Back To School

Today was Josiah's first day back at school. Wow, what a difference a year makes. Last year he cried the first few days and didn't want to go. This year he was ready way early and wanting to know why we had to wait. While we were in car pool line he said, "I'm 4 now you know!" "Yes you are, " I answered. He continued to tell me that because he is so big now he will have to show the 3 year olds in the class what to do. I agreed and emphasised that he needs to be a good example for the new kids.
He is in the afternoon class this year which I think will work out very nicely for me. He is actually there a 1/2 hour longer than the morning class and it is at a time of day that lets me get things done at home while Naomi is napping.
When I picked him up at 4pm he said he had a great day and that he made some new friends.

This is Our Story - Part 2

Two years after Josiah came home we started thinking about adopting again. We decided to adopt from Korea again since we were familiar with the process and felt it important for our children to share the same heritage. We had also decide that we would love to have a daughter. We were told that with the agency that we chose that this was possible only to be told later that by requesting a girl we would be placed on hold indefinitely. Instead of staying on hold we changed our request to either boy or girl knowing that with the Korea program we would most certainly get a referral for a son. Both Greg and I, after much prayer, came to the place that we were quite content to have another son. Besides we had boy toys and boy clothes and we "knew" what to do with a boy.

In September 2007 our paperwork was sent to Korea and we were told that it would be 5 months before we heard anything. Many people asked us about the possibility of getting a girl and I kept telling them that short of a miracle I couldn't see that happening. There had not been a girl referral with our agency for more than 6 months and there were many people still waiting for a girl.

Very unexpectedly we got a call from our social worker just 2 months after sending our paperwork to Korea. She wanted to know if we would consider reviewing the file of a little girl that was considered to have special needs. The director of our agency was in Korea at this time and when this information was presented to her she called our social worker and said for her to show it to us. This little girl was not even officially in the system yet and was not being presented to any other family.

We went through all her medical information very carefully, had 2 doctors review her charts and had several friends and family members praying for guidance.

It was clear that God was at work:

* It is virtually unheard of that we would have received the information about a little girl without God's hand being in it.

* It is almost unheard of to receive a referral picture and information only 2 months after paperwork being sent to Korea.

* Both Dr's that reviewed her file believed that she would be perfectly healthy with a 15% chance that she would have mild progressive hearing loss due to her diagnosis.

We accepted the referral of our daughter Naomi Yoojin. Our social worker advised us not to expect to travel to Korea before 4-6 months. God again had a different plan. Almost exactly 3 months after our acceptance we travelled to Korea to bring Naomi home. Our travel date was 2 weeks shy of being exactly 3 years to the day of Josiah's homecoming.

On March 10, 2007 Naomi Yoojin joined her forever family.

Wow God is good and is faithful and has been with us every step of the way.

This is Our Story

I have had several people e-mail me since I posted the Journey to Australia story asking if I would consider telling our personal story of how we came to adopt. So here is the first installment of our story. I will post our journey to Naomi later in the week. I will warn you it is very long.

Greg and I started trying to add to our family in the spring of 2001. We got pregnant after a few months and everything seemed to be ok. In January of 2002, at 13 weeks, we miscarried. After this miscarriage I went through a period of depression. I was angry with God, but learned to cling to His Psalms. I carried scraps of paper in my pockets with a verse from Psalms written out, so that I would be reminded of those thoughts during the day, when I began to feel depressed.

We continued to try to have a baby and had our 2nd miscarriage in June of 2002. After some recovery time, we got pregnant again. This time I was so nervous that I insisted on an 8-week ultrasound. This ultrasound showed conjoined twins that shared a single heart. There was no chance beyond a miracle that these children would survive. Our doctor suggested that we terminate the pregnancy, but instead we prayed for a miracle. At 10 weeks we lost our twins.

