What not to say...

Okay, I want to address some of the remarks we have gotten regarding infertility, adoption, etc... I will preface this by saying that MOST of the people who we surround ourselves with always say the right things, and ALL of them are super supportive of our struggles with infertility and adoption.

I made the mistake a couple months ago of volunteering the information of our adoption to a person I hadn't seen in years. He was a young guy - in his early 20's - who was single, and a pretty nice guy from what I knew of him. He asked what was new in my life, and I said, "We're adopting from the Philippines!!" He looked at me with a look of disdain and said, "Why would you do that?" I was completely speechless for a minute, then I glared at him and shook my head without saying anything. I just had no response. Why would I do what? Provide a loving a warm home for children who I will love dearly?? What a psycho. So that's #1 - don't EVER say that to someone who is adopting. Adoption is a beautiful thing.

Secondly, as a woman who struggled with infertility and is now adopting, that does not mean that I am choosing adoption because I don't want to get pregnant, or I don't think I could get pregnant someday. I had a couple of people say to me, "Hey! You'll get your kids without the awfulness of pregnancy and childbirth". Um... what? I have no response every time I hear this from someone (kind of a pattern with my responses). I would wish for nothing more than to be able to be with my children from the moment they are conceived. I wish no child had to go through the awfulness that most have to go through before they are home with their forever family - the orphanages, abandonment issues, and the list goes on. Adoption is NOT easier than pregnancy/childbirth, so I'm not getting the "easy way out" by adopting.

Third, when a person tells you they are adopting, do NOT EVER say, "Oh, so you can't have your own?" THESE children are my own children, whether I give birth to them or not. And for us, adoption isn't a second choice. We always knew we wanted to adopt, we just didn't know it was going to come first for us. If we do get pregnant someday, that will be great!

I also got a comment about 2 weeks ago that I've gained weight since high school (I am wondering who on this planet didn't gain weight 10 years after high school?). As I was poking around on other infertility/adoption blogs, I saw that many other women struggling with the stress of infertility saw their bodies take a hit. I am no exception. From the time we started trying to have children, I have gained 25 pounds, and am up 4 sizes. I had the mindset that I was going to pregnant any day, so why not let myself eat whatever I wanted and pretend I was eating for 2?

I made a decision in April that I was going to get in shape - no matter WHAT it took. I began running on a regular basis, and *attempting* to watch what I eat. I joined a gym a couple of months ago to lift along with my cardio workout, and am finding working out to be slightly addictive. I feel better, and am generally a happier person when I can workout. My family joined in on this endeavor 11 weeks ago, and we have a Biggest Loser-Carlblom Style competition going on. We all have our goal weights, and an incentive to be the one to lose the most weight each week ($2!!). At the end there is a prize of even more money for whoever loses the highest percentage of weight. I haven't seen a huge change in my body since I started this working out thing, but I'm not giving up! The little changes that I do see are motivation to keep on!! Since I don't get to give birth to my babies (for now), I am going to be one fit momma by the time I get my children.

Simply Christmas

Sorry, Anonymous (aka N.T.P.) for not posting about yesterday's play sooner!!

So yesterday was our church play that Dave and I were a part of. Let me tell you - Dave did a PHENOMENAL job!!! He did not miss any cues or lines, and hit everything dead on. He and Aaron did an awesome job portraying "working class/blue-collar" angels. They were the comic relief in a beautifully choreographed service focused on the basics of Christmas - Jesus' birth. Our good friend, Nikki, was the mastermind behind the service, so a huge WOOT WOOT to Nik. She brought the music, arts, drama together so beautifully. My (tiny) part went well too, even though my Mary veil fell sideways during the second service - I just continued on with my serene smiling at baby Jesus :)

This weekend we also got to make Christmas cookies with my parents. They came up on Saturday for a sleepover, then came to the play at our church. We made all kinds of Christmas cookies Saturday, so for the next few weeks if you are at our house you will be required to partake in the snacking of said cookies!

After the play yesterday, we went out for lunch with Dave's family, my family and Nikki, Aaron, Sam and Nikki's mom, Dianne. We had so much fun laughing and feeling the relief of being done with the stress of the play! After lunch, we headed out to a birthday party for our nephew, Eric. He turned the big 3 today - happy birthday, Eric!!

