Our Best Friend, Charlie

*(I know this blog has, for the most part, centered on our adoption. However, this post Is about our family. If you’re interested in adoption-only posts, then feel free to skip this one. No hard feelings. --A.B.)

 

                Before I had a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, I had a ball of fur for a roommate who we called Charlie. And when I say “ball of fur,” it’s not only said with affection, but it’s also quite literal. As a puppy, this dog was almost perfectly round, like some little furry, worm-infested orb of pure cuteness. Sure, he seemed a lot less cute after he cried for 2 or 3 nights, but it didn’t change the fact that he was, quite possibly, the cutest puppy in the history of puppyhood.

                The circumstances that led to Charlie joining me were different than how most normal people get a dog. I had made the innocent statement to my (at the time) girlfriend of how someday I’d like to have a dog and I’d name him Charlie (Charlie Brown, get it? Clever, I know.). Based on that single conversation, I started getting emails sent to me at work almost every day with pictures of shelter dogs, all of which asked the same question, “Could this be Charlie?” (She something similar with pictures of engagement rings. I guess she’s 2 for 2.)

Finally, there was a dog at the shelter in Madison, Indiana that I thought, maybe, could be Charlie. We went and found a litter of 4 puppies sitting in a pen outside, 3 of whom were excited and happy to see us and one that hid in the one shady corner of their pen. We looked at the 3 happy ones, but the loner in the corner intrigued me a little. I mean, I have to respect a dog smart enough to get in the shade on a 90 degree day. I picked him up, held him up to my face and said, “Are you Charlie?” When he answered by licking my face, our friendship began.

 

                Tomorrow morning, as I write this, after a painful fight with lymphoma, we’ll take my friend Charlie to the vet for the final time. As much as I want my buddy to stay with me forever, this illness has become more than he can bear. Charlie is a huge part of our family, and to watch him struggle with this has been one of the most difficult things we’ve ever had to deal with.

                One of the most painful aspects of this process has been the fact that our son won’t get to know Charlie. In our minds, Charlie was going to be the perfect big brother for Will. You couldn’t pick a better dog for a little boy than Charlie if you could design one yourself. Some of Charlie’s favorite things in the world to do were to play ball, run around in the yard, and swim. What kid wouldn’t love a dog like that? And Charlie was great with little kids. Whether it was with family members or people he’d never met, Charlie was always able to play without ever getting too rough. Maybe we were just blinded by the image of Charlie being Will’s best friend when he got older, but we never really saw this coming.

                Part of the reason was because this dog was indestructible. I mean, I saw him once run on a dead sprint after a ball, get to the end of his rope and get pulled by his neck up into the air, did a full flip and land on his feet as if nothing happened. Most animals (or people) would break their necks doing that, Charlie just kept playing ball. This is a dog that as puppy tore down a Cincinnati Reds flag on the wall (sorry Reds, still love you), then proceeded to eat the push pins that had been holding it in. And this was when he was still the tiny little ball of fur! This dog is the sweetest/toughest animal on the planet.

                I’m not the smartest person in the world by a long shot, but I believe God gave us Charlie for a reason. We saw tons of dogs, but I think He set this one aside just for us because we needed this dog far more than he needed us. He taught me how to care, everyday, for something that depended on me for its very existence. Having him with me taught me to be a better husband, a better father, and a better person. And because that’s what I believe, I think that maybe Charlie has finished what God sent him to do for us and that’s why he’s leaving us now.

                It’s hard for me to imagine getting up in the morning without Charlie. I’ll miss him every day, but the memories of him will never make me sad. Whether it’s remembering how he hid behind the couch when I tried to put him in his room and made me late for work, how he used to freak out when I’d try to put a hat on him, playing hide and seek with him, or a million other memories, they’ll always make me smile. I don’t think I was ever good enough to deserve this amazing dog that God blessed us with. His time with us isn’t going to last as long as we’d wanted, but we know that we were fortunate to have him at all. Remembering Charlie will never make me sad, it just makes me sad that my son won’t.

 

Finally! A Blog Post!

     There was this idea of a blog post that was supposed to be done last Monday or Tuesday, but now it's a full week later and we're finally getting around to posting. What happened? Well, have you every driven 7 hours round trip only to get home and immediately be attacked by the stomach flu? If you haven't, then just let me assure you that it puts a bit of a wrinkle in your plans. Regardless, we haven't updated this blog in 2 months now, for some reasons that we hope will become a little more clear, and we needed to let all of you know what's been happening.

     First of all, when we last left you, we were matched with a birth mom and waiting on her delivery date. We're happy to tell you now that on January 9th, we finally met our little boy. We got the call that afternoon that she was in labor and immediately got our things together and got ready to leave. He was about 10 days early, so we weren't totally ready yet, but we were able to get out the door pretty quickly. Despite driving through a bit of a snowstorm and having to navigate the 12 inches that was still on the ground in central Illinois, we were able to get to the hospital about 45 minutes after he was born. We spent most of the evening in the room with him and our birth mom before heading back to spend our last childless night at our hotel. After getting some sleep and debating on how early is too early to show up to the hospital, we went back to see our little man the next morning. He wasn't released until that evening, so we were able to spend a good portion of the day with him. After some paperwork he was released to us to take to the temporary home that we would grow to hate, the Danville, IL Sleep Inn.

     Now don't get me wrong, the hotel was nice and the employees there were great. If you were going to spend some time in that town, you could do a lot worse than the Sleep Inn. The problem was that we wanted so badly to be home and, due to paperwork that was pending with the state of Illinois, we weren't allowed to bring the baby across state lines. What made it worse was that this particular hotel was within about 200 yards from the Indiana border. We could eat breakfast downstairs and look across a field into Indiana, we just couldn't go to Indiana.

