Our journey through adoption.

I’m having to remind myself that the timing of when we will have a baby is not in my hands. I continue to pray for patience, and peace in knowing that He has His perfect plans in store, but sometimes its hard! It’s hard when I can’t be a part of a “mommies” conversation, like yesterday at Caleb’s birthday party, of course they want to share about their kids, but sometimes I wish people would be sensitive to those around them when having these conversations, about how long they go on. Or its hard when I see some of the students at my school who have parents who could really care less about their children. They show up at school with the same clothes on day after day, they smell because they have not been bathed, they don’t bring back homework, I see parents every day drop off their kids with the music blaring in their cars and don’t even say a simple “goodbye, have a nice day”…its hard for me sometimes to understand why these people have been blessed with children, and here Darrel and I are, ready to give our entire selves to a little person, and yet we haven’t been blessed with a child yet…but when I think about it, and remind myself, I do feel a peace come over me that it isn’t something I can control, all we can do is pray and do our best to stay “still and rest” in the Lord!

On a different note, yesterday we went to a fabric store to look for fabric for the nursery. At first Darrel was not “into” the idea of fabric shopping but he got more into it after he had picked out a fabric that I really liked…and he definately has a strong opinion when it came down to it of what he wants…he would say “eww, that one is girlie”…or “that one is boring…” and he came up to me with a few fabrics that were a little “scary” one of which was a poker themed fabric (he was joking of course)…but we found a fabric we both really love and could be unisex! So we are just waiting back to see if they have more of the fabric at another store, and if so we are going to get it for the chair Wendi and Ryan are doing for us, and then tie it into the crib! Its very cute…it definately POPS with color and is different than what I originally had thought I wanted for the room, but it fits well and its something both of us liked!

Today I went and met Carter…he is so handsome and so perfect. Mindy and Jimmy are both completely in love with him, Mindy said “he is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…” they are very proud parents! It’s amazing to feel the immediate love you feel when you meet a little one like Carter..I felt the same way when I met all the little angels in our life for the first time, you just immediately love them when you see them. Today as Mindy was telling me her birth story, she had said “I cannot imagine going through 9 months of pregnancy, giving birth and then handing over my baby to someone else…that is the most selfless act anyone could do..” The birthmom who is going to choose us is going to be nothing short of amazing to us, she is doing in my opinion the most courageous act a women can do, in giving her child a life she feels she cannot provide…without this women Darrel and I wouldn’t receive the gift of being parents to a healthy baby…I also realized today that when I set eyes on my baby for the first time, it will be a love that is undescribable…because I know I would give my life for any of the angels in our lives…

The Lord is so amazing in how He creates life, and gives life!

Now we have another little guy to shower love on, Darrel and I feel so blessed to have so many little ones in our life that we love so much, they are all so special! So welcome Carter to our family…we look forward to watching you grow!

Wendi and Ryan have finished painting the glider and it looks great! They put a lot of hard work into sanding it down and painting…now we just need to pick fabric out for the cushions but first we need to find crib bedding. I’m finding out that its pretty hard to find nice unisex bedding. We aren’t really into the “themed” nursery look, not saying that themed isn’t cute, its just not our style, and I would almost like the nursery to look a little more “modern” than “baby-ish”., and modern is not really baby-ish or nursery looking in any way. ..its hard to break away completely from making it look somewhat “baby-ish”…but it is our house and I want the room to blend in with the rest of our home,..does this make sense? I realize what we pick out may not be the look for most people but I think we can make it fun and comfortable for a baby! ( I’m not naive either, I know at some point our child may want something completely different and not what I would want for my home and at that point we will allow our child to express themselves they way they choose) however until then, it would be fun to do a nursery how we would like…when Wendi and I were growing up my parents allowed us to express ourselves, we had the 90210 posters of Dylan all over our rooms, but my parents had us buy frames for them, etc. so it was still “clean” looking I guess I would say…I think we will do the same…so I don’t go insane b/c I like a unified, clean, uncluttered look…who knows though…we’ll cross that bridge when the times comes. Until then, we are on a mission to find a nice unisex crib bedding that will blend in and will probably be “untypical” of what you see in many nurseries…

