Catching Up

Wow! I cannot believe that it's been almost TWO MONTHS since I've written anything on here...shoot! I thought that I'd be better at staying up to date on here, but obviously I haven't been. I've also decided that since it's my blog, I'm just not going to apologize that I haven't been more up to date...I am working on not being apologetic for things that I don't need to be :)

Anyway, let's play a little bit of catch up.

THANKSGIVING:
It was awesome! We went up to the cabin on Mt. Hood where there was a much smaller crowd this year, but still more than 20 people. On the way from our home to my parents where we were meeting one of my aunts and carpooling, Mark was following behind me in his car and somehow spun off the road. I was about one minute in front of him, on the blue tooth chatting with him when I heard him scream and say "and the car is dead" so I had to turn around and see his car wrecked. The pics of his accident should be at the bottom of this link...I'm having a hard time with blogger right now. THANKFULLY he walked away from the accident with no injuries whatsoever and wasn't even sore the next day...where as, I wasn't in the car and was super sore the next day. My parent's were sort of selling their Honda so we bought that car off of them as at this stage in life, we need to have two cars to make our lives work. 

MY BIRTHDAY:
My parents came back from Haiti and we went to celebrate at Rhinelander's for dinner. It was delicious! I really enjoy fondu and chicken schnitzel so I like that I can eat them both in the same place and I don't have to do the dishes afterwards ;) It was a good but uneventful birthday. I cannot wait for next year (hopefully) when we have a little one to make the day that much more joyous! 

CHRISTMAS: We always spend a lot of time running back and forth between families so it is a great holiday, but busy! So we got to see both sides of our families this year. Again, uneventful but great! Holidays are tough for me...because I really just want to share it with our baby that God is just taking His sweet time to give us so every holiday that passes reminds us that we are childless which sometimes becomes tears of sadness. But I keep reminding myself it's all in due time...

CURRENTLY: I'll do a blog post on adoption stuff later but I am currently in Raleigh, North Carolina visiting a really good and influential (in my life) friend/mentor and her husband. It is SO SO SO good to be out here and relaxing and escaping my life for a little bit. We had a tough situation around Christmas time that I won't be sharing details of but it was rough emotionally on me so I decided to find cheap airfare and book it out of town! Thankfully this friend and her husband (and especially Mark) were on board with my plan because this is so refreshing for my soul! I have only been here for 27 hours as I write this at 1:30 AM Raleigh time but I already feel so refreshed! I have only met her husband one other time before this-and am so glad to get to know him a little bit better and to see my friend in such a happy situation in her life and marriage. So if you think about it-if you could say a prayer for Mark this weekend as he is holding down the fort back home that'd be great. I think I'm going to head off to bed..but I wanted to at least give you a little update about our lives outside of adoption since our lives don't solely revolve around adoption-just most of it ;)

 Here are the pics of the accident (for the record the car was totaled):

Changes

Changes are inevitable. As the seasons change, the signs are obvious...currently the leaves are changing to bright orange, red, and yellow as they fall gracefully from the trees. The sun is either shining or it's raining outside as we transition from summer to fall and eventually to winter. It's gotten colder at night and it's something I take for granted every single year. I LOVE the season of fall! As we start the transition of less daylight, Mark and I are also making changes and transitioning. Here are a couple of big things that are changing for us:

1) We have decided to work with Safe Families to provide respite care for families that are struggling in one way or another. The best way to describe Safe Families is that it is similar to foster care in terms of the child(ren) live with us for an amount of time, but it differs from foster care in that the parents keep legal custody of their child(ren) the entire time! As a Safe Family, we are there to support the biological families in times of need--whether they need their child(ren) hosted by us for one night or several months while they take care of their issues--that is what we are there for. Safe Families was designed to help families that are in some sort of crisis and don't have anyone to rely on such as a good friend or family member. Here is their website if you're curious to find more information or if you're interested in becoming a Safe Families family: http://www.safe-families.org/. This won't help our adoption process go any faster, but it will keep us busy! We said that we are interested in hosting children younger than one since we have been given a crib for our baby and have a nursery mostly set up for our baby--so we just want to use this instead of finding a bed for an older child. Maybe one day this will lead to "actual" fostering children within the foster care system...who knows. Only God knows our future and so we will continue to trust in Him. We got cleared by getting background checks done, three references wrote letters (thank you to you three!!), and we just have to "pass" a home visit. We had originally had it scheduled a couple weeks ago but both Mark and I were getting sick and then life got busy--so it's now set up for next Wednesday evening. We are excited to complete this process and to love on kiddos as we wait for our future baby.