    We stayed in Danville for a few days before moving to another hotel, this time further south in Illinois. (We were allowed to drive a few hours to southern Illinois, but not allowed to go 200 yards to Indiana. Go figure.) We thought that going further south would make it easier if any of our family wanted to make the trip over and see Will. That was our idea anyway, but I'm pretty sure that his grandmothers would have tunneled in from China if that had to so they could get to see their baby. (By the way, that's happened also. He's "their baby". Not ours. Weird.)

    We ended up staying in our second hotel for a little over a week before finally getting the word from our attorney that we were cleared to go home. We got the call around 8 or so on a Monday night. It was a little late to start that drive, and we'd already paid for that night in the hotel, but we pulled off the quickest packing job in history and headed out the door. No disrespect to Illinois, but we're Hoosiers and it was time to go home.

     We crossed into Indiana probably around 10:30 that night (at which point I started singing "Back Home Again in Indiana"...badly), and finally got Will home for the first time a little after midnight. The dogs were interested, although not super excited yet, to meet their new little brother, but introductions had to wait until morning. We were all ready to sleep in our own beds.

    The weeks since have been filled with doctor's appointments, 2 baby showers, and grandparents/aunts/cousins who all "just happened to be in the neighborhood" stopping by and it's all been great. We've had more visitors at our house in the last 5 weeks than in the previous 2 years we lived there and it's been awesome. And our church family has loved him more than we could even have imagined (somehow he's become "their baby" too. I don't get it.) It probably has something to do with us having the cutest baby in the history of babies.

     We're not done with the adoption yet though. The coming weeks and months are going to bring a lot of hoops to jump through, but we're excited to get through them and to the point where he will officially be a part of our family, even though he already is. Just this week we the first of our 3 post-placement visits from our case worker and we were able to meet with our birth mom again (who's been great) when she signed the last of her paperwork. There will be a few more meetings with our case worker and lots of legal paperwork to be done, but we're marching full speed ahead toward our finalization.

     We're also looking forward to having another fundraiser on April 12. We reserved the date for this fundraiser before we were matched with a birth mom with the idea that there was no way we'd have a baby by then. Oops. Regardless, this fundraiser will go towards finishing up our adoption expenses as many of our fees aren't due until finalization. It will be a pasta dinner and silent auction and will be held at Syria Christian Church in Orleans. We'll have more details coming in our next blog and on our facebook page, so keep checking things out there. We're looking forward to celebrating this night as the completion of our adoption journey and hope that you can join us.

     Again, sorry for the long wait between posts, but we wanted to wait until we were home and things settled down a bit to update you all on what's been happening. We're so thankful to so many of you who have read this and encouraged us along the way. Please keep reading and we'll keep posting. We can't wait to see you all on April 12.

Better Late than Never

     We’ve been writing this blog, first weekly and now monthly, for over a year and, with a few minor exceptions, it’s been on time. You could plan on it, every Monday (now the first Monday of the month), you could count on the fact that we’d be posting a blog. If you’re not someone that we get to talk to a lot, you’re probably wondering what happened. I mean, why is it December 17 and we’re just getting around to posting something? Are we not adopting anymore? Did we get moved into the witness protection program? What is going on here?!?!

    Some major things have been happening since our last update. First of all, we found a birth mom! We were fortunate enough to make a connection with a wonderful young woman in Illinois who decided that she wanted to place her child with us. We’ve stayed in close contact via email for several weeks, but we were able to finally meet her face to face last weekend. As awkward as a dinner with someone you’ve never met can be, our meeting was fantastic. We’ve been really blessed to get to go through this process with such a great person.

     The other major thing that’s going on (although it’s a part of the same thing, I suppose) is that she’s due pretty soon. Really, really soon. Like “5 weeks from now” soon. So sometime in mid to late January, we’ll be welcoming a wonderful baby boy into our home. The fact that this is all happening so suddenly is another reason we’ve put off the blog a little bit. There have been several nights when we’ve had to contact lawyers and adoption agencies, not to mention our birth mom, and also make sure we have plans in place for when it’s time to go meet our child. There’s a lot to do and a short time in which to do it, but with a lot of help, prayer, and hard work, we’re getting there.

    So, if any of you were wondering, that’s why there’s been no blog. We’ve been busy, but we also wanted to wait until after we met our birth mom. As stressful as things have been at times, we’ve really been blessed that God has put us in this situation.

    We’ll keep updating the blog over the next few months to let everyone know how things are going. We also still have a fundraiser planned for April 12 that we’ll keep you updated on. When we picked the date for the fundraiser, we never imagined that we’d even be matched with a birth mom by then, let alone have a child. I guess God had some different things in mind. Regardless, we’re going to go ahead with the fundraiser which will hopefully cover most of the remaining adoption costs. So go ahead and mark your calendar.

    Finally, we can’t say enough how much we appreciate all of the support and prayers you’ve given to us throughout this process. The feedback you’ve given us, both through the blog and in person, has been tremendous and has kept us going. We look forward to keeping you updated as we finally meet our child, and seeing many of you on April 12 so we can introduce you to the newest addition to our family.

From us (all 3 of us) to you, we hope you have a wonderful Christmas and an amazing New Year.

Orphan Sunday

    
     November is probably my favorite month. The weather is great, there’s Thanksgiving, and the start of college basketball season (Go Hoosiers!). But another great thing about November is that it’s National Adoption Month, the highlight of which is Orphan Sunday. Orphan Sunday is a day of celebration and adoption awareness started by the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO). On Orphan Sunday, churches around the country talk about the cause of orphans and the biblical calling for the church to embrace adoption. The sad part is that I’m willing to bet most of you didn’t hear anything like that in your church service.

      Let me clarify a bit, I’m not calling out anybody’s pastor. Our church is like many of yours in that we have a dedicated and caring ministry team that does amazing work both in the church and in the community. They are a true blessing to anyone they encounter.

