MY ADOPTION JOURNEY :)

My husband and I had talked about adopting for years, since we dated and I was 16 actually. We always knew adoption would be apart of our life. Little did we know it would be such a great blessing and that instead of one child there were three for us.
I am a person that believes in help from God or God's hands are in our lives if we so allow them to be. I am also a person who believes in "Sign" or "revelation" .
As I said before we had always known we wanted to adopt and would need to adopt to complete our family but MONEY was always the factor keeping us from that dream. Let's face it, it can cost a pretty penny to adopt a child in the United States and even more outside of it.
Well, in Jan 2009 I had a dream, and this was no ordinary dream. A friend of mine who had just died came to me in this dream.

(this is my friend and her little girl, she is dead now, but she is who came to me) She was dressed in all white... beautiful and perfect looking. She came to me in my dream in a 15 passenger white van. I looked at her and was so happy to see her again. I kept thinking about how she had such a beautiful brilliant glow about her. She looked at me and smiled and then reached down and picked up an infant. All I saw of the infant was it was in a cream color sleeper and the back of its head. I had no clue if it was a girl or a boy. My thoughts and what I said to her was,"Did you adopt?" and then I saw the back of the head of the baby and I said to myself," that looks like one of my babies" and the thought was she was bringing me my baby. As I jumped up to run and hold the baby, I jumped up in my bed for real and woke straight up. The dream left me excited and over anxious. When I shared that dream with my husband he too knew that it was time to adopt. We both felt like the child was already born or going to be any day. The over anxious feeling of not getting adoption ready fast enough was overwhelming... We will come back to this part in a little bit so you can see where it all fits in my eyes as God showing me what was meant to be.

So we signed up with LDS FAMILY SERVICES for two reasons, we are of that faith and because its only 10% of your yearly income to adopt. Which seemed possible for us to be able to do. It all started for us in Feb 2009. We were actually online on our 19th wedding anniversary :) June 23rd. That was something to celebrate, even though we started the process immediately in Jan.

Through out this "WAITING and HOPING" process to be "CHOSEN", I met some of the most AMAZING women in the world. BIRTH MOTHERS! OH my gosh how I fell in love with each one I came across. How I was so deeply moved and touched by each unique story as to how they became birth mothers. How incredibly moved I was because they inspired me to want to be a better person! How Selfless and full of love and hope these woman were and are! To obtain half the faith, courage and strength they each possessed was incredible to me. These woman changed my life and perspective on what ADOPTION was and how it SHOULD look. They changed my mind from wanting a closed adoption to wanting and advocating OPEN ADOPTIONS! This is how my blog came about, from meeting these amazing woman. I just wanted to do more and to help others the way they had. (I know this blog is not much but it was what I felt inspired to do and all I knew I could do)


Ok so back to my journey.

We were chosen "twice" and each time the birth moms lost the baby. The wait was killer! To say Killer is such an understatement! You really put your heart out on your sleeve. You try not to but every little piece of hope or news of someone who knows someone who might want to consider placing with you or is even pregnant and considering adoption, really tends to make you over focus on that one hope. To the point it almost takes over your whole day or life. I am not kidding! This was how it was for me anyhow. You hope and you pray... You constantly look for new ways to get your family's profile seen. You start handing out adoption cards with your family's blog or info on it to everyone... Friends, Family, your hair dresser and yes even in your bills! You become this WHO ELSE CAN I GET THIS CARD TO PERSON! Because when we were with our agency they told us, " YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WHEN A FRIEND OF A FRIEND KNOWS SOMEONE." You look at Internet sites about adoption, you make video's and post them. You leave your info or blog site on your emails and on your face book page. And YES, I did all these things and more to make sure I did my part in finding my child or Birth Mom that we had prayed for and dreamt about.

Through out this journey, I started to feel prompted to go towards foster care. I was not even open to that idea when it first came to me. My husband and I felt like, NO WAY! We want and know we are meant to have a baby! But after time, God has a way of slowly helping you to see the "LIGHT" and the way HE wants you to go when its needed. And that is exactly what he did for us. I kept thinking about foster care, it just kept coming back to my mind and would happen at all sorts of time. My friend was doing foster care and had already adopted one child.

