Our Adoption Decision Journey

So for posterity, I am going to share our journey over a few blog posts so that I will remember this whole crazy journey we have been on. Today, I'm posting about our decision to adopt through the foster system.

A couple months ago, I posted this. Something I had written back in 2008, around the time I felt like God was saying that adoption is something I should do. Notice I didn't say "we"...not yet anyways. I love how the Lord took us on our own journeys to get to the same decision. I have laid out a timeline and overlaid what details we now know of the kids' lives as well.

Summer 2008- Eryn wrote this and felt the Lord calling her to adopt through the foster system. Our lives were hectic. David was working 55-60 hrs a week and was also getting sick with an illness that would plague him for the better part of a year and a half. (At this point our oldest girl, A, is 1 year old.)

October 2008- Eryn feels called to go back to school for a MS in Counseling Psychology and enrolls in a school in Colorado for a quarter.

End of 2008- We decide to move back to Tennessee from Colorado so that Eryn can go to a good school for my MS in counseling and we can be closer to family after David decides to quit his PhD program to focus on his health. Clearly, it wasn't the time to adopt or foster for that matter, and moving states would have negated that even if we had of begun the process in Colorado.

2009- David struggles with the decision to go back to school to finish his PhD. He has been teaching as an adjunct professor up until this point while Eryn goes to school and nanny part time. He decides after much trial and prayer that he wants to pursue a Doctorate of Chiropractic instead and he chooses Life University. Eryn has two more semesters to finish school at this point. (M, our second girl, was born in April '09.)

January 2010- David begins Life University in Marietta, GA while Eryn finishes up school and works on her internship at Agape Nashville (who incidentally also does foster to adopt through the state of TN, but obviously this was not a good time since we lived apart for 4 months, seeing each other on weekends, and were about to move to another state!). (February 2010 is when B, our youngest, a boy, is born.)

May 2010- We find a home in Marietta, Georgia (two counties over from the county the children we hope to adopt, but they aren't placed in the state's care just yet). Eryn continues to travel to school in Nashville for one night a week while David is in the throws of Chiropractic School. Eryn also works at an internship at an Atlanta counseling center.

August 2010- Eryn graduates and stays on as a newbie counselor at the center she did her internship at. We also decide to check out a local private agency that specializes in foster-to-adopt programs with the state. We feel good about what we learned and decided to sit on things for a while.

October 2010- Eryn gets an admin position at her job site and earns extra money while she decides to build her clientele. David also has a vision of two little girls running around our home and feels like it's time to pursue adopting, feeling very strongly that with the Lord all things (no matter how overwhelming!) are possible.

January 2011- We attend a three day training, right on our 5 year anniversary weekend no less! Also, our children are put into foster care at the very same time. We also get checked out by a clinical nutritionist to help us with some health issues (David really hasn't felt back to 100% by this point and would like to be by the time he becomes a dad!). We also have our first adoption homestudy with a wonderful contract social worker.

February-May, 2011- We complete a vast amount of paperwork, gather records, get tested for various things, get fingerprinted, etc. for our homestudy to be complete. We didn't particularly feel a rush during this time, but we felt like we had a bit more time before we needed to be approved. We get the official word that we are approved just for adoption at the beginning of May.

May 2011- The referrals start pouring in for children who are free to adopt. We don't feel led to pursue any particular referral. We begin to be more open to sibling groups of TWO. In fact our adoption agent said that she thought of us for a couple sibling groups of THREE, but we weren't approved yet at the time. We were like, "Three? Yeah right!"....

June 2011- We receive a referral for three precious children who Eryn, immediately feels a connection with. We just have an email with a small blurb about a paragraph long and no pictures. Eryn calls David and says well it looks like we have a referral we need to talk about. David excitedly listens. Eryn says, "Well it's for a sibling group of two sisters 4 and 2.....and their 1 year old baby brother!" To Eryn's surprise, David laughs and says, "OK, let's find out more about them!". We both felt a connection with these kids that we can't explain. But we still aren't approved for foster care yet, and we have been trying to get approved for a while!

This is where I leave you till next time for a posting on all the obstacles!

Some News and Kid's Room

This is it...This is not a drill people....

That has been the phrase running through my mind this weekend. We received some "positive news" this week, which is what we are calling it because things can always change! And all weekend long we have been getting ready for our final homestudy visit on Monday. (Yes, we are already approved to adopt, but we have not yet been approved to foster- just a couple more technical things and paperwork that has to be finalized before we can have foster children in our home that might be ready to adopt soon.)

