each person giving of their time and energy to make it possible. There were about 150 people that came through and almost all of the silent auction items we had donated by local businesses were bid on. There were lots of kids there including Maylena who ran around and played on and inside of the fire trucks that the fire dept so generously allowed them to do and didn't mind at all. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the event and neither did any of the other volunteers there because we were busy from the time we got there to set up at 2pm until about 9pm that night it just never stopped. If anyone took some photos that came to the event I would LOVE to have them emailed to Brittany_695@hotmail.com. The only photo we have is this one Billy took while playing with the kids around the fire trucks. Its Maylena on the left and Teagan and Aidan the kids I nanny for.
   We are so thankful to everyone who came and gave so generously to make this possible. You went above and beyond and blessed our socks off!! We even had people there we didn't know who came to play a part in our adoption journey...how cool is that?? It just goes to show when everyone comes and gives a little it can add up to A LOT. We made a finger print tree that Billy penciled on a paper and each person that attended put their fingerprint and first names to have a very cool keepsake from that night.  I will post a picture of it next time I do blog update. For now we are still in the waiting but God has been right here with us.