     So why didn’t we hear anything about the orphans? (If I may borrow from Shakespeare) “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” We (the church) have to make a bigger deal about adoption. To rely on our pastors to have to “remind” us about adoption issues is a negligence of our duties as followers of Christ. James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

      The people of the church need to make a big deal about this. Orphan Sunday should be something we circle on our calendars every year. We should put it on t-shirts and billboards. We should have huge adoption-related events at the churches. In our homes we should share those little annoying facebook links until they fill up our wall and drive our friends crazy! But we don’t do any of that. We don’t do it because it shines a huge spotlight on an issue that we’d rather keep in the dark; the fact that we aren’t doing enough for God’s children.

      Adoption month should mean more to Christians because we are all adopted. When we proclaim ourselves to the world as children of God, we acknowledge our adoption into His kingdom. What does it say about us if we ignore the rest of His children in their time of need?

      This isn’t intended to put anyone down or to criticize their church, but simply to ask a question that many of us are afraid to ask ourselves, “Can we be doing more?” If it were your child who was homeless and alone, you would stop at nothing to get them home where they are loved and cared for. Should we care any less when it’s God’s child?

October Update

     Now that we’re knee-deep in the unbearable waiting that our adoption journey has become, we find ourselves doing strange things. Things that we couldn’t imagine ourselves doing just a few weeks ago seem to make sense now. For example, we shopped for baby beds this weekend. Of course, we haven’t been matched with a birth mother yet and, even when we do, we’ll have a few months to get everything ready for our child. But still, for some reason, it makes sense for us to go shopping for baby beds. I’d like to say that’s the only thing we’ve purchased, but I’m not that great of a liar.

     The other unusual (for us) thing that we did this month was walk in our adoption agency’s annual 5k fundraiser. We’ve never been in a 5k before, so we weren’t really sure what to expect, but we ended up having a great day. We were fortunate enough to have beautiful weather and that, combined with getting to walk in a great park and with the wonderful people from the Miriam Project, allowed us to really enjoy our day. Even though it meant waking up at 4am on a Saturday and driving over 2 hours each way, we were very happy that we went. And we’re hoping to take a bigger group with us next year, so start getting in shape. You have a little less than 50 weeks of training time left.

     In the meantime we’re planning our next fundraiser. We’re still working out some of the details, but we’ll be having another dinner on April 12. We’re hoping to also have a silent auction, so if anyone has items they would like to donate or would like to help in any way, please let us know.

    Between planning for a fundraiser, thinking about becoming 5k runners, and purchasing items that we aren’t possibly going to use anytime soon; we’re staying pretty busy. Is it a bunch of stuff that we’ve thrown together just to keep busy and make the waiting more bearable? Yeah, probably. But in all the stuff we’ve been doing, we’re still having a lot of fun with the process. Don’t get me wrong, the waiting sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out, but we know that in the end it’s all going to be worth it. God has our child already picked out for us and His timing (even though sometimes we get frustrated with it) is perfect. Then again, if He wants to move things along a little quicker, you won’t hear us complain.

No August Happenings

We’ve been away from this blog for about a month now, so I’m sure you’re ready to hear about all the progress we’ve made since early August. Are you ready to hear about all you’ve missed? Well here it is….not much.  Like we’ve been for a few months now, we’re still dealing with the waiting. While we wait though, we’re consistently trying to find ways to educate and prepare us for the rest of our adoption process.

     Like we’ve done since we started considering adoption, we’re still reading every kind of adoption material we can get our hands on, listening to adoption podcasts, and watching things on TV about adoption. Recently though, we heard about a national adoption conference that will be in Louisville this year, which is great for us.  We’re looking forward to spending the weekend at this event in October, so hopefully we’ll be able to share a lot of the material from that weekend with you when we do our next blog update.

     As we told you about in our last entry, we’re also preparing for our adoption agency’s annual 5k fundraiser. At the time of our last blog entry this seemed so far off, but now that we’re a week and a half away, I’m starting to get a little concerned. I mean, surely I’ll make it, right? I’ve seen people in worse shape than me who say they’ve been to a 5k, so I like my chances. Plus it’s walking and I could probably walk all day, I suppose. It did help though when Ashley explained to me that “5k” didn’t mean 5,000 miles.

    As far as our actual adoption goes though, we’re still stuck in what seems like an endless amount of waiting. Granted, it’s only been a few months since we’ve finished our home study, and we’re aware that sometimes people have to wait much longer, but the waiting hasn’t gotten any easier. Of course, we hope that by the time we update this blog next month, we’re full of information about all the progress we’ve made to get closer to our child. However, until then, we continue to appreciate all of the support and prayers that you’ve given us. Thanks again.

The Last Till September

    We’ve written this blog every week for just about a year now. In that time we’ve gone from knowing nothing about how the adoption process works to being the self-proclaimed experts that we are now. Not real experts, mind you, just experts in our own minds.  Seeing that we’ve gone that far, we thought it was time to take a bit of a break. We’ll still update the blog when we have any progress to report (so hopefully a lot), plus we’ll update it once a month, usually on the first Monday, so keep checking our facebook page and we’ll make sure everyone is aware of any new posts.

    But before we take a little break, there are a couple more things we wanted to remind everyone about. First of all, we wanted to remind everyone about the Miriam Project 5k run/walk in Anderson on Sept. 14. Registration remains open until September 5, so if you or anyone you know would be interested, go to miriamproject.org and fill out the registration form. The Miriam Project is a great agency full of people who’ve been wonderful to us from the very start and, if you chose to take part in this event, they would greatly appreciate the support.

     Secondly, we’ll be placing another t-shirt order this weekend. They’re the same shirts that we’ve posted on here before, so if you’ve never seen them, the pictures are here on one of our first few blog posts. The shirts are $20, so if you would like one, please let us know as soon as possible and we’ll get your order in. Whether you’re local or we need to ship a shirt to you, we’ll make sure you get it.