Today Mindy is being induced to have Carter. Its so neat because Mindy and I have gone through much heartache, tears and conversations together about infertility. There have been times where we’ve cried with each other, and vented with one another. Mindy has been a huge support, I can remember last year on April 1st, I woke up feeling awful and I just lost it, I was shaking and crying and Mindy came over and just sat with me and let me cry for a very long time, no words were really spoken, because she understood in many ways how I felt…she has never “judged” me and she doesn’t make me feel “bad” when I mourn, she doesn’t give me “empty” words or promises.  I think I’ve been that friend to her too, through all the heartache, trials and struggles her and Jimmy have faced to have a baby…and in the almost four years they have been trying, I’ve always prayed and known in my heart this day would come for her, and now she is giving birth to her son. It’s so neat, and its an answer to many prayers I’ve lifted up for them, for the Lord to bless them with a baby! Jimmy and Mindy are going to be great parents to Carter, I know they will be well-balanced, he is going to feel loved, he is going to know boundaries, most importantly he is going to be raised in a Christian home ! I know Carter will be one happy, blessed little boy!

Okay, so Darrel just came in and said “jeeezzz” to how long this blog is, so I will stop myself right now…told you not to read a couple days ago, haha!

Tonight our small group went to a transitional home for women who have just got out of jail or have been sent to this home as an alternative to jail…we made dinner for them and went to their home to serve them and just talk to them about whatever they chose. It’s definately not something I’m naturally good at…starting up conversations with people I don’t know, but we were encouraged to talk to them and if we felt comfortable share about the Lord with them. The women were all eager to talk..so I just sat down at an empty table and up came two girls…probably in their young 20’s, we just talked about their jobs, where they were from, what their goals were, and then Darrel came and sat down and they started to talk about sports with him…it was nothing deep, but it was a blessing to listen to them talk. After dinner we worshiped and it was so neat to be singing to the Lord with 30 other women who have been given hope through Him. As I sat in that room with these women, there was something in common with some of them, we all love the Lord…we all have made mistakes, some bigger than others, but we all are forgiven, I was humbled…sometimes I forget to love strangers, to serve others, to step outside of my “bubble” and look around at how I may be able to share about the Lord. This is something I’m slowly trying to learn to do more, I’m not ashamed of my beliefs, and I love to share about the Lord with others, and obviously its comfortable to talk about Him with my family and friends who also share a relationship with Him, BUT it those people who don’t who I want to step out and reach…the Lord is so amazing in how He works in people’s hearts…and that He loves and wants a relationship with us, no matter what mistakes we’ve made in our lives…He is a forgiving, merciful, loving God!

This weekend was a sad weekend for my family, we said goodbye to Brewster…our childhood dog, he was such a good dog and we all loved him very much, he led a good life though, my parents spoiled him rotten. He was a big part of our hearts, family and memories, so we are definately going to miss the little guy.

No updates with adoption…this blog will probably become more of a day to day journal since there is not going to be too much to report on until we get a call…so it may not be too interesting to read…it will be more like a personal journal for me, so I’m not fun to read about so don’t feel bad taking a break…

So thats it…I’m starting to feel sick, ugh! The stress of doing the profile and being so busy is catching up I think…so heading off to bed now….

Wow, 3 months after starting the process of adoption and we are on the list. We are both so hopeful for what the Lord has in store for us. We feel at peace…yesterday as Wendi and I were driving down to meet up with Darrel to go to Kristel’s house, we were saying how anytime this could happen now, we can get the call that we are going to be parents…and Wendi said “Monday you will get a call…” joking around of course, but I said if we did get a call on Monday, Darrel would probably die of a heart attack, haha. We are both so ready to be parents, with adoption  there are so many unknowns, we could be parents tomorrow if the Lord really wanted to throw us for a loop. We both just know that we are at peace because we know when the Lord desires the Mom and the baby to become part of our lives, He will make that meeting happen, and all we can do now is pray, trust and have faith in Him! Wow though, I’m so excited but also so nervous. One day we will get a call from the agency, telling us a birthmom has chosen us to be parents…of course there is more to it than that, we could be 1 of 3 couples, or the birthparents may want to meet with us or speak with us before making their final decisions…but we will get that call one day and wow, I can’t really imagine what its going to feel like to hear those words…you have been chosen. There is a big sense of relief though, that other than praying to the Lord for the rest of this process, all we can do is wait. We are finished with all the requirements…I remember the day we received the homestudy packet and I opened it and on that day I thought this day would never come…and now it is here! AHHHH, there is some crazy feelings going on in us both…but I think the most powerful feeling is peace, peace we could only have through the Lord.

