Our Family ~ Nov 2017

Our Family ~ Nov 2017

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Haiku?



Just for FUN!

for waiting adoptive hopefuls


Praying,Waiting
Anticipating
one tiny babe.


For placed couples


Loosing Sleep
Gaining
A Forever Family


For Finalization Day

Courtroom
No Drama
Peace fills our
ever growing hearts


For Sealing Day

All in White
Waiting Over
Precious child
Your Ours Eternally


OPEN ADOPTION

You found Us
We Said Yes
Hearts Knit Together
Forever

Overseas Adoption

Boarding flight
landing, waiting
Breathe,
holding you
tears of Joy!

Foster Adoption

Broken you came
time and love
healed both
our hearts forever


* these are my friends kids both whom are adopted!

PLEASE feel free to leave a comment with your own Haiku- on your adoption experience. I'm looking for Birth parent Haiku's( 17 or less syllables) as well. These will go in an Adoption Poetry Collection Book! No need to be a pro writer- just from the heart or your experiences!

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

hoping to adopt in CO!


These are my friends Jessica & Tarik! They are Christian and wonderful and hoping to adopt a bi-racial baby boy! Check out their profile ( i took many of the pictures:)

They are working through Lifetime adoptions , which i hear is great!

I know this sweet family will be fabulous with any adoption situation too! Jessica has 4 adopted siblings and her and Tarik have twin girls and he is a pediatrician and she stays at home. Both have degrees and stay active and fit! Just love these too!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Visit w/ Phil & Dawn

We had such a fantastic visit! When Phil and Dawn got into town we went out to one of our fav. restaurants, Los Dos Portrillos, for some fab. Mexican cuisine! The Next day we went Up to Evergreen area to a stocked Fishing pond and Had tons of fun catching BIG trout!

Phil, Brandon and I helped Brielle & Aria reel them in while Dawn helped out with Gavin and putting bait on and such.

We cranked in tons with this awesome bait too!


Mini Man slept the majority of the time :)




Brielle had the biggest catch of the day 18.5 inches and 3.5 lbs!

This is not the biggest one but, it was a good sized one!

Our Lovely Grandma Dawn!


Here's one of the bigger one! aria squirmed a bit when it wiggled and flopped around!


We had fun cleaning them and then Phil and Brandon cooked them up well that night!


P & D were able to come through on the way back too! We already miss them!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Rob & Jess


are hoping for an adoption miracle! These two are sweet and fun and Jess is a terrific lady that i love! You couldn't find a better gal around! Check them out here!

Oh and check out all the new families that have been added on the side bar! Maybe you will find your match there! ( p.s. If you personally know me, please shoot me an email and i will feature your link there and spotlight you!)

This was Gav's 3 month PIC!

SO... We just had a FANTASTIC visit with Gavin's Birth Father, Dustin and Tammy, his mother
(now referred to as Grandma Tammy, which will be slightly confusing b/c Jessica's Stepmom is also Grandma Tami!)! I will post about it soon as well as the Visit with Our daughter's Birth grandparent visit as well. I feel totally LOVED and BLESSED with all these wonderful people and now i need to make new onesies for Gavin that say stuff like: My Birth Parents ROCK!
If you think I'm cute, you should see my Birth Parents! I'm Legendary and so are my Birth Parents! BM+BD= AWESOMENESS, I'm loved by Many... Parents, Birth Parents. grandparents, birth grandparents, you want me to keep going?
...And so forth! They will turn out schweet! So excited to post more!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

A bumpy road that leads to FOREVER!

Hi, my name is Traci and I have been asked to write down our adoption story... So here goes. I have to admit that I am not quite sure where to start. I feel that I have personally seen adoption from pretty much every avenue; my little brother is adopted, my best friend placed a child for adoption, I have numerous nieces and nephews who are all adopted, and then my husband, Jake, and I have chosen to grow our family also through adoption. I think I am just going to start with the journey Jake and I have had through adoption, its heart break, its endless roller coaster of emotions, and its happy endings.

Jake and I were married in 2001 when we were 19 years old. We knew we were young and we didn't want to have kids right away, but because of some health issues with myself, we knew we couldn’t wait forever to start trying. So we waited until we were 21, then I went off birth control. That seems easy enough, until it wasn’t. We gave it a good year and then sought out help.

My first doctor I went to started me on Clomid ® and told me to “relax” I was young everything would be fine. He never offered any “reason” or further testing to figure out if something was wrong. So after 6 months of that, I went to a fertility specialist. That’s when we started with some intense treatment. After 6 months with the specialist, who diagnosed me with PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, we decided to keep up with treatments, but also put our papers in for adoption. Fertility was never successful, but adoption was! 10 months after having all our paperwork and homestudy’s approved, we got the call.

A young woman in Arizona had chosen Jake and I to be the parents of her little girl that she had just given birth to. We were ecstatic! We of course got on the next flight to Arizona, we were 24, we landed, went to rent a car... you have to be 25 to rent a car! I had no idea! Of course I immediately started crying. My poor husband had no idea what to do, neither did the clerk at the rental counter, until he remembered a friend of his that rents to people under 25. Shortly after a quick phone call, Jake and I were on our way to Flagstaff to meet our WONDERFUL birth-mother, Marie, and our gorgeous baby girl, Jessalyn.