     Finally, we’ll be having another fundraiser in a few months that we wanted to make sure we reminded everyone about. We'll have more details as we get closer to the date, but the plan so far is to have a dinner and silent auction. If anyone wants to help out in any way, or if you have auction items that you’d like to donate, please let us know. We’re hoping to make this a big event that will help us cap off our fundraising efforts and we hope to see everyone there.

     Those are all the updates we have for now, but hopefully we’ll have a lot to tell you very soon. We’ll try to save the blog for any real news, but if you want to keep up with what’s going on day to day, make sure you follow our facebook page. Ashley tends to keep that updated pretty frequently, so you’ll know what’s happening between blog posts.  

    Thanks again to all of you who read this. You’ve blessed us more than you know in the last year. Even the waiting has been made easier because we got to share it with friends.

These Sneakers are made for Walking

      Our adoption agency has been great to us through each step we’ve taken in this process. From the time we first met up with them they’ve treated us wonderfully and gone to any lengths to help us. A few weeks from now, we’ll get to return a portion of the kindness that they’ve shown us.

      As a non-profit agency, The Miriam Project relies a great deal on donations and fundraising to pay for the many services they provide. One of the biggest fundraising events they do throughout the year though takes off Saturday, September 14^th with the Miriam Project 5k/10k. Runners for the 5 or 10k, as well as 5k walkers, will gather at the Miriam Project offices at 8am for a day that not only guarantees to be fun, but also a time to support Miriam’s mission of uniting children with their forever families. Ashley and I, along with some friends and family, are looking forward to getting to see all the people from Miriam who have been so great to us, and to spend the day with so many others who have been so supportive to this cause.

     The reason we’re writing this tonight is that we wanted to invite all of you to join us. If you have Sept. 14 free and don’t mind making a trip to Anderson, we’d love to have as many of you there as possible. All of the information about the event is on the agency’s website (www.miriamproject.org). If you’d like to pre-register, you can do that there. Or, if you’d like to register with us, just let us know and we’ll register our group all at once. Early registration guarantees that you’ll get a t-shirt (registration on race day doesn’t), and pre-registration ends on September 5.

     We know that most, if not all, of you won’t be able to join us, and that’s ok. We also understand that, even if you wanted to go, making a drive to Anderson early on a Saturday morning isn’t how most people want to spend their weekend. Don’t worry, that’s ok too. This blog has just been so great for us that we wanted to take the opportunity to invite all our friends who read it to join us at this event.

The Waiting Game

       I’m not really sure how this whole “waiting for a baby” thing works, so I’m not sure if we’re doing it right or not. We’ve looked for books to tell us what we should be doing during this time, but unfortunately Books-a-million didn’t have anything called “What to Expect when You’re Expecting Someone Else to be Expecting.” Our house has generally divided into 2 distinct strategies. The first one, which has been adopted by me and the dogs, is to wait semi-patiently until there’s some progress. The second approach has been to freak out about everything and find work that, for some reason, has to be done immediately, even though our baby is, at best, several months away. I won’t tell you who has taken this approach, but I will tell you that it’s someone I’m related to by marriage and leave it at that.

     Last week we were able to get rid of the yard sale stuff that filled our spare bedroom for the last several weeks. This is the room that will eventually be our child’s room, so now that it was empty, that meant that it needed to be painted right away. If you understand that logic, you’re firmly siding with Team Ashley. (However, if you thought, “What’s the hurry? There’s plenty of time to paint,” then I welcome you to the good team.) It’s no big deal though. I mean, the room was empty, so why not go ahead and get that done while we had time. I get that. It makes a lot of sense actually. Plus, it’s not like we had anything else to do. And that’s the problem that keeps coming back at us; we have nothing else to do.

      For all the adoption books we’ve read, and all the research we’ve done, none of them really give you much advice on how to survive the wait. There’s a ton of advice on how to pick an agency, domestic vs. international, and home studies, but none of them tell you much about what the wait is going to be like. Some mention it and that it’s hard, but that’s about as far as it goes. But we’ve been “paper pregnant” for almost 10 months now, and for the vast majority of that time, the question has always been, “What’s next?” First it was researching and choosing an agency. Then it was the information gathering for the application process. After that was the home study and the profile book. There was always something to work on, until now. It’s kind of a weird feeling.

     So now we’re here, just looking toward a light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t know how long that tunnel is, or how long that light will take to get here, but at least we’ve made it this far. Until we get to the end though, we’ll be finding ways to stay busy to keep our minds off the wait. Whether it’s buying things for our child, or painting his/her room, we’re trying to put any nervous energy to good use. This kid had better hurry though. If not, we’ll end up with a house full of baby items and every room in the house is getting painted.

 

 

P.S.- Just to let everyone know, we’re planning on having another fundraiser dinner this winter and are hoping to include a silent auction. If anyone has anything they would like to donate for the auction, or would be interested in volunteering at the dinner, please let one of us know. We'll have more details on here as we begin to get our plans finalized for this event. Thanks again to all of you for all the support and encouragement you continue to give us.

Adam's Soapbox

     This blog has been a number of things since we started it last September. In the last 43 weeks, we’ve shared some pretty great experiences with all of you. From picking an agency to preparing for a home study, we’ve enjoyed being able to tell all of you about it. But this blog has been some other things too. We’ve discussed things like taking our kids to IU games, the dogs knocking down the Christmas tree, and my agony over which little NBA jersey I’ll buy for my child first (I’m thinking a Victor Oladipo jersey). But today’s entry is something different. I’ll apologize in advance, but this is my soapbox moment.