I also had fun basking in the congratulations of our "pregnancy" yesterday. Nik told me that our good friend, Jane (who was the painter of the beautiful star in the play yesterday) said to her, "Someone go tell Rachel she shouldn't be lifting - she's expecting!" Then she remembered that we are expecting, but I'm not physically pregnant - I'm pregnant in my heart :) I've had lots of comments from my girlfriends that I should start taking advantage of the "pregnancy" and make Dave lift things for me, eat pickles, drink root beer and nap as much as possible. I think those are all great ideas!! I just may have to take them all up on it.

Here are pictures from this weekend's festivities:

Alvin the Angel and Mary, the mother of Jesus

Harold and Alvin (aka Aaron and Dave) as blue-collar angels on their cloud (they are snow-throwing angels)

Joseph and Mary (aka Aaron K. and Rachel)

New Poll!

Hi all, I have created a new poll to see what you all think about when we will get our referral. I added it to the top of the page this time, as you can see. To see the results from the last poll (yay to you all who voted for "by Christmas"!!), scroll to the bottom of the page.

Dave slaved away on the closet this weekend, and as a result we have a beautiful closet in our child/ren's room! We've already started filling the shelves with the gifts we've received along the way for our child/ren, which is sooooo much fun! I'll take some pics to post soon, then you can check out Dave's handiwork yourselves.

This weekend Dave is in a Christmas play at our church. He is a "blue-collar" angel, along with our good friend, Aaron. It is a comedy-drama about what the angels' idea of Jesus's arrival on earth was. I'm very excited to see him in action. I've been helping him learn the lines, and the only thing he needs to work on is not saying, "darn it" (or some such word) under his breath when he forgets a line - we don't want that to be picked up by the wireless mic!! I also have a small part in the play as Mary. It should be a good time :)

Officially waiting!!! (aka Pregnant on Paper)

Woo hoo!!!!!! We received the awesome news yesterday morning that we are ICAB approved!! This means that now the Philippines has put us on a list of Prospective Adoptive Parents (PAPs), and they are ACTIVELY searching for a child or children to match with us. YAY!!!!!

Karin (from Hand in Hand) called yesterday right after I got to work. As soon as I saw her phone number come up on my phone I got excited. She told me that she had good news for us, that we were approved!! I started crying and thanking her over and over. She just laughed and squealed in delight with me. She's so awesome :) She told me that she had called the Philippines director of the agency (Vickie) the day before to tell her that she was feeling very impatient for us, and just wanted to know if there was ANY news at all. Vickie told her it was funny that she had called because she just received the approval THAT DAY! She received ours, as well as another couple's approval who had been waiting since JULY. Yowsahs! I cried happy tears off and on all day yesterday :) I e-mailed Karin later to let her know that it's like she's the doctor who gave us the news we've been waiting on for 4 years - we're pregnant (on paper)!!!!!

She also let us know that we have been approved since SEPTEMBER 30!! Holy cow! We've already been officially waiting for 2 months and didn't even know it! That's awesome!! Our approval came in just under 6 weeks from when we sent our dossier in to the Philippines. We were approved on Dave's mom's birthday, so Happy Belated Birthday to you, Jeanne!

Dave's reaction to the news was pretty funny. He turned a little white, and started pacing a little bit. Once I got off of the phone with Karin he gave me a big hug and then we decided to go celebrate with some breakfast. On our way there he asked if we could go to Home Depot - he wanted to start buying closet supplies to make a better closet in our baby room. Once we got there, Dave was very serious about what we needed to get - while I was still floating and smiling on cloud nine!! Dave cracked me up. He's very serious about getting our house just perfect before our child/ren come home, and is pretty nervous. He keeps me from flying off the face of the earth in my excitement :)

So what is the next step?? Well, next we just wait. "Again??" You may be asking. Well, this is the OFFICIAL wait this time. Every PAP that has been placed on this list in the Philippines has been matched with a child - EVERY ONE. So we know that we will be matched now that we are approved, it's just a matter of when. We expect that the match will come in anytime between 9-18 months from now. At that time we'll know how many we're adopting, as well as what ages, genders, etc. they will be. After that, we will have to wait about 3 more months until we can travel.

Now I am in the process of making a list. I may have to enlist the help of my professional (and wise) list-making friends to help me with this. I'm so excited to start preparing for everything we need, and still feeling giddy from yesterday!! I know that we have another long wait ahead of us, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's a beautiful light (Dave told me that I have my rosy glasses on now that we've been approved :)! Thank you for all of your prayers and support during this time. It wasn't an easy wait, but I really feel that God worked some wonders on my heart through the wait. I'll share that in another post, though.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Celebration supper at Olive Garden with Rachel's family

First Trimester

We hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Today I came to a realization... Right now, I feel like Dave and I are in that first trimester when you don't announce to people that you are pregant for fear of losing the baby through miscarriage. We are in a waiting period where we haven't let ourselves get super excited for the end product - our child/ren. It's like we're afraid we will "lose the baby" by not getting approved by the Philippines. So I guess you could say that we are officially "expecting", but that we are in the first trimester.

