Beulah

This weekend our girlie turned 6. It's hard to believe that we have been blessed to have her in our lives for 6 whole years now! We have kind of been celebrating all weekend. We had dinner as a family on Friday for her actual birthday and roasted some marshmallows out back. On Saturday we went to our most favorite place, the zoo! And then today we had a our little family celebration at my parent's house. It has been a tradition all my life to have our family celebration the Sunday nearest your birthday after church. So today we gathered on the back porch of my parent's house and had Ava's favorite meal, chicken nuggets and french fries. 

After we ate dinner my dad got out his miniature horse, Beulah. and let the kids ride around in the backyard. She is seriously the cutest little horse. She is about a million years old, give or take, so she is the perfect horse for the kids to learn to ride on. The older kids (Ava and Tyler) are getting really good at reigning the horse and riding on their own. The younger kids (Ryan and Aiden) like to hold the reigns and be "in charge" but really one of the adults is walking circles around the yard and Beulah just follows.

The kids love going to play at Poppa and Mia's house each Sunday. My parents have sort of created a miniature petting zoo since the grandkids have come along. They have a regular horse, the miniature horse, two sheep, and some chickens. Ava has been working on them to get bunnies, but I am not sure that one is going to happen. 

Here is Miss Ava taking her turn on Beulah. I think she was like 6 months old the first time she rode a horse. She has loved them ever since.

 

Here is the cowboy taking his turn. I love his face in this picture! The whole time he rode he was saying "Yee ha! Hi ho!"

 

As I watch these two get older, I can't help but wonder what our next little one will bring to the picture. What will their personality be like? Will they want to celebrate their birthday by riding the little horse around the yard? Who else will be joining our family with them? I feel the same anticipation as Ava has felt with her birthday presents this weekend. The anticipation to find out the answers and to finally meet this new little one is so much fun! I don't know when I will finally get to open my "present", but I do know that it will be amazing! I can't wait!

~Andrea

How does this work?

Over the last several months, we frequently get asked where we are at in the adoption process. Due to privacy and the delicate nature of many encounters we have with birth moms, we are often not allowed to say where we are at and what is going on. But I wanted to give you an insight into what we are doing, and how the process works.

For us, most of our work is already done. we went through the Home Study process, where the adoption agency analyzes and interviews our family and our living situation to make sure that we are capable of adopting. This includes looking into our family structure, extended family, financial information, even our medical health. All of these are considered before we are approved to adopt.

After this, we prepare a family book. This is kind of like a dating profile. It shows some pictures of our family, the things we like to do, etc. It goes into the hands of birth parents, and it gives them some insight into who we are and the kind of life we live. This is the first contact a birth mom will have with our family.

After that, we wait.

When a birth mom chooses to adopt, her generic profile is sent to all birth parents in the program. The identity of the birth mom is anonymous, but the families are given information about why the birth mom is choosing to adopt, risk factors like drug use or medical history, or other variables that might need to be considered, such as chronic illness or legal risk. From this description, a family chooses whether or not a birth mom will be allowed to look at their family book.

Since we have been in the program, we have seen over a dozen birth parent profiles. Only once did we decline to have our book shown. The only reason we declined was because we didn't feel like our family was equipped for that particular adoption situation.

Once the birth mom has all of the approved family books, she will pick her family from these books, or she might pick families she is interested in meeting. She might pick one, she might pick three, she might pick as many as she wants. From there, the agency sets up an interview with the families selected, and they meet face to face. This helps the birth mom make a more informed decision. After that, she picks the family she wants. This could take a couple days, or a couple weeks; the only timeline that seems to affect the expediency of the decision is when the baby is born.

So at this point, a lot of what happens is out of our hands.

So we wait.

One thing that I truly do appreciate about this process is that both the adopting family and the birth family choose each other. I have to approve whether or not a birth mom can look at my book, and she has to choose my family to adopt her baby. We choose each other.

I am reminded of a newer song by Sara Bareilles. The song is about a romantic relationship, but I think the chorus really speaks to the beauty of this adoption process:

Tell the world that we finally got it all right
I choose you.
I will become yours and you will become mine
I choose you.

My hope is that whoever is out there that chooses our family to adopt their baby will recognize that they are a part of our family. As they choose us, we choose them.

So there you go.  Please continue to pray for our family as we view this time as preparation for what is to come. As we wait, we know God is moving for us to choose this wonderful mom who will choose us in return.

Rosie and John

A couple of months ago Ava's hamster, Flower, went to hamster heaven. It was a very sad day for Ms. Ava. It turns out, hamsters don't have a very long life span and if you get them when they are older from the pet store, that life span seems even shorter. So we decided we would wait a while before we replaced Flower. I did some research and found out that gerbils are supposed to live a little longer than hamsters and are more personable. This seemed good to me! So on Saturday we took Ava and Ryan to Petco and we got two new gerbils. Ava's birthday is this Friday. Since I have to work in the evening at our school's Open House, we decided to celebrate a little early. One of the things I found in my research was that gerbils are social and do better in at least pairs, so we got two. One of them is Ava's and the other is Ryan's.

I love the personalities of my children and how their personalities show up even in their choice of pet. The gerbil that Ava picked out is sleek and looks really neat and tidy, like Ava. The gerbil that Ryan picked out is kind of messy looking and spunky, like Ryan. In the picture Ava's is the one on the left and Ryan's is on the right. I apologize for the picture, it is really hard to take a picture of gerbils. This was the best of several attempts. :) Their personalities also showed in the names they picked out. Ava named her gerbil Rosie Buttercup. Ryan chose the name John. Even though they are both girls. John. The kid cracks me up!

 

One of the other things I have noticed about gerbils is they are not actually cleaner than hamsters. The picture of their cage below is after those two things worked and worked to rearrange their cage and bedding. Not sure how this is more functional, but they seem happy. 

 

So we will see how this new adventure goes with gerbils. So far the kids are in love and they ran right up stairs today when we got home from school to see Rosie and John.  Today was the first day I let them get them out. So we put a towel down in the bathtub and the kids sat down and we let Rosie and John run around and "explore" and become more familiar with Ava and Ryan. Jewel even tried to get in on the fun but we weren't sure if she was hungry for a little snack or not, so we kicked her out :).