Difficult Decisions...

How should I sum up last Friday... hmm... well, how about WOW, followed by some tears, anxiety, headache and heartache.  Without going into too many details, we were contacted by our agency about a possible showing of our profile to a birth mother.  (That was the WOW part)  But the more and more I read the email, there were factors we had to consider first before giving the agency a yes or no answer. (this is where the rest of the emotions came in).  I really don't want to share what was said in the email out of respect for the birth mother, but I will share this... I pray for her and hope that everyone reading this prays for her as well.  After a lot of discussion (& tears on my part), Cody and I are agreeing not to be viewed.  (Being viewed doesn't mean that we would be picked either, it's just as it reads, we'd be viewed, that's it, with a possibility of being picked.)  This was something we weren't really prepared to deal with, however, after going over everything over and over in our heads and hearts, we feel that this is the right decision to make in this situation.  More than ANYTHING in the world, we want to be parents, but we were faced with something we weren't totally comfortable with and it just didn't "feel right" at the same time.  I know, I know, I'm sure most of you are thinking... "are you crazy?" or "why would you pass this up?" BUT like I said, I don't want to go into too many details on here, but we'll answer questions privately for those of you that want to know what went on.  We do ask for your prayers though, not just for this birth mom and her child, but for us as well, because this wasn't the easiest decision to come to.  We feel that when it's our time to be parents, we'll know instantly, and it will feel right in our minds and in our hearts.  There's a reason for this hiccup in the road of our journey, but I feel it's just one step closer to our child.  Patience is a virtue, right?

So yes, we've hit our first bump in the road, but we're hauling right through it.  The reason of this blog is to share our story, good and bad, unfortunately this is our "bad" right now.  We're hoping some GOOD comes soon... but until then... we continue to wait for our miracle.... 

Always,

M&C

Fun Find!

Yes, the main purpose of this blog is for our adoption journey... however, I'd like to keep updating it often so I'm going to share other things as well as adoption things on here... so with that said....

I found a fun new app! (It might not be new to others, but it's new to me)  It's called Instagram.  It's a fun way to make your photos fun and a way to share them with friends and family! You can post them to instagram and "follow" people and see their pics as well, and you can also upload them to Facebook.  Here are a couple of images I've taken and put through instagram.  Enjoy!

Chesney boy

Gizmo...Wouldn't this make a good puzzle?

Taken during the first snow fall when it was pretty

My friend Nikki and her daughter Madelyn

My fav pic of Ches and Giz

My friend Lisa's little girl, Maddie (2 months)

My Godson, Levi... the mighty wrestler!

10 Things to know about Majesta & Cody

While writing our profile, we came up with 10 things to tell our potential birthparents on a spread in our book.  This is what we had to say....

1. Your child will be our first child -- Whether they be biological or adopted, our goal is to have at least 2 children in our family, if not more.  (3 would be ideal)  We have said since day one, that we would never want just one child so we will continue to add to our family so your child will have siblings.

2. Your child will have the security and unconditional love of two parents -- We've always viewed being parents as the next big journey in our lives.  We've tried to have a baby for almost 2 years now.  Our struggles with infertility have actually made our love for each other much stronger and our communication runs that much deeper.  We're best friends as well as husband and wife, and can't wait to welcome a baby into our lives.

3. We sincerely respect you and care about your situation -- We want to surround you with understanding people who support your decision and can offer you any resources that may be helpful.  We know that pregnancy presents new challenges and we're committed to making yours as healthy and happy as we can.

4. Majesta has the flexibility to be home with our child -- I feel fortunate to have the career I'm in as a photographer and business owner, however, this has never measured up to my desire to become a mother and I want nothing more than to devote myself to providing a child with a stable home.

5.  Our cozy home that we share with our two pets is in a wonderful family-oriented community filled with kids to play with and watchful eyes to keep a child safe -- We live in a great small community where everyone knows everybody and it provides a great sense of security.  Even though we live in the country, we're not far from town.  For the past 5 years, we have used the extra bedroom as a guest room/craft room, however, we are anxious to turn it into our dream nursery, complete with Majesta's photography of our child as artwork.  (Obviously we've started this project already!)