So now what? We wait…we have no expectations of what is going to happen next…we hope that we will have a baby by Christmas…but again, that is just our hope but it may not be the plans the Lord has in store for us…

In the meantime…I want to cherish this time with Darrel, however short or long we have left together, just us two, I want to enjoy him, enjoy rest, enjoy sleep (haha), enjoy vacations, enjoy quietness, just enjoy each other…I cannot wait though to start the next part of our journey together as mommy and daddy because I know we are going to make an awesome team!

Thank you SO much to all of you who have shown so much love and support! Either by praying or by doing something to help us in this process, your encouraging emails, phone calls and just always staying on top of knowing what is going on, so you can be in prayer over specific areas of this journey…we are so blessed, so blessed to have so many amazing people by our side! I just got goosebumps as I was writing this, we aren’t deserving of the love we receive…but we are so thankful…

This weekend was all about the profile. For those of you who don’t know what a profile is, its a small book of pictures and information about yourselves for the birthparents to look at and pretty much “choose” you by. It’s pretty intimidating we were both feeling really overwhelmed on Friday, but we prayed for the Lord’s guidance in helping us and He absolutely guided us in all of our decisions. We also asked the Lord for help with our words, and it was neat because when we went to go find our paper in this huge scrapbooking store, there were thousands of different papers and I happnened to bend down and see this one that said ”She sought out a home she could not provide, the other prayed for a child and her hope was not denied”..so on our front page we put ” They prayed for a child and their hope was not denied”…its beautiful. We worked, worked, worked ALL weekend with a couple breaks, and its done. The Lord has put complete peace over us about our profile, its the way He wants it to be, for the Mom and the baby He has already chosen for us. 

So Darrel is going to get one copy printed today so we can make sure there are no errors…and our goal is to be turning in 6 copies of the profile and $2000 on Wednesday to be put on the list! I cannot believe really how fast this has gone by, in reality we were told it was going to go even faster, but we feel like this is His perfect timing…And today I got home and received a really neat email from Wendi, her boss has given her a glider…and she just said her and Ryan would like to paint the glider and have it reupholstered for us, here is little part of her email ”we are REALLY excited to get a neice or nephew present”, for our nursery. What a neat gift that is, and it means even more that they will be putting time, energy and love into doing this for us…and for their future neice or newphew.  This baby will be  so loved by so many people….so I’m excited, Wendi is coming by today after work to show me the glider to make sure I like the bones of it. I think I will love it just because of the thought that is going to be put into it!

So check back in soon, hopefully it will say ITS OFFICIAL we are on the list in my next blog!

Last night was a little stressful as we worked on the profile, but by the end of the night we felt better as we have completed a little bit of it. We got “sample” profiles from our agency and to tell you the truth most of them look the same to me and even sound the same, so last night I didn’t sleep much because I was trying to figure out some way to makes our “stand” apart from others. I think I came up with a few good ideas…and right before I was about to fall asleep Darrel said “Jul, I have an idea, why don’t you hand write the birthparent letter instead of type it, so it feels more personal…” We may do that too. Today I went to a Michaels Craft Store to look through paper and get some ideas in the scrapbook section. I think tonight we will go back so I can show Darrel some of the ideas I found, and then continue to work late into the night on it. I cannot believe how qwickly this process has gone. So far its been so easy, I know the hard part is going to be waiting…in talking to Christine, she said everytime she hears the phone ring she gets butterflies in her stomach because it just may be “the call”. So as we move into the next part of this journey I  pray for patience. I just hope we get our profile done while I still  have hair left on my head, I felt like pulling it out last night, haha. Thank you to everyone who gave looked at our profile and had nice things to say! I meant to copy and paste our formal notice from our caseworker that we are ready to be put on the list ..

Hello Again. Just wanted to make sure you knew the notarization of your home study is final. Good luck on the next process.  May all go well for you as that lucky baby finds its way to your home.  

