Isaac's Gotcha Day Anniversary

Isaac's "Gotcha Day"--April 26, 2011

It's already been over a year since Isaac's adoption was finalized (a.k.a. "Gotcha Day!").  I'll never forget standing in front of the judge when she asked, "Do you realize that, after this day, this child will forever be yours?"  It's a day we'll never forget.

We thought it'd be a fun tradition for our family to celebrate each anniversary of Isaac's finalization and, someday, the finalizations of the other children God adds to our family.

This year, we went to Woolley's for ice cream to celebrate Isaac's Gotcha Day. We stood in front of the counter with all the different ice cream toppings, and Isaac immediately starting pointing to the sprinkles and signing "please." There were 2 high school girls working, and, when they gave Isaac his ice cream cup, there were definitely more sprinkles than ice cream. He loved it. :)

We love you, Isaac David,

and couldn't be happier that you are FOREVER ours.

Tired Out from the Park

Wordless Wednesday

Afternoon Fun

A friend told me about this idea a few weeks ago.  With all the rain and storms yesterday, we finally had a chance to stay inside and try it. 

Instead of regular blanket time, I filled a big bowl with ice cubes and set it, along with an empty bowl, on a beach towel.  Isaac was so intent on transferring the cubes from the filled bowl to the empty one. 

Hooray for simple (and free) ideas!  :)

He ate a few, too!

Mother's Day 2011

What a sweet Mother's Day!  Mother's Day is now such a happy Sunday for me, but there were several years where it was even too hard to go to church.  One year, Dave planned a weekend away for us over Mother's Day that included a day at the Fort Worth zoo and a night in Glen Rose. 

This Mother's Day, one of my friends texted me: "I'll never forget when you were so sad that Dave had to take you to the zoo for Mother's Day.  I'm so glad you don't have to go to the zoo for Mother's Day anymore."  Now THAT made me laugh!

My heart is beyond grateful for Isaac David.  He fills my days with energy, amusement, and LOTS of laughter.  Some of my current favorite things to do with Isaac are...going on long walks and picking up handfuls of rocks, watching the train by our house, watching train DVDs, playing on his new playset, and hearing him jabber on and on constantly.  He is such a little delight!

 

On Mother's Day, Dave had breakfast and Caribou coffee waiting for me when I got back home from an early morning run.  We went to Keystone and then met my parents and Grandma Joan at Mac's for Mother's Day lunch.  It was delicious!  Later in the day we Skyped with Dave's parents to wish Nana/Dave's mom a Happy Mother's Day and then ate supper outside.  A perfect day!

4 Generations--Grandma Joan, my dad, Isaac, and me

This is one loved little guy!  Isaac with Grandpa Kal & Grandma Missy

A Birthmother's Mother's Day

I can't think of Mother's Day without thinking of Isaac's birthmother.  Our relationship with her has changed so much over the past two years.  For one thing, it's strange to think that we've "known" each other for 2 years now!  (We were matched with her 2 years ago yesterday.)  Just this week, we were talking on the phone & she mentioned something that had happened to her grandfather 2 summers ago.  I remembered that incident exactly, and we both laughed, thinking how funny it is to have known each other this long already. 

Before entering the world of adoption, I had many misconceptions about birthmothers.  Why do they get pregnant?  Don't they know better?  Through our relationship with Isaac's birthmother, along with watching several of our friends' adoption stories (here's one), we've come to discover it's much more complicated than initial judgments.  Just like each of us, they've made choices that have consequences.  And, whether we agree with their choices or not, in the end they are courageous and brave.  These women choose life for a child that they love....that love is so great that they choose to place their baby in a better situation than they can provide at that time. 

Although the day we brought Isaac home was incredible, it was also shadowed by the reality that our overwhelming joy came at the expense of his birth family's sacrifice.  We welcomed a baby with love, while they essentially said "goodbye" to him with love.  We are forever grateful for their sacrifice.

From the bottom of our hearts, Happy Mother's Day to a dear birthmother.

Easter 2011

Isaac is at such a fun age right now!  Easter was no exception.  A few days before Easter, we had a little egg hunt at our house, where Isaac discovered that there is candy inside each egg.  Look at him filling his mouth in the picture above!  I made these Easter bunny cupcakes (courtesy of Betty Crocker) for our little egg hunt.

After his nap that afternoon, Isaac found his Easter basket again full of now-empty eggs.  He still reopened every single one to see if there was any more candy in them.  :)

We woke up Isaac early on Easter morning so that he could open his Easter basket before I went to church early.  He spied it right away on the island!

He was still a little sleepy, which must be why he looks so confused when he's holding this drill. Maybe he knew you're supposed to get candy in your Easter basket instead of toy tools? :)  He figured out what to do with them, though, and started drilling the gate attachments right away.

Easter morning at Keystone was incredible!  The service started with "Take Heart," during which there was powerful text and video on a floor-to-ceiling screen.  Click here to see the start of our service live--make sure you watch to the end!  To make Easter even more powerful, 88 people accepted Christ over the course of our 5 services!!! 

Easter Morning at Keystone Church!