     I got angry the other day. That’s not totally uneventful though. I mean, sometimes I get angry in traffic, at work, at the dogs, you name it (although never at my wonderful wife who is perfect in every way and who also edits this blog). But I suppose that happens to all of us at times. But this wasn’t one of those little angry moments that you get over in a minute or two, this was one of those visceral angry things that sticks with you and keeps you from sleeping at night.

    Here’s the thing: I think racism is stupid. I’ve honestly never understood it. I mean, if you want to hate me, that’s fine, I’m sure I’ve given you a reason somewhere along the way, but hating someone or judging them for something they have no control over, like the color of their skin is ridiculous to me. I just don’t get it. But late Friday night I stumbled into a facebook conversation that had evolved from reasonable discussion to borderline hate speech. I read the first few comments on the page, and everything was fine until I read a comment that basically said that all “they” (meaning African-Americans) do is complain about slavery and look for handouts from everyone instead of earning what they get like everyone else does.

     Now I make it a policy not to argue with stupid people, but my anger got to me for a few minutes, and in that time I thought of a hundred different things I wanted to say back to him (none of them repeatable). But I followed Ashley’s advice to stay calm before I replied with anything. I tried to reply calmly and respectfully, but the thought that kept going through my mind was, “He’s talking about my kid.”

     Way back when we first began our adoption application, we had to answer the big question about what racial makeup we were willing to accept in our adoption. While race was never a big deal to us, a lot of the research said that the hardest children to get placed were African-American boys. Our immediate reaction was that, if that’s who needs to be adopted, that’s what we want. We wanted to help where help was needed and if African-American boys are the demographic that needs the most help, then that’s what we want. So maybe that’s why what this guy had to say got to me so much. The idea that this guy, who was on my friends list up until that point, would make a generalization about my child (even though he isn’t born yet) had me shaking with anger. My kid is going to have a hard enough life just dealing with us as his parents, he doesn’t need stupid people adding to it.

      One thing that stuck with me though, is the fact that he was so comfortable generalizing his fellow citizens in the first place. But a lot of us have had trouble with that. We generalize people with different political opinions, religions, even regions of the country by what we assume they are like. But how often do we take the time to talk to people who have an opinion that differs from ours? Maybe what I wrote tonight will offend you or cause you to make some broad generalization about me, but if it does, I’d much rather you talk to me and explain why you disagree. We can discuss it. Great things happen when intelligent people are willing to engage in discussion, even when they disagree.

    The only thing I know about my child is that there’s a pretty good chance that he’s not going to look anything like me. In fact, if he did, I’d probably be a little concerned. But I know that no matter if my child is white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or whatever, it won’t matter to me for one second, because he’ll be my child and we’ll be a family. I wonder what would happen if we all treated each other that way.

Yard Sale

       So, what are you doing Saturday? Oh, you’re busy? Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. I mean, we were just hoping you’d help us raise a little more of the money that will be used to bring home our unborn child, but I suppose your plans must be important. Oh, you’re not busy anymore? That’s great!

     Here’s the deal: We’re having a yard sale at our house Saturday morning as a fundraiser for our adoption. I know, we’ve already had one yard sale, but we’ve got a lot more stuff! We’ve had more donations and have a ton of different items that we need to get rid of. Whatever it is you need, there’s a decent chance that we have it somewhere. We’ve turned part of Ashley’s mom’s house into our yard sale warehouse, then stored the items that wouldn’t fit there into an extra bedroom in our house. The point that I’m trying to make it this; Ashley wants her house back! We have to get rid of all of these boxes, and you can help us with that!

    Maybe we won’t have anything you’re interested in, and that’s fine. And maybe you really do have plans that won’t allow you to join us Saturday morning (the guilt trip at the beginning was totally a joke, by the way), but if you’re able to stop by we’d love to see you. If you want to join us Saturday morning, we’re at 981 S. Orchard Rd. in Salem. We’re starting at 7AM and going until we either run out of things to sell (which would be awesome), or we get tired and want to go inside (which is far more likely). The sale is also weather dependent. If it rains, we’ll have to postpone, so let’s all pray for a sunny day. We’ll also have a listing in the Salem paper on Thursday that will have some of the items in there. If you tell us you heard about the yard sale on the blog, you’ll get a discount of…well, nothing. It is a fundraiser after all. But we’d still appreciate hearing that you’re reading.

    That’s all for this week. Hopefully we’ll have some updates to give you next week on the progress of our adoption. We hope to see you all on Saturday morning!

Ready, Set, Wait

Ever since we started this process almost a year ago, there’s been one part that we dreaded more than anything else. Unfortunately, we’re at that point. It’s time to wait. This afternoon we mailed a copy of our profile book to our agency, along with the payment for completing our home study. All of that means that we’ve pretty much done everything we can do on our end, so now we begin the wait. Our agency doesn’t really have a chronological list though. Their goal is to make a good match between birth mothers and adoptive families, so the wait that we’ve dreaded might not be too long, but it’s still not something we’ve been looking forward to.

     Despite the fact that we’ve dreaded the wait for so long, getting to this point feels pretty great for a few reasons. First of all it’s nice to not have to worry about which documents or forms we needed to get filled out and turned in next. After spending months going through every detail of our finances, home, and family life, it’s nice not to have to think about turning something else in. It’s also nice to a sense of finality. I know we’re not at the end of this yet, but dropping that envelope in the mail this afternoon left me with an awesome feeling. It felt like we had taken a huge step closer to getting this process finished, but more importantly, we felt much closer to bringing our child home.

     We’ve waited on a lot of things throughout this process, but now the real wait has begun. We might not have as many things to update you with, but we’ll continue to try to update the blog once a week to keep everyone aware of any progress we have. We’ll also have smaller updates on our facebook page for all those little pieces of information that aren’t quite big enough to write a blog about. If you aren’t following us on facebook, you can find us by searching for Adopting Willpower.