At this point we knew that something had to change. We were clearly not going to have babies the traditional way. So we decided to seek the advice of a fertility specialist. We were relying on the doctors and medical research for the answers to ‘fix’ our problem. After a series of tests and procedures, our doctor was able to identify a likely cause for our recurring miscarriages. My immune system caused my body to attack a pregnancy as if it were foreign. In addition to my immune response my hormones were not at the right levels at the right times. The treatment for this type of condition was expensive, involved a lot of shots and promised far less than a certain outcome.

We decided to give treatment a try, but now things were different. I was a reluctant patient, but Greg encouraged me to make one more try before we ‘gave up.’ After all that I had been through, the thought of getting pregnant again was terrifying. For me, pregnancy did not mean a time of joyful expectation, but a time of living each day in constant dread of how the pregnancy would end.

In the mean time, I also began to research adoption. Greg was not ready to even talk about adoption; so I began the research on my own. I began to share my findings with Greg and frequently brought up adoption in conversation. Finally he asked me to put the adoption research on hold, because he did not have the time, emotional energy or money to pursue both adoption and fertility treatments.

I had been speaking about adoption with a friend and was trying to arrange a time for Greg and I to sit down with her and her husband to talk about their adoption experience. Since Greg and I agreed that we would put the adoption process on hold for a while, the next Sunday I told them that we were not going to meet with them right now. The very next day my another friend was waiting at my car when I finished work.

She knew about our difficulty having children and had quite a proposal for us. Her daughter had just taken legal guardianship for a little boy named Devan who was in a difficult home situation. She wanted to know if we would consider adopting Devan. The idea of an actual baby that might become our child was exciting. I had to call Greg and tell him what had just happened, but I didn’t know what he would say. To my surprise he said that we should look into adopting Devan. Greg said that having God drop an adoption right out of the sky was very different from some distant dinner conversation. My very next call was to our friends to re-schedule our get-together.

In the end, we did not adopt Devan; another couple that had made prior contact with Devan’s mother adopted him. This was not really a disappointment for us, because everything happened so fast that we didn’t really have a chance to become attached to the idea. On the other hand, it made me see that Greg considered adoption a valid option and our meeting with Scott and Lynn opened our eyes to more details of the adoption process.

During this time we had continued with fertility treatment, and we lost our fourth pregnancy at six weeks. This was the breaking point for me. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Greg could see what the fertility treatment and repeated pregnancy loss was doing to me and we agreed to stop treatment.

Shortly after stopping treatment we went to a marriage conference in Chicago where Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife spoke about the experience of adopting their two girls from China. Both Greg and I were reminded of Steven Curtis’s concert we had been to the year before and were touched by their story. God was beginning to work in Greg’s heart. Greg was beginning to see that adoption was a very real option, but he needed some time to grieve the loss of our children and come to terms with his fears of adoption. We went to a couple of information meetings with several different agencies. The meetings helped to answer our questions and made adoption seem less intimidating.

Even though we had come to the realization that adoption was and always had been God’s plan for us Greg still needed more time. We took a vacation to South Africa and during that time Greg read a book called Adoption after Infertility. The book put into words all the things that he had been thinking and feeling, but was unable to express for himself. The book, some much needed time away from the everyday grind, and a lot of prayer really helped us with our final decision. When we got back from South Africa we started the long process of paperwork, patience and prayer.

After our application was approved and all of our background checks were completed, we started the home study process. Home study is not the most descriptive name for this process. Our social worker discussed adoption topics in greater detail and we had the opportunity to get all of our questions answered. We completed this step in February of 2004. WE received a picture of our beautiful baby boy, Josiah TaeHyung, on Sept 13, 2004 and travelled to Korea in March to bring him home. On March 21st, 2005 we boarded a plane from Korea with our son.

We believe that God prepared us to parent an adopted child. He used Devon, Steven Curtis Chapman concerts, seminars and friends to show us His plan and to prepare us uniquely for this experience.