(they adopted one and will be adopting two more and amazing people in our lives) So I asked her a lot of questions, sometimes repeating myself at different times on the same questions.
Then one day I asked my husband if he would consider fostering to adopt. He said he would consider it... Over a period of 6 months we both started to feel strongly that fostering to adopt was what we should do. It was weird how you go from feeling so strongly about one thing to another. But for record, we DID need to sign up with our adoption agency and would never had if we had gone with the original idea of fostering to adopt. :)
So I had called Health and Welfare and started to put in our adoption profile papers with all them around us. But that wasn't enough. I knew it and felt it. We even tried for a child from Wednesday Child, got to be one of the final three families and did not make it to adopt that child. (that is a whole different story and it was hard, but not meant to be and I know that and see that now) Anyhow so I felt like we didn't get that child because we didn't have our PRIDE classes done. SO I signed us up in November for Pride classes. They were booked out until Feb of 2011. These are 6 week classes that you have to take in order to become licensed foster parents.
This is where it gets good! GREAT EVEN! One day in late November, I felt discouraged and lost. Directionless, so I got on my knees and poured out my soul to God. I told him my hopes and dreams, my hurts and desires. I thanked him for everything so far we had been blessed with and I asked flat out for direction. I told him I signed up for Pride and that they were booked out till February. I asked if Fostering to Adopt was really the way we were suppose to go and I added I felt old! That this journey was becoming long and I was not getting any younger.
Well, about 2 hours later from praying I received a phone call from a lady in Health and Welfare, she said a class that weekend was opening up (with pride) that it was a 3 week coarse instead of 6 and that OUR NAMES JUST CAME TO HER! She also said THIS NEVER HAPPENS! So I said YES!! and we took the 3 week coarse and became LEGAL LICENSED FOSTER PARENTS WITH THE ABILITY TO ADOPT RIGHT AWAY because all our stuff was ready through our agency.
THIS CLASS ENDED A COUPLE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS and the whole time we took the coarse they warned us that we could get "THE CALL" to foster anytime. I then started to pray that the Lord would wait till the new year before placing with us any child, foster or to adopt because I don't do well with last minute changes and holiday stress. And that is what the Lord granted me :)
Jan 5th I was walking into the movies, I wanted to see Life as we Know it. And as I walked in I heard in my head," You are going to be called as soon as the movie starts with YOUR children" I kinda laughed at myself and said,"YEAH RIGHT" And then that is what happened. So I had to walk out of the movie, get my money back and rush home to prepare for THREE little children.
Three beautiful little children.

One boy who was 4, one girl who was 3 and one other little girl who was 2. The little boy turned 5 a week later the 3 yr old turned 4 at the end of that month. (JAN 2011) As my husband and I were instantly consumed with three little children who had very big needs at first... we were over whelmed. We were told that these children will need to be adopted at some point soon. They placed these children with us because we had the space and ability to adopt them. We were not sure about it all. But then little "SIGNS" happened for me to see the "LIGHT" and to know in my heart that these are indeed the children that God had chosen for us. Meant to bless us :)
One was my dream.... My baby girl who is 2 was born in December and my dream that I mentioned in the beginning was exactly 2 years from when she was born. I had told the Lord that we would need a bigger vehicle, because I have 5 children and then 3 more, someone was always being left behind or had to go in a separate vehicle. So with that prayer came an answer and one day I looked at my husbands computer and he was looking into 15 passenger vans. Which we did buy :) at an auction. :)

Things have been provided for these children. Its been amazing how so many people are behind us and helping us. From giving me breaks with the kids to giving me things that I didn't have... toys and clothes. To always encouraging me to continue on when days have been hard. Even food, 3 more just placed after I spent our very budgeted food budget on groceries left us tight and me worried. How would I feed them? And God once again answered my prayers and inspired a friend of mine to share that with us. She brought us by 300 dollars worth of food and told us her pantry was already full . So to say were blessed is an understatement. I am thankful she felt the promptings of the holy ghost and acted up on them! So blessed she did!

These children complete our family in every way. 10 is enough for sure!

( there is one extra in this picture, my second daughter's boyfriend but he is so apart of our family so its all good!) I have been excited to share my adoption journey with everyone and now I can. :) So there you have it... Our little story of how we all came to be. There is a lot of healing happening in our house for these three. The trauma they have been put thru has been heart breaking. The neglect they have suffered has been awful… but I “THEIR MAMA” can say they are all caught up on shots, healthy and all the procedures they have needed (dental.. Jesse had 8 cavities and had to be put to sleep to have them fixed and capped, Ellie had no shots since 6 months old and just got tubes in her ears) are done! They are to the point where healthy is a normal for them. They came to me so sick too. Took over a month to get them healthy! The doctor that Jess has seen told me all the goals she had for since she knew him in 3 years were met in the three months I had him. That is so cool to me ;)
Anyhow… wanted to share our joy. Thank you for your support. THEY ARE OFFICIALLY OURS TODAY! IN THE SUPREME COURT! :) 11/18/11! We are very happy and excited! They will have new names. They came to us with nicknames because calling them by their real names upset them. Bella she is 4 and we are renaming her ISABELLA MAXINE, Ellie will be renamed ELIZABETH MALENE (after my dead sister) and Jesse is Jesse but he wants to change his middle names LEE GILBERT to MICHAEL.
We feel very blessed!