Another revelation that I had this weekend was the fact that Dave and I are becoming more of a "family unit". While hanging out with my family for Thanksgiving and Carlblom Christmas, I came to the realization that as family dynamics change, I have to find different ways to relate to my family. I feel like I don't fit in the same way as I used to, and need to find new ways to do this. However, I feel like I fit in perfectly with Dave - as things change we discover together how to adapt and grow. Dave is my family, and he's a great family to have!! I know, it's taken 5 years to truly feel like this, but it is a really good feeling.

I was really hoping that we would receive our approval by Thanksgiving. I even had a very realistic dream that we received our approval through e-mail. Wishful thinking I guess... Please keep on praying that we receive approval from the Philippines soon (so that we can move into the second trimester!!).

(courtesy of Yahoo.com)

Let the voting begin

Still no new updates, but I hate not updating this page every 1-2 weeks. So at the bottom of the page, I added a poll. Please vote and let us know what your guess is!!!

We recently celebrated Dave's Dad's birthday - here are Gale's new glasses

Gus playing tug-of-war with our nephew, Kyle

Some of the beautiful work that Dave does (the picture below shows the paver-patio Dave laid a couple of weeks ago, as well as the pots he planted)

A good news kind of day...

(We did not receive approval yet, but we got other good news today that makes us very happy)

Today I e-mailed Karin (remember, she's our adoption coordinator with Hand in Hand Adoptions). I wasn't really going crazy not knowing, but was feeling very curious about why we hadn't heard of our approval yet. Karin e-mailed me back to let me know that she hadn't heard anything, but quite often they will hear from ICAB months after the approval has happened (like we may hear in December that we were actually approved in October!). Karin said that no news is actually good news because it means that ICAB did not have further questions about our dossier or need additional information.

Then she hit us with a second piece of happy news. Currently she does not have any families with Hand in Hand who have waited longer than 11 months for a referral from the date they are approved from ICAB!!! She said that the wait times have been cut in half in the past year (it used to take 23-24 months for a family to get a referral after their approval). This is such exciting news for us, as we have been expecting for it to be 2 more years from the time we are approved by ICAB to receive a referral. To think that we may receive a referral by next Christmas is SUCH exciting news for us!!!

I've been feeling pretty peaceful about the adoption in the past couple of days. This past Sunday I had a very rough day. That morning, right before church, I decided to check my e-mail. I read that a woman in my Yahoo Adoptions group (who is using the same agency we are, but lives in a different state) had gotten her approval. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for this family to receive their approval. What really got me was reading that she had sent her dossier in 1 WHOLE MONTH after we did.

Dave and I were supposed to head over to "Celebration Sunday" at our church for our new fundraising campaign. Needless to say, I was not feeling very celebratory and actually spent the majority of the church service crying my eyes out. I felt pretty stupid standing in the front row crying, but I just couldn't seem to stop. Dave was so good - he just went and got me some kleenex and put his arm around me. But then Pastor Jon said something in his sermon that really made me think. He said, "God puts desires in our hearts. But He doesn't put those desires in our hearts for US to fulfull. He puts them in our hearts so that HE can fulfill them, and we give him all glory and praise". Hmmmmm... I like that - I can give this over to God and quite trying to analyze every little piece of it in my mind. Plus, I know for a fact that when God fulfills my desire it will be better than anything I could have imagined for myself!!!

Then, earlier this week on our *long* drive home from work, Dave asked me what will happen if we are never approved to adopt, and are never able to get pregnant. Will we still be able to be joyful in knowing that God's will for our life does not include children?? I really had to think long and hard about that one. Dave challenged me to live my life being joyful in knowing I'm living in God's will - whether that includes being a mother or not. Hearing that and taking it to heart has really changed my outlook on life in the past couple of days. I don't feel like life is hopeless, I don't dwell on what I can't control (like getting approval from ICAB), but most of all I'm focusing on living my life to further the kingdom of God - loving people, praying for people, and focusing on God rather than myself.

So I'm feeling giddy with being in a good mood for the past couple of days. It may also help that I've been working out every night of this week. My goal is to be one fit momma when my babies come home. It really does wonders for my attitude!!

Two cuties in their Halloween costumes visiting us at work

Gus showing off his "tough guy" costume at Halloween