Anniversary

Six years ago today Candi Hatmaker, a dear friend of mine, gave Allen's dad my email address. Allen emailed me the next day, then called the day after that. Because I was out of town I wasn't able to return his call until that Saturday, but the process had already started! From the first time we spoke I knew there was something special about Allen :) When we finally met a few days later I felt an immediate connection. It is very hard to believe 6 years have gone by since that week :) On Friday, Oct 7 we will celebrate our 5 year anniversary! I came across some pictures on Myspace(of all places!! It was the only place I could find pictures that old) and decided to share them!!

Our "official" first date. A ghost tour in downtown Knoxville.

 

 

 

 

Allen's proposal in the sand :)

One of my favorite engagement pics ;)

Our Wedding Day

So very happy :)

Cannot believe it has been 6 years together, 5 years married! Time sure does fly! Looking forward to the future with the best man I know. Love you Allen!

Adoption Update

Hope everyone has had a great Tuesday! This is a busy week for sure :) Thought I'd give an adoption update! We are currently in the middle of the home study process. I feel like we are creeping along. A few weeks ago we had our office visit with our social worker. She just asked us a few questions and got to know us. We were scheduled to have the home visit part this week but she asked if we could change it to next week. Really it shouldn't matter to me, but I guess I feel like everything has been difficult for us so far that this is just another thing that didn't work out the way I want it. Whenever we hit a stumbling block, no matter how small I worry that it is God telling us we are not following His plan. It is so hard to discern what is what! 

Anyway, we have most of our paperwork turned in to Lifeline. We have to do our autobiographies, some discussion questions and then begin our profile. I know my original plan was to have our profile ready to view by October (possibly early). However as everything seemed to take longer I thought maybe it would be more like the end of October. I know that is still very feasible, but I keep worrying that something else will come up that will push it back (like this 1 week delay) Lifeline cannot start anything else until they have our home study and it will probably take 2 weeks for her to complete it and submit it to Lifeline. Anyway I guess I'm asking for prayer and patience because I know that God already has that perfect child picked out for us. These stumbling blocks may be a way for His mighty plan to all fall into place.

School is still going well. Ever since we got our new teacher my class size is ridiculously small ( :) That's a good thing!) I have 17 kids right now! I have only taught one other year with that little of kids and it was great :) I absolutely love my team!! We are still praying together every morning and we went out to dinner for Emily's birthday last Friday night with our husbands. They get along great! We ate good food, had a lot of laughs and just enjoyed ourselves. Here are a few pics:

Happy birthday Emily!

My sweet hubby!

The girls; Amanda, Emily, Me, Jennifer, & Rachel

Posing

 

 

A weird toilet bowl outside the restaurant where we ate.

I hope really soon we will bringing home a sweet baby boy or girl to join our family! I have been praying for the birth mother and the child that we will call ours. I hope God plans on answering those prayers really soon!!! I cannot wait to bring sweet Laney Grace or Eli (still not sure about boy names) home!

More parties :)

So my sweet husband threw me a surprise party the Saturday after my birthday. I have only been talking about a 30th birthday party for the last 3 years! HA :) I guess he was listening after all!! I had NO idea! My mom was supposed to come in as part of the surprise and keep me occupied so Allen could get it all set up but she wasn't able to come so he did it all on his own!! I ran errands most of the afternoon and then I wasn't home 5 min before the doorbell rang! It was Rachel and her husband Greg and Emily who I work with! I was like, umm... why are they here? :) They have never been to my house, live about 45 min away and I knew I hadn't invited them! Turns out, Allen had contacted them through Facebook and invited them. He was even so sneaky that he didn't request to be friends with them, just sent private messages so I wouldn't get suspicious!!

So, after they arrived so did about 20 other people!! He had invited the girls on my team and their hubbies (which we were so excited to finally get them together) and all of my buddies from church!! He grilled about 25 pieces of chicken and we had other finger foods. We played corn-hole and hung out and talked!! It was so special and a wonderful surprise! It made turning 30 a little more enjoyable :) Here are some pics.....

The girls

Us and sweet Isabella :) Glad she made it to my party!!

The Woods Family

The Mallery's

Rachel and Greg

Emily and James

Some of the girls

This is the picture that Amanda's 4 year old son Noah took!! 

 

 

I have to say I was so excited :) I'm hoping my 30's will bring me even more joy than my 20's!!

Happy Labor Day/ My 30th birthday!!

 

I hope everyone has had a terrific and relaxing weekend :) I haven't posted in like 2 months! My goodness :) I guess starting back to school has been a little overwhelming. I am having a great year so far. I love my team and my kiddos are pretty good too. Our team of teachers have started praying together every morning before school starts. It is such a positive way to start our day and we know what is going on in each others lives.