Dave's mom usually makes a lamb cake each Easter, & I decided to start this tradition, too.  The lamb looks a little battered in this picture, because it had just endured two car trips on its way to Easter dinner.  :) 

After Isaac woke up from his nap, we had an Easter egg hunt at my mom and dad's house, where we'd had Easter dinner.  My sister was laughing that 5 adults followed one toddler around the yard for over half an hour.   

And, he still bit every one open.  :)

Las Vegas!

ConExpo was held in Las Vegas in March.  If you've never heard of ConExpo, it's "just" the world's biggest exposition of everything construction-related, which also means it's one of Dave's favorite events ever!  This was his second time going.  It ended up being a family event, since my parents made a road trip of it so that my dad could go to ConExpo every day they were open.  (I think he gets a medal for being the first in and last out for the entire show!)  My mother-in-law was so kind to come and watch Isaac so that Dave and I could go, too!  

the outside portion of the Expo

 This was called the "Dancing Diggers" show.  They had a choreographed routine to several movie themes--it was hilarious! 

I spent all day Saturday walking around the show with Dave and my cousin Nate.  By the end, I was exhausted and had a huge blister.  Even though Dave & my dad had always talked about how huge ConExpo is, I really couldn't believe it how it just went on and on.  I'm sure Dave could add many more details, but my synopsis will have to do for now.  :) 

After the show closed on Saturday, Dave flew home to spend some time with Susie before she flew back to Colorado...and my weekend flipped from looking at machines and cranes to a girl's weekend!  For over half a year, my sister had planned on meeting my parents in Las Vegas when they were there for ConExpo.  She is a true Celine Dion fan, and Celine's new show had just opened the week earlier.  In January, she talked me into going, too.  It went something like this: Bethany, you're a mom now, so when are you ever going to do something like this unless I make you?  If you know my sister, you know that she can convince me to do anything.  :)

I have to agree with Emily that the show was unreal!  I'd never been to Las Vegas before or seen a show anything like this one.  The effects were amazing!  But, her voice was the most incredible of all!  This was my favorite song.  I sobbed through it...it didn't help that, during the song, the screens showed pictures of her beautiful twin boys.  (Some of the same footage of her children is shown in this link, too.)  After the show, we met back up with my dad and all went out for dinner.  So fun! 

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
Psalm 34:18

Two weeks ago today, we received a call from our adoption advisor that our baby boy's adoption was off.  As bizarre as this sounds, our birthmother's husband called Adoption Network to report that the birthmother was working with two adoption agencies at the same time.  She had been matched with us and a family from the other agency just one day apart in March.  While some of our family and friends always had a glimmer of hope that we would eventually get Isaac back, that isn't even an option in this situation.  Both Adoption Network and the other couple's agency are refusing to work with this birthmother any longer.  In addition, she has been placed on a national birthmother fraud list which is updated with every adoption agency in the country, thus prohibiting her from placing this baby or any subsequent babies she may have for adoption. 

After going through the rollercoaster of Isaac's adoption, we really struggled with whether or not we should even announce this and the baby girl's adoption.  What if the adoption was broken?  Or what if the birthparents didn't sign again, as in Isaac's situation?  All of these "what ifs"....but, we finally decided to announce them because we wanted everyone to share in our joy & we knew how much we needed your prayers during the waiting period.  Our other reason was that, in case anything such as this should happen, we knew we'd need your prayers to get through the heartache.  We still look back at the time when we didn't have Isaac and wonder how we ever could have survived without the incredible support we received.  We are blessed and are so thankful for you all.   

We know that we aren't guaranteed an easy journey; but, after Isaac's adoption, we really hoped for a "smooth" adoption.  (Is there such a thing?)  And, this adoption seemed to start off that way.  Our first phone call with this birthmother couldn't have gone better.  She cried when she told us why she picked us to raise her son.  And, now here we are, for the second time in the past two years hearing social workers & adoption advisors say, "We've just never seen anything like this."  While we're happy that progress on the baby girl's adoption is still moving ahead, it doesn't take away from any of the pain and sadness we feel about losing this child.  More than words can say, we really wanted this baby boy and are so sad that we won't even ever know him.  We were so excited about Isaac having a little brother.  His crib was waiting for him, since Isaac moved to a toddler bed last month.  We've sorted clothes, discussed boy names incessantly, and done as much planning as possible to prepare for him.  . 

When you experience a miscarriage or infant loss, you are able to grieve for a baby now in heaven.  But this baby is still "here"--on earth.  We have no idea what will happen to him.  We feel so empty thinking that he will not grow up in our family, as we'd anticipated.  Stranger still, there is another family somewhere in America who is just as sad as we are and was thinking they were getting this baby.  All we can do now, in the midst of our sadness, is pray for him.  We are praying that God would protect his little life...that God would specifically place people in his life who will point him to Jesus as he grows. 

We received this news the Monday prior to Easter, and that entire week I'd been listening to this song in preparation for our Easter services at Keystone Church.  The words seem so poignant in our situation. 

So take heart

Let His love lead through the night

Hold on to hope

and take courage again

All our troubles and all our tears

God, our hope, He has overcome

All our failures and all our fear

God, our love, He has overcome

All our heartache and all our pain

God, our Healer, He has overcome

All our burdens and all our shame

God, our freedom, He has overcome

God, our Justice, God, our Grace

God, our freedom, He has overcome

God, our refuge, God, our strength

God is with us, He has overcome