And the Twins are....

Before I go into the big reveal...

I have to tell you what has transpired in the last week.  Katy and I have been doing some serious planning and shopping.  We made meals that we froze ahead of time, made lists of the girls outfits for my son to read so he can just hand them clothes.  I was even thinking of putting each girls outfit for each day in a gallon ziplock bag and labeling it.  I want NO drama while I am gone!  I just want to be prepared.

So, we have been working to get this all done so Katy and I can fly away to meet the birthmom and go to the doctors with her and spend time with her, etc.  Well, last Sunday she had to go to the emergency room, she had some bleeding and was worried.  Everything is fine, she had a sonogram and the twins are fine and healthy and the doctor said they are growing great and big!

So she texts me that she is fine but she happened to study the sonogram and was able to discuss with the Tech what the sexes are.  So she has been teasing me all week about this and really driving me crazy because I just want to know!!!

Then yesterday my wonderful son calls me to let me know he has an interview for a new job...and by the way he got the job and they asked him when he can start and he tells them right away!  Aren't I happy for him??!!  NO!!  I remind him that he is supposed to stay with the kids next week, "Oooops!"  He says!  What?

So we had to cancel , or should I say reschedule our trip out there until June, because my Mom will be here in June for 2 weeks, for the girls Dance Show.  So she suggested we just go then instead.

So I call the birthmom and tell her we won't be coming out there until June and she suggests we Skype so she can give us the surprise of what the sexes are now!!  So we did!  It was so much fun!!  Here are the girls waiting for her Skype to call us.  I guess Ava Marie was not as excited as the rest of them.


So all I have to say is that I am really excited, I have been waiting to find out what we are having so I can start to plan...which for me is the really fun part!!  And also so I can start picturing their little faces and to pray for them by name.  Oh I am so blessed!  So here is a little picture from pinterest to let you know that....

We're having twin BOYS!!!!!

Can you believe it?!  In my pretty pink world we will now have twice the testosterone!  And we are all thrilled!  And the best part...I have nothing!  I will need so much!  Except the double stroller, I actually already have one of those, but otherwise we will be on the hunt for everything from clothes to a new baby bathtub.  Yes, folks, I have a bright pink bathtub!  I think it is time to start the shopping!!

A Journey of Faith and Love

My family and I are starting on a new journey, one that is going to take months. Contemplating this journey has brought us together through so much prayer and discussion. This is a journey I never thought I'd actually take, one I had thought was not for me, but after all, I follow God and this is where he has led me.

We are adopting again! This time we are doing a private adoption. I will share what I can as we go, but there is a lot I will not talk about because this is not just my story, this story also belongs to others. There is a wonderful birth family and they live far away from us, so we are learning to communicate over a long distance. I am in awe of the woman who will give birth to my next children, she is so sweet and so giving. I pray for her every day, that she will always know our love and that her birth children will always know how much she loved them and wanted the best for them.

Yes...you heard me right...I said children. It's twins! And yes I am totally serious and thrilled!

We do not know if they are girls or boys yet, we have to wait another 10 weeks! To say the girls are excited and can not wait to find out is a total understatement!! Katy and Mackenzie spend many hours rearranging the furniture in different bedrooms to decide where their cribs will go. I keep telling them we have a way to go, but they want to be ready!

I continue to work my way through tax season, but occasionally I find myself wandering online over to Baby's R Us or Bye Bye Baby website! I know, I know, I really do have to wait until we know what the sex is, I have so much little girl stuff, but I have next to nothing for little boys. But it is so much fun just to look!!

Adoption...

Adoption is a pretty popular word in our family. My daughters and I discuss it quite frequently.

As in, "I was adopted, right?"

And the ever popular, "Why aren't all kids adopted?"

And lately, "When are we going to adopt another baby/sister/brother?"

In fact, it is not uncommon for us to be out in public, see a cute baby and then the girls start asking me, out loud...very out loud, can we adopt that baby? Of course this is usually followed by the parents of that baby getting up and moving away from us...very quickly!

No, we can not adopt every baby we see, but sometimes I wonder why does adoption have to be so hard and sooooo expensive?! It seems to me the largest cost of adoption is the agency fees. Agencies give a lot of good information to the prospective parents, they also screen both sides to make sure everyone is on the same page, but they spend a LOT of money on advertising to find birth moms and adoptive families. But if you know a woman who wants to find a family for her child and you have a good attorney, do you still need the agency? Most would say, "No."