2) We have also decided that I will be going back to school!!!!! Pending any big surprises, I will be finishing my Bachelors of Science in Human Development. As most of you know, this has been a long process in the making. I went to 4 different colleges to figure out what I wanted to be--and I've always come back to some type of social work. So we shall see if this leads to me getting a Master's Degree one day, but for now I'm focusing on just finishing my Bachelor degree. I will be attending Warner Pacific in their adult degree program so I'll only be attending class one night a week for 4 hours. The great thing about this is that as we wait for our child to come (and as we do Safe Families), I can attend classes. Then, when our kid comes, I can stay at home with him/her and then "trade" parental duties with Mark as he gets of work and as I go to class for that night. It will be hard, no doubt, but I'm looking forward to getting my degree done after paying so much money for my 2.5 years at the various colleges I've already attended and to make something of the coursework I've already taken. The cohort that I'll most likely be in starts at the end of January/beginning of February so I still have a couple of months until school starts, but I'm excited!

We would love to invite you to pray for us as we make these changes. We are nervous for both of the changes but we also know that this is what God has called us to, so we boldly step out and take them on. We would also really appreciate prayer in the adoption process. I knew that it would be an emotional process, but I didn't quite realize just how hard it was going to be. We have been on the waiting list for 4 months (well, just shy of 4 months) and we love that our book has been shown to several families! However it is just an emotional roller coaster for a variety of reason. We would just really love prayer for peace and rest. Also, we are asking for prayers for birth families and their unborn child(ren). I can't imagine having to make an adoption plan for my child and how difficultly heart wrenching it is. Prayers for their peace of mind, clarity and emotions to be protected during their journey would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the prayers in advance!!

I think that's it for now--off to enjoy the sunshine for today! :)

It's Been A While

So it's been a while since I've posted--but please don't that fool you into thinking that we are boring people. We have been busy doing nursery preparation, getting emails/phone calls with information on prospective birth parents maybe looking at our books, and then normal life things.

We have been shown to a lot of potential birth families, but so far they haven't amounted to more than just our books shown. While it is sad, frustrating, and confusing, we know that we are meant to adopt and one day our child will be in our home. We are ready for that child to be here NOW, but in the mean time, we are learning what it means to trust God on a daily basis. We are involved in a Life Group (small group Bible Study) and we recently read through Acts. One of the biggest "lessons" I learned from Acts was that God called Paul to something and even though Paul faced many challenges in getting to where he was called--God was faithful and God blessed Paul as he made it to his destination. I took away that God called us to adoption...and although it isn't easy on a day to day basis, I know that God is being faithful to His promises to us but we must trust in the Lord. There have been days lately where I wish our baby was with us right now, but I am learning that that time isn't now for us. I fully believe in this waiting time that God wants to continue to grow us, stretch us and have us continue to lean on Him in ways we have never done before. What that looks like--I am not sure other than the emotional and financial aspects of adoption. I hope it doesn't mean that we will have to go through a failed adoption (one where the birthparents make an adoption plan, chooses us to parent the child, and either the day of the child's birth or before the birth parents' rights are terminated they choose to parent...which, is TOTALLY their right, but doesn't make it easy on adoptive parents that have had to go through this as I am assuming you become attached to the birth family and to the child), but if it does mean we go through a failed adoption in order to learn more of being dependant on God, then I will do it. I am willing to do whatever  God has called us to do and I don't want to wimp out or run the other way just because it isn't easy.

But as we go through this waiting to be chosen process, I've tried to keep myself busy, which usually leads me to buy things for the baby. I'll go to a consignment store usually and buy a couple onesies here or there for $.50-$1.00.We have also gotten out to do fun things. We went to the pumpkin patch for our second annual pumpkin patch time with our niece, Mark's oldest sister and her husband. We got lucky with the weather--it poured and hailed the whole way to the pumpkin patch and starting letting up when we arrived. By the time we took the pirate ship ride (they have that instead of a hay ride) it stopped raining and the sun was out for the rest of the time we were there. Here are a few pictures from that day:

So we will leave you for now--I hope to be more frequent in posting things on the blog...but we shall see as we enter the Holiday Season!

Weekend away!

After having the situation with the prospective birth family, I was having a hard time moving on. We had had a super busy summer as well and hadn't gotten the chance to spend a lot of time together. At the end of May, my mom broke her leg which required two surgeries and she needed a lot of help--and because I don't have a paying job (I'm a house wife and help out here and there as people need it) I was able to help my mom out. I believe most of June was spent being at the hospital with my mom or at my parent's house helping my mom. July was getting ready and having our successful garage sale--but that also meant we didn't get to go away for our anniversary. Last year we were lucky enough to spend almost a week at my grandparent's beach house that they own. We loved the fact that we got to get away and it was free!! So we were hoping to make it an annual thing. However, now that Mark has a newer job aka no vacation time (well, he started back in April) and we have a lot of adoption stuff--it just wasn't feasible to make it happen this year. But we still wanted to get away...So we decided to go to Seattle!!! He was able to just flex some of his time so we were able take off Friday morning and come back on Sunday without using any vacation--YES!! Here are some pictures of our trip :)

Here we are at Kerry Park
On the roof top of Hard Rock Cafe

We rode this bad boy!!

