National Adoption Month

Hi everyone! I can't let November slip away without a blog post during National Adoption Month. We haven't found our baby yet, but we are still praying for a miracle and we are more hopeful than ever! Our adoption agency featured our video and it went "viral!" Over 6,000 views! I will have to share it again on our Facebook page (Shawn and Renee's Adoption Journey) and maybe it will reach the prospective birthmother who is looking for us.

Family photo from August

As expected, fall has been busy! I am teaching 9 online sections of biology (some are really small) and love that even though that keeps me up late sometimes working, I get to be a work at home mom with a job I love. Shawn has been learning all about life in Georgia outside of Atlanta. His territory stretches from Macon in middle GA all the way to the South Carolina and Tennessee borders. He is loving his new position with the Department of Education and feels like this is where he can really make a difference.

Halloween at Target is the best!

We've enjoyed several Fall Festivals. There's just something about seeing the leaves change color, pumpkins, fall foods (pumpkin everything!) and slightly cooler weather (think 60s and 70s) that our family loves! We tried a corn maze and realized Avery and I would probably be stuck there for days if we didn't have our master map reader, Shawn, with us. Avery also had fun shooting a corn cannon, carving a pumpkin and dressing up as Hermione Granger from Harry Potter for Halloween. We stayed here for Thanksgiving and we are so lucky to have friends that treat us like family and included us in their feasting. We did a lot of relaxing on those 4 days off and today was a bit of a rude awakening -who knew you could be tired from so much relaxing?!

In all her glory!

Although we haven't been matched with a birthmother yet, we have had several positive and uplifting things happen in the last few weeks. Our new contact at ANLC has been much more honest and open with me about numbers of birthmothers they are seeing, who they are sending our profile to, etc. This makes me hopeful as she is much more hands on. Also, Avery's amazing birthmother wrote the sweetest letter to prospective birthmothers about her experience with us and our commitment to our open adoption. We think the world of her and it brought tears to our eyes to read her words. ANLC is adding her letter to our profile packet. It touches our hearts to know she is praying and doing all that she can to help us in this second adoption journey so that Avery can have a sibling. Another exciting development - KVC Photography began a project called the Deeply Loved Project. Katie, the owner, is an adoptee and she wanted to give a voice to the adoption community. She held a contest and chose 3 families - she is doing the photography and partnering with another woman who writes love stories to share our adoption stories. We are thrilled and humbled that she chose us! We met her this morning for our photography session. Two out of the three of us are not photogenic but she made it fun and easy and she captured some amazing photos. She will be working with the writer on our stories and we can't wait to see what comes out of it.

We so appreciate everyone standing by us during this journey. Keep sharing our blog, our Facebook page and tell someone you know that friends of yours are trying to adopt again - you never know, they may know someone thinking about adoption. :-)

We got to see a sweet friend's 3 week old baby, Eden! Avery was in love!

Summer 2016

Fun with sidewalk chalk and bubbles!

While we don't have much to report on the adoption front, I do want to be able to look back some day and reminisce about what we were doing while we were waiting. While we haven't exactly been sitting around feeling blue that we aren't quite where we thought we'd be this summer, we did feel like we needed to be intentional about adding experiences and making our summer as meaningful as possible. Avery has been waiting for a sibling for as long as we've been wanting to give her one and she's old enough that she's going to remember this time in her life so we are trying to make it a summer to remember - and possibly (hopefully!) her last as an only child. She loves coming up with names for her future sibling - the names right now are all "Harry Potter- centric."

We kicked off our summer with a Memorial Day 5K/10K. We walk and run at least 5 days a week so I thought it would be fun to do a family race. Shawn was less enthusiastic but he went along with it and he and Avery did a fantastic job on their first 5K race! I signed up for the 10K - my first- and I thought for sure I had made a huge mistake once we drove the course and I realized it was going to be a lot more hilly than the greenway we usually run. Shawn and Avery were my constant cheerleaders and my brother, Justin, was a pretty fabulous long distance coach. I was pretty proud of our accomplishment.

A ride in Nana's mustang never disappoints!

Shawn's grandmother passed away so we drove up to northern NY at the beginning of June. Although the trip was for a sad occasion we made the most of it by stopping in at my parent's in western NY and visiting our old stomping grounds in Syracuse. Shawn and I spent our first year of marriage in Syracuse so it was fun to check out all of our favorite spots. It's always funny to us to visit our first apartment - we had a 2 bedroom townhouse that had just been remodeled and we thought it was just the greatest. I'm sure it's gone downhill a little in the last 14 years but I'm pretty sure we were also blinded by love back then too. 

Shawn and I celebrated our 14th anniversary on June 15th. Our friends, Courtney and Wade, watched Avery for a few hours and Shawn and I enjoyed checking out Ponce City Market and a kid free meal. Avery joined us on our actual anniversary for lunch at Fickle Pickle.