My awesome first grade "rock star" team!!

Anyway... on Wednesday I turn 30! Where has the time gone? To celebrate, a lot of my family made the trip to come stay with us! On Saturday my brother Shane, sister in law Anne and sweet baby niece Grace arrived! I haven't seen them since she was born in May. Oh my goodness, she is such a sweet baby! When they got here I was so excited to give Anne the Carter's outfits I got at JC Penney's! They had red dot clearance so I got 8 outfits for 11 dollars! What a steal :)

Grace Templeton 3 months old

 

 On Saturday night we watched the TN game! It is so exciting when football season begins in East Tennessee! Everyone wears their orange and it seems like a happier place! I enjoyed some alone time with Grace before the rest of the family arrived.

 Allen is infamous for giving me birthday presents early and this year was no exception! He couldn't wait to give me my new i-Phone 4!! YIPEE :) We played around with it and got everything set up. I was so excited about the Instagram app!

Sunday morning Allen and I went to church. Our youth pastor Joel was preaching and we didn't want to miss that! Everyone was to arrive shortly after we got back from church.

Isabella didn't want to talk to me! But she LOVES Allen :) She told her Mom Allen was her best friend!

 

                     When we got home Glo and Nick had already shown up and decorated the house :)

 Dad got there right after us and then my sister Leslie and Thomas arrived around 4. We just sort of hung out and talked Saturday afternoon.

 Sunday evening Allen's parents came over and we grilled out steaks. It started raining right when we started to grill so Allen had to move the grill in the garage. The steaks were yummy tho! After that I opened my cards and presents!

Next was cake :) Check out the cool 30! It stayed on fire for several minutes!

Then we tried to get a family pic :) Sadly, Grace was feeding so we are missing them :( Here are a few shots...not sure if any are good enough for a Christmas card!

Me, Allen and his parents. They were so sweet to come over too!

Me and Leslie

 As you can see it was a fabulous weekend :) Makes turning 30 a little easier to swallow! Hoping that in my 30's I will get to be a mommy!! I can't wait!!

And we're off!

We got back from Boston Saturday evening and had a nice, relaxing 4th of July weekend. On Monday Allen received a phone call from our social worker, Karen. She was just calling to introduce herself and said she would be getting back to us later this week. I was excited to know we were already being contacted!

Yesterday she emailed me and asked if she could call later that evening. She called around 430 yesterday and said we needed to discuss our Desire of Child Form. Apparently with out of state couples, the agency requires us to apply for only bi-racial children. The only exception is for caucasian children with special needs. I told her we would talk about it and get back to her. When I got off the phone I was heart broken. It's not that I didn't think Allen and I wouldn't love a child of another race, we had actually put down "willing to consider" all other races on our form. It was limiting us to this right off that bothered me. I started worrying about the future, could I raise a bi racial child? Would I know how to care for them if their health etc was different? What about when they were an adult? All of these things overwhelmed me and I started to think maybe we had made the wrong choice with adoption. Was I ready to pursue this?

We know a few couples at church that have adopted children from another country/and/or race and we knew that we could talk to them if we needed to. I went to bed last night very doubtful. I had prayed that morning for God to continue to open doors for us. If this wasn't something we should be doing I asked him to close the door. I had felt up until this point everything had worked smoothly. I was beginning to wonder if we shouldn't just go down the IVF path!

I woke up this morning, did my bible study and prayed. I sent a text to my mom, stepmom, sister and sister in law expressing my concerns over the bi racial matter. I was sure to include that we are not against bi racial adoption but feared that we were not at peace about this being our only option. If a birthmother were to choose us and we received a phone call that the child was bi racial and we were able to pray about it and were at peace we could move forward. But our hopes of adopting a child who is white were gone. As I spoke to each of them tears filled my eyes. What exactly did I want? What were my intentions of adoption to begin with? All of this really helped me weigh my options and really look at my heart. I felt horrible even saying that it bothered me to adopt only a bi racial child! What kind of person must I be to feel this way??

After having a few conversations I contacted our social worker through email and asked her if we could change the gender portion if we were limited to bi racial? She emailed me back and told me , yes, we could do that but it would probably increase our waiting time. Then she went on to mention the normal wait time is around 2 years. I knew going into this it could be a while but here we are after 3 years of painful infertility and now maybe awaiting 2 more years for a domestic adoption, not even international! I told her that we needed to pray about our decision and get back to her.

