Life over the Holidays!

Life has been super fun and filled with so many family and friends! We are so blessed and are loving every minute of life. Luckily Mason is able to keep up. Actually, he is always 10 steps ahead!! He is growing, changing, and learning so much everyday. For Thanksgiving, we were able to stay in Utah and spend it with Kent's family!! For Christmas, we are flying to Colorado to be with my family!! I seriously am on count down. I am so grateful for the flexibilty of both of our jobs that we will be able to spend over a week there!! Here are some much overdue photos over the past few months!

Link to Profile

I noticed that I am a ding dong and don't have a link to our adoption profile...might be a tad important :)
You can check it out here!

Accepted!!

AHHH!! This is just all so exciting and can't even believe it is all really happening. We were actually officially accepted 3 weeks ago today. I was at Girls Camp with no service. I wasn't able to talk with our case worker but was able to find one bar of service to hear half of her voicemail and that was all. I don't know what was worse. Hearing that little bit and not being able to do anything about it or maybe I should had just waited until I got home. HAHA. Probably the way it happened was best. Well I got back from camp on Friday and then we left for Colorado for 2 weeks!! It was a long, fabulous trip but it also meant another 2 weeks with no progress after we were just accepted! How annoying. So I got back on last Saturday, kicked my butt into gear to finish up some last finishing touches on our profile, and then today got the most amazing news that our profile was published. I have been waiting for this!!! We shared the news with all of our friends and family. We are looking forward to the day we get to meet more of our family!!!

Graduated!!

Saturday was our last class!! YAY!! It was so bittersweet. We had such a great time getting to know everyone is our class and getting closer to our adoption. We hit it off with one couple and had dinner before our last class and carpooled up to Logan. They are way fun and am sure this is just a start of another friendship.
I wanted to talk about our third class that was last Saturday. It was the "panel" class. We had one (out of three) of the birth moms show up to talk to us and share her story. I was bummed that only one showed up. I LOVED hearing her side and all the love and time and prayer and everything she put into her decision to place her baby for adoption. It is such an incredible process on all sides of it. This birth mom talked about how her process of healing has worked and how she feels that adoption was the best choice for herself and her boy. Next they had two couples come that have adopted before. One talked about openness, and the other on interracial adoption. They had wonderful stories to tell and great advice. One thing that I learned is that I am really going to have to hold on to the reigns. I have a tendency to jump right in. All parties at the meeting said it is best to start into the relationship slow and to gain each others trust and slowly open the door to a more open relationship. I want a relationship with the birth mom to be fully trusted and for the child to know exactly where they came from. I want our child to not have any questions about who they are. We have started to pray for our future child and for the birth mom. This has been such a great way to help Mason understand adoption more and to really start to bond with the idea.

First Class

Saturday morning is going to be our first class!! I can't tell you how excited I am!!! It sucked because we were originally told that our classes start May 5, so I was super bummed when I found out I had to wait even longer.  I am not really sure what to expect or what they talk about. That's probably why I can't wait. :) I am also excited just to talk with other cute couples about adoption and what all their stories are. This has been such an adventure already, and we are just getting to the fun stuff!! I got an email yesterday from our social worker, she received all four of our recommendation letters!! YAY!! She said they were all "glowing and very positive" So glad they didn't talk trash. jk.....but seriously. And just so I can remember who we had write letters, this is who we had. They only allowed us to have one family member...lame. So we had our good friends who live by us write one, Jacy and Todd Serr. We had Kent's mom write one because she sees us the most and probably knows Kent the best. We had my best friend Kelly McGraw, who I have known since 7th grade write one. She knows me the best! Then we wanted to do a co-worker, but all Kent's co-workers are all family haha. So then we were thinking for me....We both really wanted to do my old boss at Great Basin Engineering, Brett Blechert. He was like the grumpy, mean guy who is just like my dad. But the most caring, amazing person you'd ever meet. He passed away almost a year ago. I miss him dearly, its weird. You wouldn't ever know how much he meant to me. So sadly, we couldn't have him write one. So we had a lady, Kari Gibson, that I work with write the other one. She actually taught Kent in pre-school (and I think Kindergarten, cant remember now haha). She's amazing and couldn't be happier to have her write the other one.

hubby

One of the questions on my adoption questionnaire ask to describe your spouses’ personality and strengths…thought you would like to read what I wrote

Once you meet my husband, you will agree with everything I say. I am the luckiest girl on this planet. He is tall, dark and handsome with a heart of gold. As cheesy as it sounds, it is true in every possible way. He is not as outgoing as I am to begin with, but he warms up to people fast. He is definitely more on the quiet side. As I am sitting here trying to think of characteristics to describe him, the beginning of Article of Faith number 13 is just running through my mind. He believes in being “honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men.” He comes from a wonderful family where the parents have been the example of what he has become.  I have never seen a family where hard work and service has been so deeply engraved. I truly married above me and am blessed for it every day.

...from the beginning

I dont know where to begin. As this process of adoption continues to progress, I just had to start recording everything. So many milestones and so many amazing stories that I never want to forget. So much will be very private that Kent might kill me for sharing to the whole world but at least we will have a record of it in the end, as well as the birth mom. Something for her to follow to watch her angel.
hmmmmmmmmmm.....
I suppose square one sounds good for a start.
Two years of trying this month. Not too long you say? Well I guess thats your opinion. But in a way you are right. It really has flown by. It has probably been about a month or so since we decided that we wanted to abopt. It has been something that Kent and I talk about casually on occasion but nothing that I ever thought would actually happen. I don't want to say that Kent and I ever really struggled with the infertility thing. I only see it as a blessing in our life. Of course I had my times of just breaking because I truly thought that I was pregnant and I wanted to feel another baby grow. I only remember one actual, real, horrible break down. I just knew I was pregnant. I even took a test that said it was negative, but apparently I was not taking NO for an answer. haha. (I must have taken it too early, right?) So a week passes and still nothing. Things were looking up. Then one day I went home for lunch and Kent was home too, thankfully. I went to the bathroom and there it was. staring at me. I lost it. I cried and cried and cried. Finally got myself together and had to get back to work. Hopped in the car to head back. Cried the whole drive. Pulled myself together, again, and went inside. (I must have had it written all over my face) One look at me and the Principal asks, "whats wrong, Janelle?" WAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! The fireworks busted out and weren't gonig anywhere. I literally could not stop crying. (poor guy, I felt so bad, he just asked a simple question) I gave him a brief description of what was wrong, I dont think he wanted the whole story (haha) and he just sent me home. It was a rough couple of days. I was back on my feet and from then on I just never expected pregnancy again.
I had done some minor research on adoption through LDS Family Servies and learned that they now require Dr note of infertility. HMMM I thought. A couple of months went by and said to Kent, lets just adopt (half joking half serious) and he says "give them a call" So I did. It was so simple for us. That is my favorite part of this whole process. I haven't looked back once. Some people may think this is a HUGE, life changing choice, shouldn't you really ponder about this? Well I say to them, you got the first part right but that is it. It is because it is such a huge decision that it was so easy. With something like this, I feel like you are either in or you're out. No tittering on the fence here. Another reason is I am technically infertile right now. We havn't really tried too much of infertitly medicine except for one month worth. I don't know why, but I just didn't feel like that road was for us right now. I am so young, creepin' up on 25 here (eeek!) Adoption was just screaming our name I suppose. I firgure after this journey, we could always go back to the crazy drugs.....or not. Either way, I have time.

The Journey Begins

Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart,
But in it.
-Unknown