Reflections

What a day to reflect. Referrals are starting to arrive and how wonderful it is to see these families!!! Yippeee!

On another note, its been a year since we turned in our application to our agency. A year ago this week, Michael and I were in Colonial Williamsburg celebrating our 5th anniversary. We were playing online at the sister resort of the one we were staying at when the got the wonderful email that we had been accepted into the program. That email really changed everything. We got home and 1 week later we went to our orientation program and started "the paperchase". It felt good to be doing something. It was something that Michael and I could do together and that's what I enjoyed the most. Before our trip, we attended our first First Friday (the monthly adoption support group) which really got us motivated.

During the process we have found a new church, met wonderful friends (too many to mention) and have dreamed about the future. We have named our daughter (LynnMarie) started a collection of books, and have collected squares for her quilt. We bought her first outfit with some of our family and I have participated in secret pal and bib exchanges. I have learned to love consignment stores along with just window shopping at the more expensive stores. I found more websites to search at work

This adoption process has brought us closer together. I remember spending hours cleaning the house waiting for our SW visit. I wish the house had stayed that clean. I remember meeting our SW at a Starbucks in Roswell and having a pumpkin spiced latte. Its amazing what you remember. We have seen families paperchase, get referrals and bring their babies home. I remember watching Laney's family get their referral (the biggest boohoo moment so far in this journey). They showed the video at our support group and I know it made it seem so real to Michael. I remember being at work knowing it was Laney's Gotcha Day and clicking refresh over and over again on her blog. Finally at 6am, the pics were posted and there again were the tears. I had to explain they were happy tears. We watched Sheridan come home. His parents were mentors to us during our paperchase and helped us beat the May 1 deadline.they have helped us far more than just our adoption.
I have met some wonderful blogging friends and have communicated more with my family this year because of the adoption process.

I was able to have lunch with a group of ladies months ago and was so happy to get to meet Maisie and read about Brianna coming home. Today, I read that Chani's family learned about her!

It's been amazing. God has opened doors that I never knew were there. I have experienced more at work because of this adoption. I have watched Gods hand over so many friends and families . I wish this wait was not so long. I wish I could start shopping and planning for our trip. The one positive thing is that if we were were pregnant we would only have 9 months to shopeand plan and with this long wait, theres even more time to do just that. This year has been so awesome, I am looking forward to the next one. I can't believe that at one time in my life I thought adoption was just "a nice thing for people to do". Its such an amazing adventure, I cant imagine not being in this place.