As always, God is in control and He hears our prayers. Just a few hours after emailing I got a phone call from Karen. I was on the other line and couldn't switch over, but the voicemail said she had good news for us! I called her back quickly and  when she answered she said "We have opened Caucasian adoption up to you guys." I was flabbergasted! Really? I still don't know if its just "US" or if they have changed the out of state part but either way I was thrilled. Then I had to start thinking about whether we still wanted to consider bi racial in our profile! Our profile will be viewed more if we are more open, however if we are not at peace about a particular partI do not think we should accept it if we're really not comfortable. This is our life we are talking about!! Our social worker kept telling me that we had a lot going for us! She said we are a young, childless couple with a sweet and bubbly personality and that we would be appealing to most young birth mothers. I know God has all of this figured out already. That is the best part. I can sit here and wonder all day long how all of this is going to work out, but He is sitting up there smiling because he already sees the sweet boy or girl that will be ours one day.

Until then we are happy as our family of 2(+2 furry animals)! By the way the Mission Trip was incredible! Maybe I'll blog on it eventually! Here are a few pics from the trip! Thank you for all of the prayers!

Handing out chapstick on a street corner in Boston

VBS

VBS

Done with paperwork and leaving for Boston!!

Sooooo, we have officially turned in our application to Lifeline! Now we wait to see if we've been approved then begin the home studies! I'm hoping by October that our profile will be on file! It's a very exciting process! This week we told our families and the friends we used as contacts :) Everyone was very excited and supportive. I think my family is so happy for us that we are turning in a new direction. My dad said he has been praying every day in 2011 specifically for us to have a healthy baby born this year! Who knows? He maybe praying for that birth mother who is going to choose us to parent her child!

I am glad we finished all of this before we leave on our mission trip! We will be gone until next Saturday. We are going to New York and then to Boston. I am so excited to see what God has in store for this trip. We are going to have so much fun and get to see a lot of neat things, but most importantly we are getting to share the gospel of Jesus with people who need it :) I am so blessed to belong to a wonderful church that supports missions and has a heart to tell others about the Lord. Please pray for our group of 75 leaving today! I will update on that trip when we get back! Also pray for Allen and me as we start this adoption journey! I know God is gonna do great things!

Changing Directions

Good morning everyone! Just wanted to blog a little today about a new direction we are pursuing. It has been exactly 3 years since we started trying to have a family. I will always remember the date because we were on our way home from a friend's wedding and stopped in Gatlinburg to eat dinner. Allen leaned across the table and told me he was ready. I responded with, "Ready for what?" He said I could throw away my birth control pills! That began a journey that has led us to this day 3 years later. Did I ever think on June 22, 2008 that I would be sitting here 3years later childless? Absolutely not! After hearing those words from Allen I think I immediately went out and bought the book What to Expect when You're Expecting! Jumped the gun a little huh? Although I worried we'd maybe experience a little trouble, I never thought it would be years of painful infertility.

So now as I look back on what we've been through medically; several rounds of clomid, 3 rounds of HMG shots, almost 10 IUI's and 2 laparoscopic surgeries, we are excited to say that we have started the process of domestic adoption through Lifeline Children's Services! Let me preface with this: Allen and I still feel very strongly that one day I will be pregnant. I know that may seem weird to say that and start adoption but we are ready for a family and feel this is the direction God is leading us. We have been married almost 5 years and will be 30 and 33 this year. To me, waiting much longer to start a family is silly. I have wanted to be a mother since I could talk and if that means having the chance to bring a sweet child into our family through adoption then that is what we'll do! I know that the journey we've taken so far has been a rollercoaster and we couldn't have made it without the love of our Savior Jesus and constant prayer warriors. Infertility is a battle that is so unexplainable and painful but I believe God has big plans in store for those of us He brings through a trial of this kind.

We have only told a few people at the moment. We are almost done with the initial paperwork and hope to submit that this week. Then we will have two home studies, fill out a profile, and wait patiently until a birth mother chooses us! This whole process will take around 2-3 months so hopefully our profile will be ready to view by birth mothers in October at the latest! We are prepared that it could be immediate or a long wait. Either way we know God has a plan for our family.

Financially we are praying that He will provide. We have heard of some grants and no interest loans we can apply for as well as donations from family and friends. Even though we have spent so much money so far on our infertility journey, I am really not worried about the money. People adopt every day domestic and international and I believe God provides the money and a means to pay for everything.

Please pray for us as we start this new journey! I hope to soon be blogging about a new addition to our family! We have already started praying for that sweet little one God is knitting in the womb just for us!

Oh and on a side note, Hank now knows how to sit, shake, speak, lay down and roll over!! He has been like a sponge lately!! I just love him so much and I know he can't wait to be a big brother!! HA!!