I would prefer the word “blessed”…I don’t really care for the word “lucky” because God doesn’t plan His plans off of “luck”..we are going to be the ones that are blessed. Okay…to our little angel that the Lord is going to bless us with, we are one day, one step closer to holding you in our arms. We continue to pray for you and your mommy and we talk about you so much. We talk about what we think you may look like, what you may want to be in your life, we talk about what we are going to teach you, about how we are going to pray over you every day for the rest of your life, how we are going to teach you about the most important love there is, the love you only can receive from the Lord…we cannot wait for the day the Lord already has prepared for us to meet…that day is going to be the most amazing, blessed day in our whole life. We do already love you…and we are so excited to meet you!

We received confirmation this morning that we are set to go and be on the list, however we need to complete our profile and turn in the check with our profile. So the next few days are going to be busy working on completing our profile. We have pics, picked out, we have our birthparent letter, about us, about us indivisually, and our family and friends letters written out. So its just putting this all together nicely in a “book”. WOW, it happened fast, and now its our “fault” we aren’t on the list as of today, since we haven’t finished our profile…but it will get done in perfect timing. SOOO, we need YOUR help! All the people who know us best, I’m going to attach what we have written for our profile..PLEASE give us any suggestions of what we might want to consider adding in or taking out, what we maybe have forgotten or should include! Be truthful, our feelings will not be hurt! We need honest opinions because this is ALL the birthparents see of us, so we need help in making sure we are expressing and showing ourselves in “true” colors! So go at it please…if you want to add comments on our blog then you can or email me…we would really APPRECIATE all of your honest help!

Dear Birthparents,

Thank you for taking this time to read our profile. We understand that the decision to let go is the most selfless and painful decision of your life. There is no greater sacrifice. Your decision is a true testament of a parents love. There are no words that adequately express how deeply blessed and grateful we will be to you every day for the rest of our lives. We promise that your child will have a father and a mother who loves, protects, nurtures him or her all of the days of his/her life. We will provide a warm, secure, safe and happy home. We will spend a lot of quality time

 with him or her every single day. We will be involved parents who fill your child with a sense of self-value and confidence. We will help your child discover what his or her interests are and provide all that they will need to enjoy the things that he or she loves the most. He or she will be surrounded by constant love. We have been praying for you and your baby. We will continue to pray for you every day for the rest of our lives. I also pray that somehow you can know our hearts and have complete peace in knowing that there are no two parents in the world who can love your little one more than we will. We are open to sending and receiving letters and pictures if that is something you would like and your child will fully understand how they became a part of our family.  May God bless you always and forever.

About us:

We met at a park 14 years ago while involved with a summer church program for children. We were young, Julie 14 years old and Darrel 16 years old. It did not take us long to realize that we would be each other’s one and only loves for the rest of our lives. Since that day we have been inseparable. We have been married six years now and lead a blessed life. We have fun together, we laugh together and we enjoy sharing time with one another. We boat, ski, camp and are involved in a variety of other activities. We live in a beautiful home on an acre of land with our two “furry” babies, Princess and Wake. We live in a small rural town, with farms full of horses, cows, and sheep but we live close to a big city that offers many opportunities, we feel we have the best of both worlds.  We have an amazing support system of family and friends who will be a big part of your child’s life, we try to spend time with these people as often as possible and enjoy bbq’s, playing games, and going on weekend trips to the lakes. We have nieces and nephews that play a big part in our lives. We often pick them up for a fun filled day of playing at the park, going on bike rides, or playing hide and go seek. We love to travel and have traveled to a variety of places around the world; we want your child to experience the world around them as well. We both love children and have dreamed of starting a family together.  Along our heartbreaking journey to have a family, we have lost two precious babies through miscarriage.  We pray to God that He will bless us someday with a child to hold in our arms and shower with love every day of his or her life. We have so much love to share.

Darrel about Julie:

Julie has a beautiful, kind, sincere heart that loves people, especially children. She is a wonderful auntie to our nieces and nephews, her love for them shows in her actions, she is who they all run to when they want to play or cuddle. Julie is a kindergarten teacher and every day she comes home and tells me stories about “her kids”, she loves her job and shows them daily that their teacher values each and every one of them. Her dream is to be a stay at home Mom.  Education is a passion in Julie’s life and will be an important part of your child’s life. Her heart is full of love and her desire to take care of others leaves all her family, friends and me as her husband feeling like there is no one more important in her life than us. She is my best friend and my support. She is a follower of the Lord, her life and our marriage is centered upon our faith. She was born to be a mom, and your child will be the most precious gift given to her and your child will feel nothing less than cherished. She will teach your child how to be a good, giving, loving, strong, dedicated, fun person because she is all of these things. Julie and I share a strong relationship as husband and wife, she is a supportive, nurturing wife and our marriage is one that is filled with fun and laughter, and your child will be very blessed to have her as their Mom.

