Home Study

It has actually been a year since our homestudy became active and that means that it is time for an update.  We had to get physicals, fingerprints, reference letters and a home visit from our caseworker.  Our caseworker came to our house on Friday.  Our visit went very well!  We updated some information, like my new job and our nephew Parker joining our family!  We talked for awhile about our profile and how we have done a little networking with our business cards.  She loved our card and asked if we might talk about it at the next waiting families meeting! 
She was also a very big hit with our dog, Mischa!  For those of you who don't know our dog, she is a very big chicken.  She scares easy and is pretty much afraid of everyone and everything! lol  Well, not on Friday!  She LOVED our caseworker!!!  She would not leave her alone.  All she wanted was for her to pet her and scratch her back!  She was in love!  After she left, we told Mischa how proud we were and gave her all her favorite treats!  We have never seen her act like that when people are in our house!  It was amazing!
Before our caseworker left we talked about our profile and how long we have been waiting so far.  She said she does not understand it.  We have a great profile!  She seems very happy with our profile and doesn't want us to change anything.  She said that we are being shown above average and that we are getting a lot of attention that way.  It just hasn't been the right one yet.  We are feeling good about our caseworker and we trust what she is saying about our profile.  We had a great visit and are very excited about what is to come.  I am not saying that I won't have more tough days or that we don't need your support because we are getting close!  Thank you for all of your support!

Fall is here!!!

 I know, I know, it has been a long time!  A few things have happened over the summer!  I contiued to follow my C25k plan and  I ran 2 5k races!  The first one was the Color Run and it was amazing!  We ran with my brother Ben and sis-in-law, Jessica.  We have been following the same running plan and really kept each other going!  The Color Run was in August and than we ran the Run Wild 5k at the Detroit Zoo a few weeks ago!  That weekend was great because we had a very full house!  9 adults and 3 kids in our little house.  Rick made everyone is fabulous chicken fajitas and we hung out.  We ran our race and than went to the zoo!  It was a great time.  We also spent a great long weekend camping and going to Nascar with wonderful friends in August.  Also, I just got a new job that will NOT require me to work nights and weekends.  If you know me, you know how incredible this is for me!  I have been searching for this.
Our adoption agency is making some changes to their website in October which will be great for us.  We have some work to do to get together additional photos to start our own photo gallery as part of our online profile!  We can also post video if we choose as well!  It should be very cool once it is all up and running.  Anything that we can do to get more info about us out there, the better.  With this change to our profile we will have the opportunity to add photos to tell our story.  Now, we are not the best at taking pictures of ourselves so it may be a little challenging but I think we have some good stuff to get us started.  And like before we will probably ask our original profile photographers (Kistin and Jessica) to help us get a few more photos!  Also, you will probably see me with a camera attached to me asking everyone to take our picture everywhere we go.  We recently went to an amazing waiting family meeting to hear birthmothers talk.  The birthmothers were all saying how important these pictures are.  "Pictures are worth a thousand words"  That is what one birthmom kept saying.  So, now with the new online photo gallery, we have a huge opportunity to tell birthmoms about who we are!  As always, thank you for your thoughts and prayers!  I know that He is working on answering them!

Waiting Families Meeting and week 3

So, the running is going really well!  I have one more run this week and I will be done with week 3 of the C25K.   I was sick yesterday and recovering today so tomorrow I should be ready to get my last run done!!  I feel great and so proud of myself.  I have not given up, even with the leg cramps that I have been battling.  I do think they are getting better.  I only have to make sure that I drink enough water to float away and stretch really well after.  Only thing that I would like to see happen a lot faster is weight/inches disappearing!
On another note...the other night we went to a waiting families meeting at the adoption agency.  They have these meetings every 3 months or so to get waiting adoptive families together to talk about different topics.  This particular meeting was about openness in adoption.  I know that this sounds very scary to most people, it sounded scary to us too.  But as we listened to the 3 adoptive families that had come to speak, we realized what an amazing relationship can be formed.  We were scared about wether we wanted to increase our openness on our profile.  We stayed after the meeting and met with our case worker and talked to one of the families.  They helped us to realize that as long as we were open to more openness, we could discuss and negotiate with the birthmother about how much openness there would actually be.  After talking to our caseworker and this other adoptive couple we are very happy with our desicion to increase our openness.  This will hopefully increase our chances of being chosen by a birthmother.  Because, our profile was shown 3 more times in the last 2 months.  Maybe had we said we were willing to discuss more openness we may have been chosen.  But of course God has a plan and this was the path that we needed to take to be 100% comfortable with discussing more of an open adoption.  We will take it all one day at a time, start the relationship with the birthmother slow and see what evolves!!!

One more thing.....

So, I forgot to add this part to my earlier post.  I understand that this may embarrass him a little, but I am so proud of my brother and so happy for his support that I have to write this.  My youngest brother Christopher sent me a text yesterday to ask me a few questions about our adoption process.  He needed to know when we started looking for an agency.  He is doing a speech for one of his classes about how adoption is a better choice than abortion.  When I read his text, I couldn't have been prouder.  What a big topic to get up and talk about.  He has become such an amazingly loving and supportive young man.  Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that he is so grown up.  I can remember trying to teach him to say my name like it was yesterday.  Or, taking him to the movies and sitting in the very front row because that is what my little "stud" wanted!  I am just so happy to have his support and thankful that he is out there standing up and talking about what he believes in.  Not only that but he is out there spreading the word about adoption and his favorite waiting family.....

On my way to becoming a runner!