6.  We are financially secure -- We both have worked very hard to secure the resources to be able to provide for a family and to allow Majesta to work freely as she needs/wants to.  We will be able to support the many activities available to children; dance classes, baseball, softball, soccer, swimming lessons, as well as guitar lessons, piano lessons, or whatever else our child would like to pursue.  We hope to be able to provide as much as we can for our child's college education and any other goals in life they are preparing for.  Traveling to many places ourselves, we are planning to expose our child or children to as many places around the world that are rich in cultural places and traditions.

7.  We value many things such as family, friendships, compassion, honesty, faith, hard work, courage, other cultures and keeping an open mind -- Cody was raised Methodist and Majesta was raised Catholic, however, as we got older, we did not agree with the teachings of our churches  We were then introduced to the WELS Lutheran faith and felt like it fit us better so we went through the process of becoming confirmed.  We plan to raise our children in the WELS Lutheran faith, however, when they are older and want to explore other faiths, we will not stand in their way and will respect whatever religion they choose to be.  -- We also have experience with adopted children in both our family and close friendships.  Majesta has 4 adopted cousins, 2 that were adopted from Korea and 2 that were adopted in the US.  Our close friend, Lane, has also adopted from Korea and is in the process of adopting again.  Our family and friends support us in our adoption journey 110% without a doubt.

8.  We know how to have fun! -- We hope our pictures will show how much we enjoy having a good time with our friends and family and the great places we have been.  If we're not out with our families having a good time, we're usually calling up our friends to go catch dinner and a movie or have a Wii night at our house.

9. We have two 4-legged "kids" -- Like a lot of people do, we became "parents" to pets before we began to grow our family.  We have a 6 year old cat, Gizmo and a 5 year old Black Lab, Chesney.  Cody always had barn cats growing up that he became attached to quite often and Majesta grew up with 2 dogs, Rocky & Buck.  We feel having pets in the house teaches children responsibility at a younger age and we will probably always have some type of animal in our home.

10.  We would be honored to meet you an would love to hear about your dreams for your child!


So that's our list of 10 things we listed in our profile for any potential birthparents to read.  Of course, this list is just a small part of our profile, after all, it's 26 pages long!  Anyways... just wanted to share this with  you all! Thanks for reading!

Always -
M&C

Our Profile

Baby Room

Yes, ever since starting our adoption journey, we've been preparing for our 2 foot growth... here are a couple images of our preparation...

Finding a paint color was hard to figure out... but a soft green can go either way! 

After a successful day of painting, almost done! 

Since Cody didn't help, Chesney kept me company 

All painted and ready for furniture! 

Gizmo helped too... NOT! 

Found these at Hobby Lobby... Love them!

Our agency...

If you're interested to see our agency, the website is www.adoptionsofwisconsin.com

The Start of Our Journey....

After almost 18 months of infertility treatments, Cody and I made the decision that we were going to adopt a child.  We were tired of our lives revolving around doctor appointments and each month coming and going with no success with our treatments so we looked into adoption.

In April 2011, we did some research on adoption, as well as made our consultation with Adoptions of Wisconsin in Madison.  We first met with Jenny at the consultation and she answered our list of questions we had as possible adoptive parents.  She was so friendly and we knew shortly after our meeting with her that AOW would be the agency we would use for our journey to become parents.

On May 9, 2011, we sent in our official adoption application as well as scheduled our first home study that would take place on June 30th at 10am at the agency.  I began researching and planning out what to write in our adoption profile that prospective Birthparents would read once we were accepted into the outreach program after all of our home studies were complete.  Of course, once I started working on the profile, I was glued to my computer because I wanted to finish it and have the final product in my hands right away.  I spent many hours in photoshop designing out our profile "book" and basically writing the story of our lives thus far.  On top of making our profile, we also got started working on our 18 hours of adoption education that we needed to complete.  Thankfully, we were able to do most of our education through education websites so we could do the courses together and discuss them together as we went.

