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!