So I think that this blog is turning into me writing about more than the adoption.  I hope that you all don't mind!  If all I do is focus on how long this process feels or spend all my time waiting for that phone call, I think I might go insane.  I have recently started the couch to 5k program and I am loving it.  I am on week 2 of the program and I am so very proud of myself!  I never thought that i would be able to run or actually love doing it.  It has certainly helped me to let go and relax lately, at least the 30 minutes that I am running it does.  When I go out to run all I can focus on is breathing and getting through each interval.  I think that is why  I am loving it so much.  We have signed up for a 5k called the color run with my brother and sister-in-law in Grand Rapids, so it gives us something to work towards and look forward to.  I can't wait to be able to say that I ran a 5k!
As always....Thank you for your prayers and support.  Please keep it coming!  We need all that we can get!!!

Waiting, waiting, waiting....

So, we are at our 6 month mark.  We have had 3 views of our profile that we know of.  We are expecting an update from our caseworker this month and also attending a waiting families meeting.  Hopefully the waiting family meeting will give us some hope and encouragement.  Lately I have been having trouble staying positive.  I am feeling a little hopeless these days.  I know it will happen and all that but it's just how I am feeling. We need to get out and do stuff and keep ourselves busy.  Last weekend we went to Eastern Market and bought some flowers and plants. I spent the whole day Sunday working on transplanting flowers and planting new ones while Rick worked on the grass and driveway and sidewalks!  There are still a few things that we would like to change but it looks really great!   I have been trying to get myself motivated to start working out again.  I stopped and haven't been able to get myself interested again, but I am tired of feeling lazy and yucky.  I started the C25K program last night.  I know that a few of you have either completed or started this program as well.  It felt great to just run/walk outside and let it all out.  I am excited to continue with this program and I will keep you posted on everything!!!!

5 months and counting...

We have been officially waiting for 5 months.  I know it doesn't sound like very long, but to me it feels like a lifetime.  We heard from our caseworker last week and she let us know that our profile has been shown 3 times in the last month!  We are finallly being shown!!!!!!  That is the first step, right!?!?!  My hope has been restored.  I was feeling pretty defeated.  This part of the process is the worst!   Keep us in  your prayers!  Our baby is out there somewhere just waiting to meet us!

Spring is Here!!!!

Spring is here and I love it!  The weather is amazing and it is great to have the windows and doors open!  The dog is enjoying it too! She is loving going for walks and of course playing fetch until she is so exhausted that she can hardly stand up!
Along with spring came our adorable new nephew Parker David Roth!  He is absolutely adorable!  I will add a picture as soon as  I know how. lol  We were able to go and visit with family and meet the new addition the day he went home from the hospital.  It was a great day, hanging out with all 4 nieces and nephews!  They are growing so fast.  Next weekend we are celebrating our nieces 2nd birthday!  So we will have another amazing day spending time with our family!  We can't wait till they are all coming down here to visit our child!
Today, I was able to go visit a friend and meet her new little bundle of  joy!  Cute little Bryce!!  He was born just a two days before our nephew, Parker.  Mr. Bryce was a bit early, so he is a little guy!  He and his mommy are doing great!  I got my hair done and held the baby!  Great day!
Meeting these little guys gets me really excited about being a mom!  I can't wait till we are matched with our child!
Hope everyone is enjoying the first day of spring! 

3 months and counting...

Ok so I am not the best blogger.  I began this by saying that I wanted to use this as a way to keep you all up to date on what is going on witht the adoption process.  We have been officially waiting for 3 months.  It doesn't sound like very long but it feels more like years rather than months. We have gotten several emails from our caseworker to touch base and tell us that our profile has not been shown at all yet.  We are told that it is very common for new profiles not to be shown in the first couple of months, so here is to hoping that March is gonna get our profile some action.
We have been trying to keep busy, which isn't hard for us.  We have the crib and the dresser/changing table at home.  They are still in the boxes but they are out of layaway and sitting in the baby's room.  We alos bought a stroller that I fell in love with while we were out checking them out and trying to figure out how they all work.  We ordered it and it also sits in a box in the room.  We have even chosen a paint color which is also purchased and sitting in the baby's room.  We have not yet done anything with these items except put them in the room.  Sometimes I think that we should really get going and clean things out and get it painted and start to set it up.  Other times I think that once I set it up will I want to just walk by an empty baby room everyday.  Rick teases that one of these days he is gonna come home to fine me sitting in there just starring at the walls or something.  I will admit that
I have sat in that room and imagined what it will look like and feel like, but I don't make a habit of it.
Like I have said before, somedays are harder than others.  Somedays I wake up with a very overwhelming feeling of I want our baby now.  But, we continue to try to take it one day at a time.  Everyday something happens that keeps me going.  Like, meeting a patient at work that had adopted an infant through the same agency that we are working with.  Her and her husband only waited 6 months for a match.  Meeting her that day was perfect timing.  I was having an exceptionally hard week and she gave me renewed strength.  Other days it is seeing a multi-racial family out at the store or at the zoo.  I want more than anything to walk over and start talking to them and ask them about their family but you never know how they will react.  I want to talk to anyone that I can adoption, but strangers aren't really all that into my story at this point.  Oh well, they will have many questions for me soon enough!  People's reaction to hearing that we are adopting is always positive.  I just want to talk about it alot more than they do.
We know that this will happen for us, but the not knowing when is FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!  As always everyone's love and support is amazing and we defnintely couldn't get through all this without it.  If you can please share our story, our profile, our blog or whatever with anyone you can.  You never know who may knows someone who knows someone....!