Everything went perfectly. 6 months after Jessalyn was placed in our home her adoption was finalized and she was ours. Our story doesn’t end here... When Jessalyn was 19 months old we got another call, this time for a baby boy in Tennessee. Again, we couldn’t be happier. This time, with a 19 month old in tow, we headed for the Southern State of Tennessee. We were definitely old enough to rent a car this time... no worries.

While we were in Tennessee, everything seemed perfect. We all loved our new addition, Colby. He was the best baby ever and both Jake and I felt everything was going to be alright. I want you to remember that last sentence “everything WAS going to be alright.” It’s important in this story. So after spending 2 ½ weeks in Tennessee and spending a lot of time with Colby’s birth family, we headed home with our +1 family and began settling in. That was mid-July in 2007.

Two months later, a call from our agency, there is a problem. Colby’s birth father is contesting the adoption. What”! Again I begin to cry, a very UGLY cry. We were going to lose our little boy. Except I was reassured by our worker that they were working on it and we didn’t need to worry about anything at this point, we were going to court, I mean his birth father had 9 felonies on hi record, no one would give a baby to that. So for the next 15 months we were thrown into a court battle. We went to attorneys, bonding professionals, through paternity testing, we traveled multiple times across the country to fight for our little boy. But to no avail, The Monday after Thanksgiving 2008, 17 months after meeting Colby, we had to put him on a plane and never see him again. I can’t write down the heart break we felt, we continue to feel even almost 3 years later. I miss him every day of my life, even though he was adopted, he was my baby boy.

3 short months after losing Colby we were approached by a high school senior girl who knew what we had gone through and wanted to talk to us about maybe adopting her baby that she was currently pregnant with. Our first reaction was NO, not right now, we aren’t ready and we don’t know when we will ever be ready. But she was persistent and determined to have Jake and I adopt her baby. So we gave in. We were hesitantly excited. She was SURE this is what she wanted to do. Then came the day for her delivery. It was a long day, but we were in this for the long haul. She was still sure this is what she wanted to do, up until after she gave birth. Then the night after the baby was born she changed her mind. Again, I cannot write down the way we felt, not only did we feel this loss, but the recent loss of Colby became so real and so fresh all over again. I was mad, I was hurt, I couldn’t put me, my husband or my daughter through this again.

We had been hurt, very hurt, at this point in time we had an awful taste in our mouth about adoption. We didn’t know what we were going to do to grow our family. So we waited, we prayed, our families prayed. Then finally about a year after the second loss, we cautiously put our papers back in for adoption. Fast forward two years!!

In April 2011 my friend, Lori (also an adoptive mother), called me. She told me she had been contacted by a birth mother in Las Vegas who had a two-year old little boy that she wanted to find a home for. I was nervous and honestly didn’t think anything would come out of it. But I called Val, and she said that she and the birthfather, Jay, knew this is what they needed to do for their son. So I had them to go meet with our agency, and they did! We drove down to Las Vegas a week after being contacted by them, met them, met little Zander, and instantly knew that he needed to be in our home. Val and Jay felt the same way. So that Friday, with all the papers signed, we brought Zander home.

Everything is ok. We knew that everything would be ok. It hasn’t been easy, I never expected it to be easy. But it is what it is, and you take the good with the awfully bad. We are preparing to have Zander’s adoption finalized in three weeks. He fits. He is ours and we love him so much. We don’t ever hear about Colby, he is in my constant prayers. But we have Jessalyn, and we have Zander and we are a family that God created and that He meant for us to be together for eternity. And we will be. It is through adoption that we have been able to have these amazing children. We are blessed, so very blessed.

4 Months!

Our Lil' Man is finally growing a bit...

He is way ahead in the developmental areas. Like he could roll over at 10 weeks, slept through the night at 8 weeks, has great stability and strength and is already trying to crawl ( not super successful) by grabbing onto the carpet and wiggling his toes to scoot. He gets about 1-2 inches forward. And his hand eye coordination is that of a 6 month old.


He is constantly smiling and giving good belly laughs now! He squeals and blows raspberries and get excited when he hears his own voice!

On the charts he is pretty small though. He is 3% in weight at 11.4 lbs ( he needs to stop working out, i guess) 2% in head circumference,
and 31% in length at 24.25 inches!
To US - He's perfect and if you see his birth dad- He is tall and lean too!
He is SUCH AN EASY BABY! And He eats like 7-8 ounces each feeding! Big eater. Oh, and he is eating some oatmeal now:) He devours it and tries to lick the bib clean! (honestly, he really does, it's hilarious!)

Oh and in a couple days Dustin and his mom come for their first visit here! Very excited!

Sunday, October 2, 2011

LOVE DAVE THOMAS FOUNDATION...

I am urging you all to search your hearts! Infants are only a fraction of the children who need a permanent home! We will venture into foster adoption this upcoming spring and everyday I wonder what sweet child/ren will teach us when this day comes. I'm not naive! I know it will be difficult but, all good things are challenging and I chose to Help Children, not forget that they are there waiting and needing families like us!