Announcements, Announcements, Annouuuncements!

We're adopting!

I've always wanted to adopt.  When I was a little girl I dreamed about not only having biological children but also adopting.  I've never been able to listen to "When Love Takes You In" by Stephen Curtis Chapman without feeling my heart tighten and my eyes well up.  Two of my cousins are adopted through the foster care system and we ADORE them and the fun they bring to our family.

George didn't dream of adopting like I did but he has a special place in his heart for adoption.  George has often equated adopting children to the way God adopts us as his children.  When you adopt you tell a child, "You are mine.  I don't just love you like a child of mine, I just love you.  No matter what."

So how did we decide to adopt?  We talked about it a long time ago between Christin and Lindsey, even started the process, but then Lindsey came along and we had to pull our application.  Then I got pregnant with Jack.  During my pregnancy with Jack George and I came to the conclusion that we don't really care for pregnancy.  Something about all the vomit, exhaustion, moodiness, and with my increasingly complicated pregnancies which resulted in more and more doctors visits.  Anyway, at that point we said, "Maybe God wants us to adopt next time." 

After Jack died we asked our doctors what our fate would be should we choose to get pregnant again.  They assured us that it was reasonable for us to assume we could have another healthy baby:  as long as they monitored my pregnancy to extreme measures.  We weren't sure with two small children at home that I should be spending extending amounts of time in the hospital but we put it on the back-burner.

In the fall we started talking about whether we wanted to have another baby or adopt.  Our conclusion was, "there are so many babies out there waiting,  we've always wanted to adopt, lets pray about it!"  Okay, my conclusion was, "let's go!"  George's was, "let's pray about it and analyze it from every angle and then make an informed decision"  (He won)

Sooooo, after lots of prayer and information gathering we have decided adopt a baby boy (3-6months) from Ethiopia.  We applied with America World Adoption Agency www.awaa.org and have been accepted.  Now we are just starting the paperwork and soon will start our home-study.

There is so much more to tell , but I'll save that for another day!