Happy Birthday...

Girls trip to San Fran in 2002

When I told Mac this morning that it was Aunt Brookie's birthday today, he said, "I hope she enjoys her birthday in heaven." And I hope she does too, but I sure wish we were celebrating it with her here with us. I hate that she was TAKEN from us and I miss her fiercely. Nine years is way too long.

I am so grateful for eternal families and the asurity that we will see her again.

Miss and love you Brooke!

Happy 28th Birthday!

Sunday Gratitude {my forever family}

I am grateful...

01.   that ONE YEAR AGO TODAY we were able to take our baby girl to the Temple and have her sealed to us FOREVER!!

02.    that the capstone of our adoption experiences gets to be kneeling across the alter from my true love just as it was the day we started our family together almost eleven years ago.

03.   that so many family and friends were able to be there to show their love and support at all three of our sealings.

04.  to be able to start the process to find our third miracle baby and remember that the ultimate goal is to have him/her forever.

05.   that after the news of so much heart ache and loss for family and friends this week, that they all have the knowledge that families CAN be forever and not just for this life.

06.   for my beautiful, smart, amazing children and that I am lucky enough to be their Mother.

07.  for the sacrifice that their amazing birth parents made for them...adoption truly is all about LOVE.

08.   to have our children's birth families as our extended family.

09.   that my parents and my husband's parents made the choice to be sealed in the Temple. What a great example they were and are.

10.  that we live close enough to the Temple that we can go often.

bride...

Hubs's little sister was married a couple of weeks ago. And I had the pleasure of being their photographer at the Temple. I LOVE taking pictures at the Temple. J was such a stunningly, beautiful bride. These are just my favorite photos and just the few that I have had time to edit so far. We miss her terribly and every time I think about her not coming home for the summers anymore, it makes me really sad. But we are so SO happy for her and L.

a decade...with eternity left!

To think we have been married for ten years is crazy. On one hand it is really hard to believe, because I don't feel that old and in hind-sight it seemed to go by fast. On the other hand it is easy to believe when I think about all that we have been through in ten years.

We have had the lowest of lows and the highest of highs (several of each of those) and every thing in between!

Hubs and I chose to be married in the Temple where we could be sealed to each other forever, not just until "death do us part".

Over these ten years we have had many huge events happen in our lives that have reaffirmed how important it is to us to live worthily so that we can keep those blessings that come from the covenants we made with each other and our Heavenly Father ten years ago.

We want our family to be FOREVER!

We want to see our sister B and our nephew N.

We want the beautiful children that we are and will be blessed with to be with us in the eternities!

I want this man I fell in love with and married ten years ago to be by my side forever.

I want NOTHING LESS!

Hubs,

Thank you...

for always loving me,

for being beyond patient with me,

for being my rock in our darkest days,

for holding me until I fall asleep,

for telling me you love me,

for kissing me after we pray,

for kissing me every morning when you get out of bed,

for kissing me every time you leave and come home,

for helping me when I need you,

for our 1.2.3.I.love.you signal,

for loving me no matter what I look like,

for listening to my rambling thoughts,

for holding my hand,

for being worthy to hold the priesthood,

for having a Temple recommend,

for coming home every night to us,

for being the man I want by my side forever,

and for being everything I need you to be!

I LOVE YOU Hubs!

  

Sealing photos...

A friend emailed me today reminding me that I hadn't posted our pictures from the Temple. I kindof forgot to post them here because I had already posted them on Oak's blog for her birth family.

We didn't do the professional photos this time because I didn't want another thing to stress about. I also knew that Mac would not cooperate for pictures, and that would stress me out too.

I ended up having a friend (who is a great photographer too!) shoot some photos of us, telling her that all I wanted is one good picture of us in white and one good picture of us in front of the Temple. Mac was such a goofball when she was taking our pictures in the atrium, that I didn't regret at all not getting professional pictures done.

These are my favorites and I have to say that I LOVE THEM!!!

Thanks A!

Adding to our ETERNAL family...

On Saturday, January 8th, 2011

we will be able to take our precious

Oak

HERE...

photo by Shonda Barlow

And our FOREVER family will become FOUR!

We are so excited and blessed to be able to have our sweet girl forever.

Heavenly Father absolutely knows what he is doing,

and we have seen his miracles in our life.

National Adoption Month

November is NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH!

It makes me smile that there is a whole month devoted to just ADOPTION. I feel so fortunate to be apart of the adoption community and to get to feel first hand all the love and emotion that goes along with growing your family through adoption. I just want to take this opportunity to share my feelings with all my friends and family and all those that may peek at my blog. I feel that it is so important to get a positive message out there about adoption, so if anyone has any questions about adoption or our own story of adoption, I would be happy to answer them.

I can't even begin to tell you EXACTLY how this picture makes me FEEL!

This is our sweet, beautiful, angel "C" holding our Mac right before we took him home from the hospital. I feel so fortunate that we had about 5 months before Mac was born to get to know C pretty well. But it also made it that much harder to watch her go through the pain and heart ache that goes with placing your child. After leaving the hospital with our son, I could not think about C or what had just happened with adopting Mac with out crying. It is a very unique experience to feel so incredibly happy and so incredibly heartbroken at the same time. How I love and admire C for her vision, for her beautiful, selfless heart, for her sincere love and concern for Mac, for her desire to do the right thing for her son, and for just loving Mac enough to put him before her own comfort and desires. I think about and pray for C every single day! And my love for her is as deep as it is for Mac. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to keep in contact with C often. It makes us so happy to know that she is doing so well, and to know that her future is bright as Heavenly Father is surely blessing her for the sacrifice she has made for our sweet Mac.