Here we are in our hotel room with the Space Needle behind us

We had a total blast! We got to meet up with some friends that are also adopting through Bethany for Friday night dinner, then Saturday and Sunday it was just us and our schedule. We got to go down to Pike Place and eat some delicous mac & cheese, wandered around City Target, ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, we rode The Great Wheel (it's a ferris wheel on a pier), took a 'Ride the Duck' tour, went to Kerry Park, went up the Space Needle at night, just hung out and enjoyed spending time with each other! It was such a blessing to get away and not talk about adopton. We refrained from uttering that word (other than on Friday night with our friends) until we were back on the road on Sunday. On Sunday we stopped by the outlet mall on the way home and bought a super cute onesie that says, "I Love Daddy" and can be used for either gender. It's the first onesie I was able to get that wasn't a specific gender and mentioned 'daddy'.

I was sad for the weekend to end and wish that I could spend more time with my man. He is a very hard worker at his jobso during the week we don't get to spend much time with each other and the weekends have been jam packed with other stuff...so times where it's just us and life isn't getting in our way are priceless and I treasure them.

The very next weekend (last weekend) we had a great Friday night with some of our good friends. We decided that we had another free Saturday since it was a long weekend and so we wanted to leave town again. This time it was to Cannon Beach!! I have a favorite pizza place--it's called Pizza a' Fetta...and it's delicious!!!!! We usually go there when we go to my grandparent's beach house-but we haven't made it to the beach house in a year, so I was missing my yummy pizza. We had joked about going to the beach just for the pizza...but after joking about it for over 9 months we made it a reality! Thankfully the weather cooperated with us so we went into Seaside and played at the arcades and miniture golf and then got to stick our feet into the ocean. We then drove over to Cannon Beach and ate pizza--then drove home. It was a fun date day. I am not sure how I got so lucky--a weekend get away and then a date day all within a week of each other?!?! Oh how my soul needed that!

My love tank is filled up and I feel refreshed! I am ready to tackle life with a new attitude. I am thankful for my husband to spoil me in such amazing ways!!!! So now we are back on track of just waiting for our time to become parents--whenever God sees it fit! :)

Adoption Update

We are alive and well! We have been staying busy this summer with house cleaning, yard work, nursery preparation and getting to spend time with our family and friends.

I am sure you guys are all interested in is our adoption progress! There isn't a whole lot to tell (sort of). We are coming up on being on the waiting list for 2 months. And let me tell you--it's been a LONG two months of waiting. I am learning the art of patience and learning the art of staying busy to keep my mind off of all the waiting. Thankfully we HAVE had our book shown to several prospective birth families so the waiting hasn't been for "nothing" but waiting is HARD!!! There was one prospective birth family that made it hard. We got a phone call from our social worker saying a woman (prospective birth mom) was in labor--and for a variety of reasons was thinking of adoption for this baby. She gave birth on a Wednesday. Her and her significant other had already named this baby--so we had a name, weight/height, all of the baby's stats, etc. I knew that we were at least one family of two that our profile books were being shown...but I let myself get attached. I got things ready--we washed clothes, packed a diaper bag and did all other things baby related. I tried hard not to let my heart hope that this could be it but at the same time I couldn't help it. It's a fine balance and I'm not sure I've learned it yet. Thursday came and went and we hadn't heard anything about the family or baby. Friday came and I emailed our social worker asking for an update. Our social worker let us know that the family would like more time with the baby and would like to think more on their options. I completely get that this is their baby and until the papers are signed (if ever) that it is their baby until that moment. However, I started to view this as our child--even though we weren't anywhere close to that moment. So we had one of the longest weekends ever!! I didn't sleep much or eat much as I just wanted to know either way. I wanted to know if these parents were going to choose to parent or choose a different path for their little baby that had a name that I knew. We waited all day on Monday as well and finally got word on Tuesday that the family decided to parent. I was C.R.U.S.H.E.D!! In my HEAD, I knew that it could go either way and that the birth family had every right to make that decision. In my HEART, I wanted this to be it. I wanted this baby to be ours. I still pray for this little baby and for her parents. I pray that God is with them as they enter a new phase of parenthood and that things are going well for them. But I didn't know it would be hard for me to let go of this little baby that I hadn't met, let alone seen a picture of. I just knew her name...and kept picturing what she looked like. I felt like I had "lost" her. So I gave myself a week to grieve this little life that wasn't going to be in our life and then needed to just move on. I know that we will be okay and that this baby wasn't meant to be ours. We are on a journey of a life time and this experience has helped us grow in our adoption journey and as a couple. We are stronger than we thought we were and know we can do the same situation again if it does happen again with another family.