My Little Boy is 4

Yes it's true. On Wednesday August 13th Josiah will be 4 years old. Last Saturday we celebrated his birthday with family and had a fun time. He got some cool toys. We got him a big boy bike which he has asked for all summer. Of course now he refuses to ride it because someone has told him that it is too dangerous to ride. I have no idea where he heard this and he refuses to tell me. Perhaps he thought it up all on his own. From his cousin Leah he got a baseball and bat, Aunt Melody gave him a 3 wheeled scooter, which he loves and Grandma and Grandpa gave him a catchers mit and ball. From Granny and Grandpa in South Africa he got a Spiderman and Wolverine man walkie talkie set. He thinks those are pretty cool too.

Adoption After Infertility

Several people have asked me lately what is it like to go through the process of deciding to adopt. I could write a ton about what we went through and how we felt and how God lead us down the path of adoption to our two beautiful children. Instead I am going to post a story written by an anonymous author that describes a lot of the feelings and experiences of going through infertility and completing the journey of adoption

Different Trips to the Same Place

Author Unknown

Deciding to have a baby is like planning a trip to Australia. You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place; you’ve read many guidebooks and feel certain that you’re ready to go. Everyone you know has traveled there by plane. They say it can be a turbulent flight with occasional rough landings, but you can look forward to being pampered on the trip. So you go to the airport and ask the ticket agent for a ticket to Australia. All around you, excited people are boarding planes for Australia. It seems there’s no seat for you; you’ll have to wait for the next flight. Impatient, but anticipating a wonderful trip, you wait---and wait---and wait. Flights to Australia continue to come and go. People say silly things like, “Relax. You’ll get on a flight soon.” Other people actually get on the plane and then cancel their trip, to which you cry, “It’s not fair!” After a long time, the ticket agent tells you, “I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to get you on a plane to Australia. Perhaps you should think about going by boat.” “By BOAT!” you say. “Going by boat will take a very long time and it costs a great deal of money. I really had my heart set on going by plane.” So you go home and think about not going to Australia at all. You wonder if Australia will be as beautiful if you approach it by sea rather than by air. But you have long dreamed of this wonderful place, and finally you decide to travel by boat. It is a long trip, many months over many rough seas. No one pampers you. You wonder if you will ever see Australia. Meanwhile, your friends have flown back and forth to Australia two or three more times, marveling about each trip. Then one glorious day, the boat docks in Australia. It is more exquisite than you ever imagined, and the beauty is magnified by your long days at sea. You have made many wonderful friends during your voyage, and you find yourself comparing stories with others who also traveled by sea rather than by air. People continue to fly to Australia as often as they like, but you are able to travel once, perhaps twice. Some say things like, “Oh, be glad you didn’t fly. My flight was horrible; traveling by sea is so easy.” You will always wonder what it would have been like to fly to Australia. Still, you know God blessed you with a special appreciation of Australia, and the beauty of Australia is not the way you get there, but in the place itself.

This is my Australia and the journey was fantastic!

Picking Peaches

Saturday was the last day that Tracy and the kids were here. After our very late Friday night we got up slowly and got going. We decided to go to Huber's orchard to pick peaches. We had great plans to eat lunch, pick peaches and then let the kids play at the little kids farm they have there. After picking peaches in the very hot sun and standing in line to pay for them we decided that we all needed some rest, so we got back in the car and drove home. This week I have made freezer jam, frozen peaches and today I made a peach crisp. We have also had peach smoothies and peach slushies. We have almost exhausted our supply of very yummy peaches.

You Know You're a Redneck When...

According to our friend Chris, we are now officially rednecks (see previous post). We got a babysitter for Naomi and took Nathan, Josiah and Danielle to the county fair. Now we had a great time riding the rides and eating fair food, but the absolute highlight of the night for all of us was the demolition derby. Josiah had read a library book this summer about a demo derby at the fair and was so excited when we told him we were going, but I have to say I think Tracy and I had the most fun watching the cars smash each other. I was going to put a slide show together with our pictures of the evening, but photobucket is not working today, so here are just a few pictures.




"But my car didn't win!"