Our journey coming to an end

I wanted to share the email that we sent out to immediate friends & family yesterday. I would like to post here as well.  I know a lot of you "silent" readers have been prayer warriors for us throughout this process and we will forever be grateful to you for keeping our family in your prayers.  I do ask that you do not stop praying for adoption though.  At our agency, they are at their highest numbers ever of waiting families and have now started putting people on waiting lists.  Pray for the waiting families, the children, and the birth parents.  Though this didn't work out for Ross & I, I do not want to leave a bad taste in any one's mouth about adoption.  We are still 100% supportive of adoption and are so thankful and blessed for going through this journey, even though it didn't end up how we expected.  Thank you for following us throughout this journey!


Hello Everyone,

 We felt it was appropriate to update family & friends with our adoption status as you were all there from the first steps we took with the process.  Many of you were skeptical of the situation but were supportive, which is what we needed.  After 1 year of preparing our home study and 2 years waiting on the adoption list,  Ross & I have made the decision to not renew our home study  and be removed from the list. 

 It's been a very hard decision for us, but the reasons for getting off the list out-weighed the reasons for staying on.   We are ready to move on with our life, and accept the fact that we are and will only be a family of 4, even though we had at times visions of something else.

We have yet to understand why we were brought to the adoption process and waited patiently for 2 years with nothing but disappointment.  We have cried, laughed, and prayed until we were blue in the face for two straight years.  We're exhausted. We are thankful for the opportunity and know that God has bigger and better plans for us,  we are needed somewhere else.  That's not to say that we aren't mourning the "visions of our family" that we once had.  It's hard to have a plan and have it not go as planned but as we all know, God's plan is much bigger and better.  

I want to thank you all for your love and support throughout this 3+ years.  I know we wouldn't have gotten this far without the support of wonderful family and friends. 

Until our next journey,

Ross & Anne

Prayer Request

I don't have much to update but just wanted to ask for some prayers for our family as we decide together the next few months if our adoption journey is coming to an end or if we should continue it.  Our home study is up for renewal at the end of August and we truly feel torn.  We are exhausted. Mentally and Emotionally and are not sure how much more we have left to wait another year.  We know God has a plan and whichever way he leads us, we will follow.  Right now I could use a crystal ball if you happen to have one laying around :)

Thank you!

May

Hi Everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I've posted. We haven't had any phone calls or anything since so nothing to really report!  Our agency is up to 29 waiting families and out of those only 1 is "pending" an adoption so there are a ton of familes in our shoes.  For some reason, summer seems to always be a slow time with adoption, I'm not really sure why. We are staying busy over here though!  We have started building a guest cabin at our lake home and finding new projects to complete around the house. Never enough time in the day to get it all done but once  it is done, it will be wonderful!

Our youngest graduated from Preschool this year and will attend full time Kindergarten in the Fall.  It's hard to imagine our "baby" is 5 and going to school soon.  Big milestone in our family.  Ian will go into 3rd grade which seems crazy as well!  Another big milestone that is approaching way too fast is my 30th birthday!  I always said I wanted to be done having kids by 30 and clearly that "wish" is not coming true very quickly!  I may have to add 31, or 32 :)

Both boys started baseball followed by soccer so we will be running Mon-Thur nights with that.  Welcome to the world of kids in sports! Busy, busy!  Ross will be coaching both boys' baseball teams this year so that will be fun for all of them.  Looking forward to watching their games!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.  We've had a lot of people give us the "dont give up" talk lately and we do appreciate it. Somedays we do feel like we want to give up and then we get the push to keep waiting and holding out hope. I cannot believe it's almost been two years since we started the journey of waiting and almost 3 years of actually starting the journey.  Time sure flies.....

May

May already!?!  Cannot believe some of you got over a foot of snow today.  We were lucky to not get any. 

My lack of updates has been mostly due to no updates. It's been very slow on the adoption front, which gets me frusterated. Trying to focus my energy on other things so the frusteration doesn't turn into negative energy.   I'm not really even sure what to say anymore on our blog but we're still here. Waiting. and Praying. 

March Update

These last few weeks have been pretty quiet in the adoption world but we did just get the March update outlining the agencies current clients and inquiries.  There are a few birth moms who are considering adoption that are due this summer and have not started looking at families yet.  Keeps me positive knowing this I guess. 

Tomorrow afternoon, Ross, Nolan & I are heading to Arizona for a few days.  Spending the night in Pheonix with some friends we met in Mexico and then heading to Lake Havasu to spend the rest of the weekend with Ross's sister.  Even though we just got back from vacation 6 weeks ago, Ross & I are definitely ready for another one! And Nolan is super pumped he gets to come with this time :)

Finally, if anyone is interested/or know anyone who would be interested,  the Catelynn and Tyler (Teen Mom fame) tour will be on the following dates:
-Tuesday, April 16th: St.Cloud State University
-Wednesday, April 17th: U of MN
Please help spread the word to their target demographic (18-24!)

:(

I'm so frustrated today!  We got word that the birth mom decided that she didn't want to look at profiles so far away from her.  (She lives in Georgia).  It frustrates me that the social workers let it go this far.  Involving 14 families, sending our books down to GA and getting all of our hopes up and then none of the books even got looked at. 

I am at the point where I have removed most emotions from the profile showings and have refrained myself from getting really excited, but it truly is hard to remove all emotions 100%.  Every profile showing that goes by we wonder "is this the one?" Like a woman trying to get pregnant, every pregnancy test she takes wondering if this is it, that's the feeling I have. You try so hard to not get too excited but it's unavoidable. 

It will be 2 years this summer that we have been waiting and have a lot of hard decisions we have to make soon if we will continue this journey or not.  It's truly an exhausting process, one we could have never prepared ourselves for 100%.  Some days I feel like I am constantly on a roller coaster.  Please pray for our family.  We are not ready to give up, yet we also don't know how much longer we will be able to continue.  I love this quote......

March Profile Showing

Just wanted to give a quick update that we will be having an out of state profile showing on Monday of next week (25th of March).  There will be approx 14 families shown coming from all over United States!  Baby is due in early May.  As always, please keep all the families involved in your prayers! We would LOVE to welcome a spring baby to our family this year :)