So all weekend we have been shopping/ looking on Craigslist/ having minor freak-outs about what a __ year old might eat? what kind of bed do they need?/ getting really excited/ freaking out. again/ trying to make our home look like it did in April when we had our last homestudy (which we thought was our last one so we let our house go to pot...j/k...sort of :).

We have felt so blessed by many of you with your thoughts, prayers, checking ins, and donations (THANKS HURTUBISE FAMILY!!!). Huge shout out to Maurine and Mom for their contributions- Maurine got us the adorable curtains and Mom donated my childhood armoire and cute laundry basket for them to put their dirty clothes in. And we also feel blessed by Craig and his list!

Here are some pics of the kiddos room we just finished today. Also, we just kindof got a lot of things because they will be checking to see how many beds we own on Mon. We may have gone overboard with the beds in the room but this is just so our social worker can see that we have plenty of space- we can always rearrange :)

The Things That Grow at Our House

Isn't it amazing that something this small can grow into a giant of a thing producing 25+ zucchini? I am still amazed at how God created the world to work. Small things producing such bounty. Makes me feel like I can make more of a difference in the lives of others with just my small gifts. And it has been so, well for lack of something less dramatic sounding, spiritual to tend our garden, our little piece of earth that is our responsibility to tend. I am probably more contemplative this year than last since I have motherhood in mind. I hope the seeds I plant in my children will come to fruition, but just like the garden- sometimes it is up to the plant whether or not it will bear any fruit or survive. Ultimately it's out of my control, even if I do everything I know to do. Thank you God for this lesson in parenting. And thank you God for our blessing of a garden. We feel very blessed to be in a home with a large space to grow and experiment, and we even have an apple tree and a grapevine to boot!

We have had much success with our garden this year. We got planning early this year and already have had plenty of "harvest" so far:

• 42 cucumbers (lots of pickle making going on at our house :)
  
• 10 zucchini
• 5 green tomatoes
• 1 jalepeno pepper
  
• 64 apples from the apple tree
• several salads worth of lettuce, kale
• and also fresh basil, mint, and rosemary out the wazoo

Here are some pics of how we gathered our apples. We were very red-neck about it. David got a rake and we spread out this blanket. He would shake the tree with the rake and we would move the blanket around the yard to try and get it under the apples that might fall. It was fun. And now I have plenty of apple butter and applesauce :)

In other news, I came home the other day and there were these new curtains hanging in our dining room:Yes, my husband sews! He did a good job. Just made roman shades with some old fabric we have had for a couple years, an old pair of corderoys, and some supplies from Lowe's. I was so amazed that he just threw them together while I was gone to work. He is a man of many talents :)

Also, random, but I wanted to post some pics of Easter. We got to go to Memphis for a couple of days and visit with some fam. Look @ how long David's hair is. It's much longer now. I married a hippie ;)

We're Approved!

The Drive Time commercial with the guy saying, "Approved, approved, approved..." keeps running through my head!

We got the word from our adoption agency late Thursday night that we are officially approved by the state of Georgia. Our adoption agency is now looking to match us with children. This will depend on what kind of referrals our agency gets from the state. Sometimes the summer can be slower, they say. We could be getting a call any day/ week/ or month now!

We will see....and definitely keep you posted.

Amicalola Falls

David and I went to Amicalola Falls State Park today. It's only about 1hr. 15 min. away. It reminded me a lot of Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee, but with more mountain views. We did a "strenuous/ moderate" first mile. I don't know who put the "moderate" in there, but for Eryn Jones- it was all the way "strenuous"! We could have done several more miles and hiked to a really neat inn and lodge that you can only get to by trail, but we whimped out and went back down the falls :) We got some good excersise though, and it was great being out in nature all day!

Also, we saw a bear cub (or so we thought)! If you can see in the photo below, it's the big brown blurb kindof in the middle. David didn't get a chance to get a great pic because I was already at a mild walk/jog (you know, fast- but not too fast to attract undue attn. from a bear :) 1/2 way down the trail! If I had the camera, I would have had a great shot because the little guy looked right at me....as if he was saying, "My momma is going to be here any minute, and she will eat you!" But we met a nice couple further down the trail that said he was most likely an adolescent and then I got less scared for our journey back!