    We’re excited at the progress we’ve made, but more excited about what’s to come. This wait, no matter how long it takes, will send us through a wave of emotions. There will be times, I’m sure, like today when we feel so happy about the progress we’ve made. There will also be times when we think that we’ll never get to the end. No matter what kind of mood we’re in, we’re looking forward to bringing all of you with us as we continue on this journey. As always, we appreciate all of the support you’ve given us through your prayers, kind words, and donations, and ask for your continued prayers as we move forward. We can’t tell you how much it means to us that you’ve joined our family on this path. Thanks for your support….and thanks for waiting with us.

We're done!!..Just kidding

    It’s over! We’re finally finished! Ok, we’re not totally finished, but we’re sort of finished…with some stuff…..almost. We did make a lot of progress this week though that has us very excited. First of all, our home study is finally finished. We had to track down a few more documents to add to the report in the last couple of days, but we received an email from our case worker today that said everything was finished. We weren’t really worried about it getting finished, but it was a great relief to finally have it done.

    The other thing we finished this week was our profile book. This is the book that our agency will show to birthmothers that they feel might be a good match for us. The book is full of pictures of us and our family and friends and gives them an idea of who we are. If it sounds a little like an advertisement for us, well, it kind of is I guess, but it allows the birth mother to get a good idea of the family she might be placing her child with. To say that we (and by “we” I mean Ashley) have obsessed over the making of this book in the last few weeks is an understatement. We’ve looked through every picture we can find and went over every word to make sure everything was just right. After reading over it several times together, we took it to a few other people to make sure it was ok, then sent it to our case worker. This was the scary part. I mean, we love our case worker, but we’ve also never made a book like this. We wouldn’t have been surprised if she came back with a list of things we did wrong that had to be fixed. Fortunately, she emailed us today and said everything looked great. While it doesn’t seem like a big deal to go online and make a photo book, getting this done was a huge victory for us.

     So now that those two things are done, we’re getting close to having our part of things finished. We’ll get the book and home study turned in, then we’ll be in the waiting pool (Not to be confused with the wading pool, which would be much more fun). Our agency doesn’t work off a waiting list, so we could get matched up with a birth mother any time after that. We’re hoping the wait will be short, and that very soon some birth mother will see our profile and think that we’re just what she is looking for. No matter how long the wait is though, we’re excited at the progress we’ve made and how close we are to getting to our child.

     We probably agonized over the profile book too much…..and the home study…..and pretty much everything else, but in the end it’s all going to be worth it. We’re excited about what’s happening with this process. Even though it might take longer than we like, we feel like we’re taking huge steps to getting closer to our child. We’re excited about what’s happening and we’re excited that you’ve all chosen to be a part of this journey with us. Thanks for everything.

Too Blessed to be Stressed

     So I’ve been having some headaches recently (don’t worry, I saw the doctor, had an MRI, saw another doctor, now we’re all good…except that it kind of led to the blog being late this week. Sorry). And though they turned out to be nothing serious, it led to a lot of concern and attempts to figure out where they were coming from. More than once someone has suggested that maybe it’s the stress of the adoption process that’s at the root of this mysterious brain pain. And while that’s probably a decent idea, I feel like I need to set the record straight at this point; our adoption isn’t stressful.

    Ok, I’ll admit, there have been a few times we’ve been stressed. When we had our home study, we were worried we wouldn’t get the house clean. When we had our fundraiser dinner, we worried about not having enough food (or not enough people to eat the food we had). But all of our worries have been things like that; the things that are associated with the adoption, but aren’t a real part of the adoption process itself.

    Maybe we just haven’t gotten to the stressful part yet. There might be some of you who have adopted and are thinking about how naïve we are and that we don’t realize all the stressful parts that are coming. Maybe you’re even right. I think we’d be the first people to tell you that we aren’t experts on this, but to be totally honest, we’re having a lot of fun with this process. I mean, who else do you know that invites all of their friends and family over (and even some strangers) to dump cans in their yard? That was an awesome night! We had a soup supper a few months ago, which was also a great time. From the yard sales we’ve had to selling t-shirts, we’ve had fun with just about everything we’ve done.

    The common denominator in all of these things is the people who’ve been involved. Everyone we’ve had who’s helped us, no matter what we’ve been doing, has been such a blessing to us. If you dumped cans in our yard, donated items for our yard sale, bought a t-shirt, or even read this blog every now and then; we seriously can’t tell you how much you all mean to us. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve helped make this process so much easier on us and we appreciate that so much.

    Eventually we’re going to print out all of these blog entries to save for our future child. Hopefully that will allow him to learn a little about the process that got him home. He’ll learn a few other things also. That dad likes to ramble and use way too many commas. That we had a few odd fundraisers to help with the adoption costs. That this blog occasionally drifts into talking about IU basketball. But hopefully he’ll also see how many of you have supported us (and our blog) from week to week and how positive of an experience his adoption has been. Trust me when I tell you that those two things are definitely connected.

Famous...well....almost famous

        So, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week or so, let me break the news to you: we’re famous now. Seriously, we’re multimedia superstars! I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it, but if you haven’t, let me get you up to speed on our new-found fame. A few weeks ago, Marcia Walker from The Salem Leader came by the house to talk to us about our Can Our Yard Night Fundraiser and our adoption in general. We had a nice conversation for about an hour or so before she left. We didn’t ask when it would be in the paper because, quite frankly, we didn’t know if she would even find any of our story newsworthy. I mean, granted, the whole can in the yard thing is interesting in a whole “those people are weird” kind of way, but is it really worth dedicating a story in the paper to? Apparently it was, because we opened the paper last week to find our picture in there. (It’s also online, hence the term “multimedia superstars”)

http://salemleader.com/main.asp?SectionID=54&SubSectionID=276&ArticleID=6947&TM=82175.33

       It was great to have the article in the paper, and the fact that they even wanted to include it in the paper was awesome. The whole reason we’ve been so open about our adoption process is that we’ve wanted to be a resource for others thinking about adoption, so getting our information out has been great. We also like anything that publicizes adoption more. After all, if someone sees us in the paper, whether they’ve ever met us or not, it might make them consider adoption. And with all the children in the world who need homes, the more families that are willing to adopt, the better.