C, I hope that you know how much you are loved by not only us, but our extended family. Mac will always know your great love for him. You are our hero!

Saying THANK YOU is just not enough!

 

After so many years of crying and yearning for this day, it felt so surreal when it finally happened. Especially in the manner of which it happened. This picture is of us seeing and holding our son for the first time. Mac was only about 30 minutes old and you could feel his sweet spirit and we knew something wonderful was happening right before our eyes. We knew this beautiful little baby boy was OUR son. We had to wait along time for him, but all the pain and heartache we felt from our infertility was worth it and we would go through it a million more times for this unique and amazing experience. I know without a doubt that Mac was to come to us in the way he came to us, when he was supposed to come to us. There was no other way! Mac is almost one and this day has been on my mind alot. I can't believe that I have had the great privilege to be Mac's mother and that it never would have happened without our C.

Making Mac ours FOREVER was a dream come true!

The day was more special than I could have ever imagined. Being able to have my family forever is so important to me. And to be able to share that with so many family and friends was a special experience. The moment I walked into the sealing room, I started balling (I remember doing the same thing when Hubs and I were married and sealed). To be able to look across at my sweet husband and then over at my beautiful son and to know that we were a forever family was such a peaceful and satisfying feeling.

And the icing on the cake was seeing C and having her parents attend the sealing. We had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with them before we were supposed to get ready for our sealing. And I will treasure those moments of getting to see them interact with Mac forever. I know having them there will always be special for Mac, because he will know that they all loved him enough to let him have an eternal family with a Mother and Father. I will never forget what C said to me as we had to say goodbye. She was crying and she hugged me and told me that it made her so happy to know that we all got what we wanted. Oh my beautiful C, how we LOVE YOU!


The opportunity to grow our family through adoption is truly a blessing I am so grateful for! I love being Mac's mother, I love watching my husband be the best father he can be. I love watching Mac grow and learn, although it breaks my heart at how fast that is happening right before my eyes. We want the world for Mac. I pray everyday that we can do our best at raising Mac to be proud of where he came from.
We can't wait until we have the opportunity again to grow our family through adoption. And we pray that it will happen in Heavenly Father's time, not ours.


Please be an advocate for adoption!
If you have the opportunity...
Help single women in unplanned pregnancies realize that there is another option out there for them.
Be supportive to adoptive couples who struggle with infertility by being sensitive and aware of their very tender feelings.

a mother...

"To be a righteous woman during the winding-up scenes on this earth, before the Second Coming of our Savior, is an especially noble calling. The righteous woman's strength and influence today can be tenfold what it might be in more tranquil times. She has been placed here to help to enrich, to protect, and to guard the home-which is society's basic and most noble institution. Other institutions in society may falter and even fail, but the righteous woman can help to save the home, which may be the last and only sanctuary some mortals know in the midst of storm and strife."

--Spencer W. Kimball (1982)

The beginning of FOREVER!...(Mac's Adoption story~Part 1)

***When I sat down to write about having Mac sealed to us, my mind kept on wandering to the very beginning of our story and how we got to this day. It seemed that it would only make sense to tell you this way, so that you may all understand the great significance this day truly had for us. So as to not bore everyone all at once, this story will have to be told in parts.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This is VERY significant in my life, because not only does the church I belong to have many beliefs, but I truly have faith in and know for myself that these beliefs are true. One of these beliefs is that families can be forever, we do not have to part at death. As worthy members of the Church, we are able to receive permission to enter the House of the Lord, the Temple, and receive the blessings of eternal families. Hubs and I were able to be sealed together for time and eternity on April 14, 2001 in the Portland, Oregon Temple. I am so grateful to Hubs for being the man he is, that he loved (loves) me enough to want to be worthy enough to take me to the Temple so that I can have my own eternal family. So that we can be together forever.

Another wonderful blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is the strength it has given Hubs and I to get through our trials. In the seven plus years we have been married we have gone through many, very difficult, life altering trials. Our knowledge and beliefs has helped us to take the very real pain and heartache that we felt through those trials and turn it into something that would help us, refine us, strengthen us, and make us better disciples of Christ.

One of our great trials is the struggle we have had bringing children into our eternal family. As with most trials, no one understands the great pain and heartache that goes with infertility unless you have traveled that road, and I do not wish that road on anyone. And even though at times the pain and heartache seemed unbearable, I never felt my Heavenly Father's comfort and love for me more. I learned so much about myself, my husband, our relationship with each other and my relationship with my Heavenly Father. I knew that my Heavenly Father had a plan for me, for us. In waiting for that plan to unfold, we learned to rely on the Lord, rely on each other, be grateful for what we have, and to have patience.

After five years of struggling with infertility, we felt like we should try growing our family through adoption. Choosing adoption is not something to take lightly by anyone. And even though we tried other ways first to grow our family, and they were unsuccessful, we would never say that adoption was our "last resort". We know that there was much to be learned to prepare ourselves to bring Mac into our family in this special way, and that adopting our son was Heavenly Father's plan for us all along. When we look back at our journey from the moment we turned in our paperwork for adoption, we can see now how Heavenly Father was leading us to C and Mac.