We are looking forward to the future and cannot wait to hope, pray and be blessed with Baby Bretl--we know he or she is out there for us!! So please continue to pray along with us as we continue on this crazy journey of adoption :) I will be hopefully posting two more blog posts this week--one on our trip to Seattle and another one yet to be decided. :)

Garage Sale and Exciting News!

Hello All,


We had our garage sale last weekend, here are two pictures from Day #2 of our garage sale before we opened:

We had great success!! On Friday, it ended up just being Mark and I setting up and running the show until about 1:30 when my aunt (Kelly's aunt) showed up to help. It was very awesome that she could be there to help out--Thanks Aunt Kappy! We sold a LOT of items on Day #1 and could not believe how busy it was. Mark and I woke up at about 3:30 am on Friday morning to start setting up and at 8 am people started shopping our sale, even though we didn't start until 9 am. So we weren't quite all set up, but people shopped anyway. It is what it is...but that means I didn't get any pictures of the first day! My parent's (Kel's parents) came and helped put things back in the garage over night-so thank you Dad! It was nice having help putting things away!

Day #2 we got up at 3:30 am as well to start setting up, and then around 8:30 am we had a lot of help. Mark's dad, Kel's friend Paula, Shawn's girlfriend Allison and then Mark and I. Mark's dad and Mark set out the furniture in the morning as I've been recovering from a shoulder injury so that was awesome we had some extra muscles--and Paula, Allison and I got to help customers as the showed up. Saturday (Day #2) wasn't nearly as busy as Friday (Day #1) but it was still busy! We didn't have nearly as many big items as we did on the first day, but we had a successful day. We sold lots of items on both days but still have half a garage full of items that didn't sell--and so we plan on donating those items to people who need them :)

In other news, WE GOT APPROVED!! Our home study hit the hands of the supervisor I believe on Friday, and by Wednesday afternoon, our home study was approved!! We thought we had several weeks between when the home study was finished to when it got approved--but apparently it doesn't...so we are now on the waiting list! However, we haven't finished our profile books which is what we need in order for birth parents to find out who we are. We have been so busy between my mom breaking her leg (and taking care of her) and our garage sale that our profile books kind of took a back burner...but now they are front and center and need to get done ASAP. We have so many emotions going through our bodies right now--we are super excited that we are approved as it means that at any given time, we could become parents...but it's scary because at any given time we can become parents with little to no warning. This weekend we are going to buy a car seat so that we are at least prepared for that--and then from there slowly build are baby accessories as we find them on sale and as needed.

We would like to thank everyone who have prayed for us and walked with us as we got to this stage in adoption--there is no way we could have gotten here without walking beside us! We also would like to thank everyone who donated so many items for our garage sale!! You helped us get that much closer to being able to adopt!!

Prayer requests:

1)For our profile books to get done within the next day or so

2)For all birth parents out there that they may feel peace and love as they make decisions for their kiddos whether that's choosing to parent or choosing to place their child for adoption.

3) For us as we start getting birth parent profiles--that we will make wise choices that God has given us and that we don't rush into anything without feeling called by God. I know there are going to be some tough decisions as to whether we want our profile book shown or not. So wisdom in that area.

Thanks y'all!!

Our Garage Sale is Coming Up!

Hello all,

We are still waiting for our homestudy to be completed which then means the next step after it's completed is getting it sent up to Seattle for approval. We emailed our social worker today and she is about 75% done writing it up but truthfully, I'm getting impatient. We are coming up on July 4th which is the time frame of when we should have gotten our approval notice...but now our homestudy won't even be seen before the committee on July 4th. So it's hard to just wait! I'm ready to stop waiting and to have our little one in our arms :) But alas, we wait. Isaiah 40: 31 has been a good Bible verse for me to meditate on... "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like angels; the will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

In other news we have our big garage sale coming up in a week and a half! Our garage is getting filled with donations by friends and family and we are able to sort through it this week and weekend. We are so thankful to all those that have donated! We are still taking donations as well to those that would like to donate. Please email, facebook, or call/text us as we'd love to take anything off your hands. THANK YOU!!

We will write another update after our garage sale. :) Enjoy the sunshine that is supposed to come in the next few days--I know Mark and I will :)