      But for all the things that were good about having that article in the paper, there was one thing that bugged me about the whole situation. It was that this was even news in the first place. Granted, dumping cans in someone’s yard to help them raise money is news, but the adoption process itself, and even fundraising to pay for it shouldn’t be. One of the biggest hurdles that separates people who think about adoption from people who adopt is that the costs become too much. Most people can’t afford to just write a check to cover adoptions. Fundraising is the key that allows average people to take on the above average cost of an adoption. Personally, nothing would make me happier than seeing adoption fundraisers in the newspaper every week. The more common fundraisers become, the more kids are finding loving homes.

       I know fundraising can be kind of a touchy subject. Some people may even say, “Hey, it’s your choice to adopt. If you can’t pay for it, that’s your problem.” And I understand that completely. But if having a fundraiser, whether it’s for us or someone else, helps get a child who needs a home into one, then I’d be happy going to fundraisers every weekend. I hope that’s one of the things people take away from this blog and our openness about the process is that, even though you think you can’t afford to adopt, there are options. Our greatest goal is that this causes other people to talk about adopting. And while I can’t afford to pay for other people’s adoptions at the moment, maybe I’ll win Powerball or something and I’ll pay for a lot of them. Maybe it will even be yours. Just tell people your adoption was financed by some multimedia superstar.

You Silly Goose

Parents can have some pretty high expectations for their kids. Some parents are convinced that their kid is going to be the next Michael Jordan, the next Mozart, or the next Albert Einstein even before they’re out of diapers…sometimes before they’re even born. But to be fair, we have some pretty high expectations for our future kid also. Like his mother and father before him, we expect our child to be a huge dork.   

     What brings this up is that it’s almost time to have our annual NerfWar at our house. For those of you who are more mature than us (pretty much all of you), NerfWar is like a big, grown-up game of capture the flag. Everyone has a Nerf gun and, if you get shot, you’re out. If you’re wondering, yes, we have the maturity of 7 year olds, but it’s not just us, our friends are dorks too. Just picture a big, open yard full of adults (and we let some kids play too) running around with Nerf guns. Sounds pretty silly, right? It gets worse. This year we’re dressing up like superheroes. Like I said, we’re dorks.

    It’s weird, we know, but we have a lot of fun with it. More than anything else, it’s an excuse to have our friends and family over. We get to run around the yard with the people playing the game, and get to spend the rest of the night enjoying a cookout with everyone else.  But that’s why I’m pretty convinced that our child will turn out to be a dork…because he’ll be surrounded by them! No offense to any of our friends and family members reading this, but you guys are huge dorks too. Our child will grow up with parents that not only think adults playing with Nerf guns is normal, he’ll be surrounded by them!

    I think our future child’s dorkiness is a great thing though. Although I’m sure he’ll eventually be embarrassed that mom and dad are shooting at their friends with Nerf darts, there’s going to be a time when he has a lot of fun with it. We’re looking forward to having him around. We can’t wait to have our own little NerfWar player running around the yard with us, trying to capture the other team’s flag. Hopefully by the time we have our next NerfWar, we’ll have our little Nerf Warrior here. I think he’ll love being a part of it. Even if it means having a family full of dorks.

Home Study? NAILED IT.

So we finally made it. After weeks of worrying about what the home study would be like, we were finally able to get through it.  In retrospect, there was no need to worry at all, our case worker’s visit on Thursday and Friday couldn’t have gone any better. We spent about 3 hours Thursday evening answering a few questions both individually and together, then another hour or so on Friday talking about a few other things, and after that we were done. It was great.

The fact that we got through this with such ease is due in large part to our great case worker from The Miriam Project. Brooke and her agency have been outstanding to work with since we first met them. They’ve always been eager to help with any questions we’ve had and have been an amazing partner in this process. The other way we got through this was through all the support of our family and friends. Last week, as this home visit was drawing near, we asked for your prayers. When it came time for our home study, the nerves we’d felt the weeks before (the nerves that fueled cleaning and painting binges around our home) sort of disappeared. By Thursday afternoon, we felt comfortable. We were comfortable answering the questions we were asked, comfortable talking about the paperwork we had to do, and comfortable discussing the future of the child we’ve prayed for all this time.

Next on our seemingly endless to-do list is the creation of a profile book. This will be a book of photos and descriptions for our agency to show to birth mothers that they feel would be good matches for us. The goal is to try to use this book to try and show who we are. I’m not sure if that’s possible, but we’re going to do our best. Eventually, this book will find its way into the hands of a birth mother who hoping to provide for her child what we can give. So just when we thought the pressure was off, here we are back in it again. Regardless, we’re confident that God has a plan for this process. He already has a birth mother and child in mind for us. And while I’m sure we’ll still agonize over every picture and every word that goes into that book, knowing that He is in charge continues to comfort us.

A Week of Panic!

      In the last month we’ve sold concessions at an auction, had 2 day yard sale, and filled our yard with 627 pounds of aluminum cans. It would be reasonable now if we decided that we needed to relax a bit and take some time off. I guess we’re not all that reasonable, because all of that stuff seems like a vacation this week as we prepare for the biggest step so far in our adoption journey: our home study. So instead of taking this week and relaxing, we’re running around the house in a panic, cleaning (and re-cleaning) everything we can find in preparation for our case worker’s visit to our house.