Julie about Darrel:

Darrel is a strong, dedicated, loving, funny, attentive and kind husband, son, brother, friend and uncle. He enjoys people’s company and he is often the one who makes people laugh through his sense of humor. He takes his role as a provider and husband seriously and always makes me feel secure and safe. He values education and worked hard to obtain his Bachelors degree and is close to completing his Masters degree. He enjoys his line of work as a medical sales representative.  He loves to play with our nieces and nephews and whenever they are around him you can hear them laughing hysterically. His heart for people is what drew me to him, he is the person that our family and friends know will always be there to help them when needed. He enjoys the outdoors and his favorite activity is taking our boat out and teaching others how to ski or wakeboard. He also loves to snowboard and play basketball.  He makes everyone in his life feel like they are important, and he does this by showing through his actions and words how much they mean to him. He is so much fun to be around, he makes me laugh almost every day by just being light-hearted. His love and desire to serve the Lord and others is what people admire most about him. He is a balanced man, he is strong but yet gentle, he is funny but yet serious when time calls for it, he is an amazing man. Children naturally gravitate towards Darrel because they can sense his easy-going spirit. Darrel will be active in your child’s daily life and he will teach your child how to be a well-balanced person. Because he enjoys being physically active and enjoys the outdoors your child will experience many fun activities. Darrel has so much love to give as a father, he will love your child like no other!

Family and Friends:

We cannot share about our life without sharing about the people who are most important to us our family and friends. We have a close-knit set of family and lifelong friends who have been our rock through our journey to start a family. Our parents have been so faithful in prayer and cannot wait to welcome into their arms a grandchild. Both our younger sisters, whom we adore, live only a couple miles away from us and are anxiously awaiting becoming aunts. They talk about all the fun they are going to have and outings they want to take the child on.  Our group of friends who we also consider “family” has so much love to offer to your child and are happily awaiting the addition for us to start our own family. We feel so blessed to live near so many of our loved ones and spend almost a day a weekend with them, playing games or just hanging out. Your child will experience an abundance of support and unconditional love from these special individuals. There is a lot of fun, laughter and activity with our family, friends, nieces and nephews!

Dear Birthparents,

We have a crib for our baby in our home, something I’ve always dreamed about and now is a dream come true. Darrel surprised me and said “Do you want to do the crib tonight?”…I said sure, it was already 9pm, but together we got it finished by 10:30pm, it was neat building our baby’s crib together, something I will always remember. And the crib is PERFECT, I absolutely LOVE it. I have my design ready to go for that room, the name of the game is SIMPLE and STRIPED its going to be very simple in style, obviously the room is going to be planned “unisex” but once we have the baby, then I will be able to tie in different colors and accessories to make it look either girl or boy. I love the crib, its EXACTLY the style I wanted, a little tiny bit modern and traditional mixed into one, its two toned in color, off white with dark wood. It looks perfect too because you see in through the jack and jill bathroom to the guestbedroom and vice versa from the guestbedroom into the nursery and they both combine well together with the colors in all 3 areas, guestbedroom, bathroom, nursery! Darrel is sweet, I think he knew I wouldn’t push to do this, but it was important for me that my parents see it when they are here, just because they bought our nursery set for us..so yep, crib in our house…now we just pray for the baby who will be sleeping in it, chewing on it, spitting up in it…all things I dream about too!

Update: I’m cleaning the house right now, I enjoy cleaning b/c I blast Air1 and just have quiet time..and as I cleaned out the nursery, I just felt this peace over me. I was worried that seeing a crib in that room may make it harder on me, if there isn’t a baby in it, but I can honestly say that it was depressing in our 2nd home and this home sometimes seeing that empty room was a reminder of what we don’t have…having the crib in there makes me look forward to that day that we will have a baby in there!