Towards the end of June we took a long weekend and went to Jacksonville Beach, FL. On spring break we discovered that because Jacksonville isn't super touristy, the beaches aren't very crowded. We had two great days at the beach and we can't wait to go back. 

I took Avery for her first pedicure before we headed for the beach. She thinks we should go every week now since it is "so relaxing!"

Avery FINALLY learned to ride a two-wheeler!

On July 16th, Avery turned 7! I can not believe we have a 7 year old! On her birthday we went to a rescue zoo in north GA and toured a goldmine in Dahlonega. She chose to go out to a Ichiban for a fun hibachi supper. She is really into Harry Potter right now and is reading the 5th book so we knew she'd be thrilled with Hermione's robe and wand - her reaction and joy did not disappoint! We also spent some time the night before her birthday texting with Avery's birthmother. We are thankful every day that she chose us to be Avery's parents. Here are the pictures from when we met Avery for the first time. This was at 1AM after driving 11 from Charlotte to St. Louis with only 2 stops. :-) My goodness...we look like kids ourselves. :-)

We've still got a few weeks before the full madness of the school year begins so we hope to make a few more trips to the lake, the splashpad, and maybe some hiking. 

On July 1st our adoption liason retired. While we enjoyed working with her, we are looking forward to having someone fresh on our case. Our new contact person is the owner of the company so we are hopeful that her expertise will get us some traction. At this point, I think we are ruining their match time statistics. 

We have started a Facebook page and we're doing everything we can to network, in addition to the marketing efforts of our agency, but for some reason we just haven't caught the attention of any expectant moms. We've had a few friends send us adoption situations that they've seen posted on Facebook and we are so appreciative for these leads and we are checking each one out. Please continue to pray for us and share our story. We never imagined we'd be waiting this long but we are still confident that we were called to adopt again and we have faith that everything will work out just as God has planned. Thanks for sticking with us!

Spread the Word

Mini Spring Break weekend in Jacksonville, FL

Good afternoon friends, family and followers! I was ashamed to realize I hadn't written a blog post yet this year! The problem is, I write them frequently in my head and they rarely make it to the computer. We don't have a whole lot to update you with but we are hopeful that 2016 will be the year we become "party of four."

Jacksonville Beach

We've been enjoying spring in our house! It's fun to see what springs up. We had tons of daffodils in front of the house and around the mailbox and now we've got irises, azaleas, and roses in bloom! This past weekend Shawn and Avery planted some pots to add color to the front of the house and we discovered baby figs and baby pears have started growing in the backyard. Now, if we can keep them all alive it will be a miracle. We do not have green thumbs but love looking at flowers.

Jacksonville Zoo

Our agency keeps us updated with how many times they have sent our profile out to prospective birth mothers and how many views our profile is getting online. These numbers have been fairly steady but we still haven't made the connection with that special lady that we are hoping for. We are still hopeful though and we know that when the time does come we'll be able to look back and understand why we were meant to wait.

Hiking in the Georgia Mountains

We've been working the last few weeks to update our homestudy. It hasn't quite been another year but we need to have everything done so that our social worker can get it updated before the one from last year expires. Even though nothing has changed this required physicals for all of us, financial statements, verification of employment, fingerprinting for the FBI and GBI, and a few other forms. The fingerprinting is the silliest - we had to go to 2 different UPS stores - one for the FBI and one for the GBI. Our social worker came for a visit as well. She's a very sweet lady and Avery just loves her. We hope the next time we see her is for a post-placement visit.

We appreciate you sharing our story and helping us spread the word. We know our agency is promoting us but we are also hopeful that we can make a connection with a birthmother through mutual friends. Thanks to one of our friends giving me a contact that may have known of a possible birthmother, I called up a stranger ended up talking to her for quite a while. She and her husband adopted 7 months ago and she had heard of another woman considering adoption. She looked into it for me after talking and it turns out that her friend hasn't seen the woman again so she didn't have any more information. But, she has my contact info now and has shared our story with several of her friends so it's just that many more people helping us network.

Vogel State Park

We definitely have our days that are difficult but we have a pretty positive outlook most of the time. When we first began the process, I saw a diaper bag that I loved. Shawn told me just to buy it and we could add things that we bought for the baby in so it was ready to go when we got the call. Over the course of almost 2 years, that diaper bag is full of sleepers, sleep gowns, and burp cloths. Now, I was able to laugh about it, but the day I saw our diaper bag for sale in TJMaxx, I definitely had the thought of "we've been waiting so long our diaper bag is in TJMaxx!?" :-)

Running through the sprinkler! Looking forward to lots of backyard fun this summer!

Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers! Please feel free to share our blog and get in touch with us if you would like extra info or a profile to share with someone.