On June 30, we arrived at AOW 30 min before our appointment, and then waited another 30 min past our appointment because our social worker, Claire, was running late because she got lost when she was meeting with a Birthmother that morning.  The first home study was basically all about Cody and his upbringing.  For 2 hours, he got to talk about himself, and was he ever happy about that! Haha!  Claire is SUPER nice and when we walked out of that first home study, we knew we had chosen the right agency to work with.

Our next home study was on July 13 in Madison and that meeting was mostly on my upbringing as well as how we work as a couple.  Again, everything went well and we scheduled our last home study for July 28 at our home.  Our last home study visit was quite short, not only because we had covered most everything in our fist meetings, but there was also an impending storm coming and Claire wanted to get going to MN before it began because her air conditioning was out in her car and it was HOT out as well.  She was here at our home for all of 45 min to go over the last bit of paperwork we had to fill out and answer any questions we had going onto the waiting list.  We also submitted our profiles to the agency that day after many hours put into them.  Hopefully they are attractive to prospective Birthparents and that we didn't miss anything.

So, once we were done with all of the home studies, filled out a ton of paperwork and completed our 18 hours of education, we were put on the waiting list.  AOW has a waiting list, and an outreach program.  10 families are on the waiting list at any given time, and 10 families are in the outreach program.  When you are on the waiting list, you are basically just waiting to be able to move into the outreach program but your profile could potentially be viewed if you're on the waiting list if a Birthparent wanted to see more profiles than the ones of the families in the outreach program.  We were hoping that we'd be in the outreach program in August, however, some things happened at the agency that made other families not move out of the outreach program so we just waited until we got the call that we were able to move in.  Thankfully that call came on October 11, 2011.

It was a typical morning, I was getting ready for work and was in the middle of texting a friend when a 608 number appeared on my cell screen.  Since the caller ID didn't say who it was, I let it go to voicemail and didn't think much about it so I just finished my text and then saw that the number did leave a voicemail.  When I went to check the voicemail, the ID said Madison, WI and I immediately got excited!  It was Jenny from AOW telling me a spot had opened up to move into the outreach program.  I could barely function after I heard those words and I couldn't dial her back fast enough!  The funny thing was I had a cold and hardly had a voice so she didn't recognize it was me when I called her back because my voice kept cutting out when I talked.  Once I got off the phone with her, I called Cody with the good news and was balling my eyes out because it felt like I was announcing I was pregnant or something.  It all became so real to me and I just couldn't contain myself.  After numerous phone calls spreading the good news, I was late for work but that didn't matter.  Unfortunately, the next day, I lost my Grandma Powell so that brought me back down to earth again pretty quickly BUT at least I got to tell her that we were going into the outreach program and she was happy about that.

SO.... after all of that, it brings us to where we are now... waiting.... praying for a phone call and hoping God guides our birthparents to us soon.  With that said, even though our journey thus far has went pretty quickly and smoothly, the average wait in the outreach program is a year so we're trying not to get our buggy in front of the horse.  We're excited, don't get me wrong, but we also can't get too excited because that will make the wait that much longer.  However, we know that however long we have to wait, it will all be worth it when we get to hold our child in our arms for the first time.  I hope that brings you all up to date on our journey and I'll be posting more to come about it soon! Until then, thanks for reading!
Always,
M & C

One of our favorite images we did for our adoption profile 

Welcome!

Hello everyone! As our adoption journey continues, we thought we'd start a blog to keep you all updated on what's going on.  We feel this is the easiest way to keep in contact with our friends and family members who would like to know what we're up to and where we're at in this journey we have started.  We feel very blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives that have supported our decision to adopt.  We hope that this blog will help keep you all updated and answer questions you might have, as well as us sharing our ups and downs during our waiting time.  Even though our journey thus far has been pretty quick, we are now at the point of just waiting... patiently... and impatiently.... so with that said... WELCOME to our blog and please feel free to check back often for updates and stories!
Always-
M & C