I have been a foster/adoptive mother for 7 years. Fostering to adopt is really a great way to add to your family, while also being useful to the greater good. It is especially great when you are younger and have lots of time, so if you have a child for a year or two and then they are eventually adopted by a relative or go to live with grandma, you don't feel like you have run out of time to repeat the process. (Yes, sometimes it takes years to find out you will NOT get to parent that child forever.)

I have also been involved with International adoption. It too can take years before you actually have a child in your home. It can also go very well and make everyone very happy, but it is pretty expensive at about $35 - $50 thousand dollars for one child! And what does that child lose? Well, since it is so expensive, often the family can only afford to adopt one child, so that child loses out on the opportunity to have siblings.

I started looking at domestic adoption, I originally stayed away from that because I thought it was going to be tremendously expensive AND I also believed that no birth mother would ever choose me. I'm not down on myself, I am just being realistic. Since I thought most women who place their babies for adoption were single and only wanting their children to be raised in a traditional two parent family, preferably with no other children.

But I have recently found out that I may be very wrong. There are women out there that would welcome a single mother. They are less interested in how many are in the family and more interested in what kind of people make up the family. In other words, are you an active family, do you go on vacations, do you have pets, is your family diverse, I think you get my drift. The trend is to look more at the character of the family, not just do you have a Mom and Dad and a White Picket Fence.

Now I am not saying all birth mothers are looking for single women like me to parent their child, but I am saying that it is not unheard of. So where am I going with this? I am starting to think that there are a LOT of families out there that would just love the chance to adopt and add to their family except for the cost! I am saying that there are a tremendous amount of families, both big and small, with one parent or two, who may not fit the traditional look of the nuclear family from the fifties...but they would make terrific families for many children out there. If only adoption was NOT so expensive!

I am saying I do not think adoption has to be so expensive!! What if there was a place...like a website...that birth mothers and adoptive mothers and fathers to be could find each other...without the agencies?! What if they could talk and meet when they were ready and find out if they had the same hopes and dreams for these children on their own?

What if there could also be social workers, and attorneys, and screening agencies, and anything else that these families needed on this website, to make the adoptions safe and secure and NOT cold and all about the paperwork and the $$$$!

Is there anything like that out there? Maybe there needs to be.

1, 2, 3...

We got up at our usual summer time wake up at 8:30am...oh how I am going to miss sleeping in when school starts next week! I got dressed and got the baby out of her crib. Angie is spending a couple of days with her "other" family. (The couple that wants to adopt her, keep your fingers crossed.) My daughter Mackenzie was already dressed and came downstairs with us.

I changed the baby and put her in this adorable little dress that her GodMother Tina got for her at a garage sale...for just 25 cents! What a steal! It is a Gap Kids, and it is a pale sage green sun dress with zoo animals appliqued around the hemline. Mackenzie and I were pointing out and naming the different animals and Ava was repeating the names in her sweet little voice. Then, she points to a cluster of flowers and says, "One...two...three." And yes, there were three flowers right where she was pointing!

Do I have a genius child or what!? And she is only 19 months old! We were so excited! Of course we tried to get her to repeat it for the other girls when they came down, but no, she just laughed at us everytime we tried.

I am in my office trying to get a really big return finished. It is a corporate return and after it is done I can finally do their personal return. Oh how I want the taxes to be done! Of course there will always be more.

After lunch I am going to take the girls over to look at a house that I've been eyeing. It is about 3 miles from where we live right now. But it is not in a subdivision like our home. It is in an area where there are lots of farms and land. It is so beautiful and sits on a parcel of land that is 9.82 acres and has another piece of land attached but can be sold separately that is 10 acres. I've always said that my next dream is to pick up about 20 acres just south of here...I just wasn't quite ready yet!

The farmhouse itself is about the same size as our home we are in right now. But the first floor has more rooms including a formal living room and the upstairs bedrooms are smaller on the farmhouse than ours right now. It isn't really a farmhouse, it is actually a Colonial, it's just that it sits on a farm and so I like to refer to it as The Farmhouse. The girls call it the Blue House.

I really can not afford to own 2 houses, and the market is not good enough to warrant selling the house I am in right now, but I like to dream. And if it is God's plan for us to live in a different house, then he will help us find a way. If not, I am happy in the home we have right now...I would just like a little more land, and some chickens, and beautiful trees, etc. I think I need to work more on the whole contentment thing!