     That panic is based not in reality, but in the fact that we have no idea what to expect. Sure, we’ve read every book we can find, talked to everyone we can think of, and done more research online than we thought was humanly possible, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re still new at this. All that research is great, but none of those books gave us a guarantee about what would happen at our house. I mean, what if she wants to look in our fridge? She could, right?  I guess it’s possible, so we cleaned that out. Does it look bad if we have a bunch of dirty laundry? Just in case, we’ll wash every bit of clothing we have. At this point, I’m prepared to be judged based on what brand of peanut butter we use. (It’s JIF, but I’m picking up some Peter Pan tomorrow just in case).

      At the end of the day though, all of the fear and worry over this home visit can be calmed by thinking of one simple question, “Why are we adopting?” When we ask ourselves that question, we know that we’re doing this because it’s what God has called us to do. When we first decided to do this, it was after weeks of prayer and discussion, all of which was leading us to the same direction. If we are going to trust in God to guide us in our decision, how can we not also trust Him to guide us through the times when we’re stressed or uncertain? Despite the brief moments of stress at our house this week, we take comfort in the fact that God is bigger than anything we’re worrying about.

     As of tonight, we have about 2 more days to get the house ready for our home study. And I’m sure over those next 2 days we’ll be running around like crazy to make everything spotless, but we’re also going to remember that ultimately God is in control of our adoption from even before we knew about it. I didn’t mean to be preachy this week, but if you’ll allow one more thing, I’d like to ask (if praying is your thing) for your prayers this week as we prepare and go through our home study. We’d greatly appreciate it. We will continue to pray that this process goes smoothly and that we will be able to let go and let God take control of what He would have us do. By this time next week, I’m confident that He will have guided us through a successful home study and have us one step closer to bringing our child home. Even if we don’t have the right kind of peanut butter.

627 Pounds-worth of Thanks

        So, how was your weekend? Ours was pretty nice. After I got in from work Friday, my parents and Ashley’s parents stopped by for a little while, which was great, and later a few more friends stopped by for a few minutes. All in all it was a pretty nice evening.

Oh yeah, and then there was this….

 

That’s what our yard looked like when we woke up on Saturday morning. Friday was, of course, our “Can Our Yard Night” fundraiser, so we spent Saturday cleaning up. We spent most of the morning raking cans into a huge pile then shoveling them into garbage bags. After loading up 4 cars with 627 pounds of aluminum, we began our caravan to Mitchell to Goodman’s for recycling. And though I’m not sure dad could see out of the back of his truck, and I drove most of the way with one hand because of the giant bag of cans in my passenger seat pushing against my side, we all made it safely there. After a few minutes of unloading (which, by the way, goes way faster than the loading), we had finished up another fundraiser and had another big addition to our adoption fund.

 

We wanted to thank all of you again so much for taking part in this fundraiser and for your donations. The amount of cans as well as separate donations that we received was more than we ever imagined and we’re so grateful. And a special thank you to the people at Goodman’s who were so kind and helpful to us on Saturday. Friday night (and even Saturday) was a lot of fun for us and we can’t tell you how much we enjoyed sharing that evening with you.

Now that we have that out of the way, we’ll get to work preparing for our home study in a couple of weeks. We’ll try to keep you all updated on how that goes after we get finished with it. We’re also planning on having some other events in the future, but we don’t have anything to announce yet. We’ll keep you posted on here when we get those nailed down. In the meantime, thanks for all you have done and all that you continue to do. Your support, prayers, and encouragement mean so much to us.

Can Our Yard Night!

      We’re going to keep this short and sweet tonight for a few reasons. First of all, we’re getting ready for our next fundraiser this weekend, so we don’t have a lot of extra time. And secondly, I forgot about writing the blog until after 9 o’clock tonight. Sorry.

     Anyway, this week is our long-awaited “Can Our Yard Night” and we couldn’t be more excited. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone as they come over to trash our yard for the evening (and to clarify, it’s only that evening. This isn’t going to be an every weekend thing). So Friday night, from 6-11 pm, swing by our house at 981 Orchard Rd. in Salem and come take part. And while you’re at it, tell your friends, co-workers, neighbors, or whoever else you can find to stop by also. This is a “more the merrier” kind of situation. If you don’t have any cans at home, we can work with that. Just stop by the store, buy a can of coke, drink it on your way here, then toss it in the yard. No problem!

     We’ll have everything marked as best we can, but just to keep everyone in the loop, here’s how this is going to work. First of all, we’re going to be dumping all the cans in yard on the south side of the house. We’re keeping things on that side of the house just to make sure we keep them from drifting into the neighbor’s yard or into the road. Don’t worry, the side yard will allow plenty of room for you to dump as many cans as you’d like. We’ll have everything marked off in the yard though, so when you get here, you’ll know where you can dump everything. Also, when you get here, we’re going to have you turn into the driveway, then into the yard. This should make it easier for everyone to get off the road, dump their cans, then safely get back on the road. Again, we’ll have all of this marked off so there won’t be any confusion. Driving through the yard shouldn’t be any problem (unless it’s really soggy, then just drive slow) but if you’re worried about damaging the yard, just remember, we’ll have a yard full of aluminum cans. We appreciate the concern, but we’ll have bigger problems.

     But just because the entrance and exit will be marked, don’t think that we’re going to push you through like you’re in the drive-thru at McDonald’s. We want to have fun with this and we want you to also. If you want to drop them off and leave, that’s fine, but if you feel like hanging out with us for a little while, we’ll have a spot on the side of the yard where you can park and stay for a little while. We’ll be sitting around outside from 6-11, and we’d love to have the company.

     I think that pretty much covers all the details, but if you have questions or there’s anything I didn’t cover, you can call me at 812-968-4975, or send either of us (or our adoption page) a message on facebook and we’ll answer any questions you have. We’re looking forward to a really fun evening and hope to see all of you there. We’re as excited to see you guys as some of you are to make a mess in our yard. And, by the way, if any of you really enjoy picking up cans, then I think I might be able to hook you up with a fun activity for Saturday!