A Little Fire Brigade Update

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For our 10th anniversary, Jamie and I took a trip to Banff, Alberta. Which was every bit as amazing as the Google images described. On our last morning in Banff, Jamie made me climb a mountain. Granted, the trail started halfway up the mountainside, but it was over 2,000 feet of elevation change in a short amount of time. So pretty much just up. To keep my mind off my burning thighs,  Jamie took me through a recap of our entire marriage. You know, like what they do on reality television shows so they can squeeze out one extra episode? Yeah, that. But as cheesy as it felt, Jamie was right…we’ve been through a lot in our 15 years of being together and 10 years of marriage. It’s certainly been hard at times and there are a few people I wish were still around to celebrate this milestone with us, but I’m so thankful for this little family of mine.

It felt like a fitting way to close another chapter in our marriage before opening up another one and it was kind of fun to look back and see how much we’ve overcome. I’m not exactly sure what the next chapter will hold, but I can definitely tell you that it includes a second baby and a mini-van.  Okay, maybe not the mini-van.

 

Wait, what? 

 

Yep, that’s right!

 

We’re adopting!

 

Sometimes the best things in life happen when you least expect it. Jamie and I met in high school nearly 15 years ago. It didn’t take long for us to know we were meant to be together. During our premarital counseling, we talked a lot about what we wanted our future little family to look like. How many kids, where we might live…whose job it would be to do the laundry. One thing we both agreed on was that the Lord had placed a deep desire on each of us to adopt someday. We always knew that we wanted adoption to be part of our family’s story. We just never talked about when. But amidst a wedding, life and then the birth of our son, Liam, we’d somehow tucked away our plans to adopt into the corners of our hearts for “someday in the future.”

Our road to parenting hasn’t been an easy one. But what it’s helped us realize is that our family isn’t complete. Not yet. One night a few months ago, Jamie said, “Remember how we’d always talked about adoption? When do we decide to look into that?” Jamie voiced what I’d already been thinking and together we decided to just see what our options were and what we would need to do. The more we looked into adoptions and local agencies, the more we heard God telling us that now was the time. Adoption was always part of our “Plan A” for our family. We are not choosing adoption because of infertility. But rather, our struggle with infertility caused us to remember that.

I plan to share more about the adoption process as we get further along, but as of now, we’ve applied to our adoption agency and are getting ready to begin our home study. We’re hoping to complete this as quickly as possible so that we can finalize our adoption profile.

Since some people have already asked, here are the ways you can help currently:

1. Prayer – Adoption journeys are never easy or simple and we need all the love and support we can get. Please pray for us, our adoption agency, social worker and also for the expectant mother who will be making the life-changing choice for us to be the family for her baby.
2. Donate – The cost of an adoption is quite significant. If you would like to help financially, there are several ways you can do so. Any amount we receive is such a blessing. You can donate through our online fundraiser page or mail your donation directly to us. We also have a fundraising account set up with Just Love Coffee. Friends of ours who adopted used them and the coffee is amazing and makes a great gift. Proceeds from each purchase go towards our adoption costs. We also plan to do a couple of additional fundraisers and we’ll announce the details as soon as we have them.
3. Share – We would be so grateful if you could post this link (or our YouCaring page) with your family and friends on social media to share our adoption journey.

I’m excited to share our adoption journey with all of you!