Rocky

I know you're not supposed to have favorites and I love you all, but my favorite gift for Michael was from my cousin Emily. She knitted (crocheted? I don't know the difference, shame on me.) this stuffed animal named Rocky! As in, from scratch. There was nothing and now Rocky exists. She had a little tag around his neck that said "Hi! My name is Rocky!" I looked up, found her in the sea of faces at the Adoption Celebration and said "You made this by hand didn't you?" She confirmed with a nod. My heart got all chokey (I seriously wish I could just deal with emotions like a normal human).

But wait. It gets better.

I pull this book out the gift bag. "Oh how cute!" I think, "She made the character from this book!" I open the book. YOU GUYS. SHE WROTE THE BOOK. Emily wrote the story and her friend Alex did the illustrations and they had the book printed (we have the first edition, I feel like such a rock star. They have the second and third copies.)

She wrote a book and made a stuffed animal by hand for our son. 

Emily - thank you, thank you, thank you! We love you so much!

Michael's Room

The. Room. Is. Done.

Well I'd like a tiny little boy in the room, but I can have to wait for that.

 Marc and I found a similar idea for this bookshelf on Pinterest so we went to Home Depot, bought the supplies and made it!

 His closet with his tiny clothes!

 Dino bed!

 Security Guard in position

She's sniffed and investigated every inch of the room and every object that has come into it!

(they have no idea what's about to happen...)

Oakes

Marc and I first met 22 years ago. That is long enough to know in what situations we work well together and which situations we should work separately for the sake of still liking one another at the end of the day. House projects most often fall into category two. That being said, we are capable of doing different projects in close proximity to one another so we can still laugh and talk.

When we moved into our house the entire place was laminate wood floors except the back two bedrooms. I've wanted to put wood floors in those two rooms the entire time we've lived here. It should come as no surprise that such a project is expensive so it had to go on the back burner for a number of years. When we got Michael's referral I saw my opportunity to pounce.

We headed to Home Depot (Home Depot, as a side note, thank you for recognizing veterans and offering a veteran's discount - it means a lot to them. Lowe's, hats off to you as well.) and picked out floor samples. I suggested getting enough samples to just craft a floor ourselves. I thought it was a very Pinterestesque idea, but alas, Marc said no. After getting home, laying the samples out on the existing wood floor, squinting, moving them around a bit, and squinting at them some more we picked one that was a near match.

Our friend Oakes is a man of many talents. One of them is constructing things, he's the owner of A.O. Fletcher Contracting. We asked him if his company would put in the wood floors in the back two bedrooms for us and he said "Pssshhht. I'll just come over and do it with you guys. It'll be my gift to you and a good time to just hang out." Two birds, one stone. I was sold. (Seriously though, we love Oakes).

So one Saturday in May he came over and he and Marc spent 8 hours putting down the floor in Michael's room. I forgot to take "before" pictures of Michael's room, but we got "during" and "after"

Two cute assistants helping

For the record, I didn't shut them in the closet in this photo, they were no longer in the room

Then he came back for another Saturday in June and helped us with the spare room (and I snagged some "before" photos this time!)

I (we) love it.

Oakes - thank you for your time, your talent, your conversation, your laughter, your advice, your faith, and your love for us. Thank you Sarah, Maddox, Cam, and Stella for giving up your husband and dad for two entire days to come help us.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We. Are. So. Blessed.

(For anyone keeping track, the only remaining item on my "house projects" list is a kitchen back splash.)

Goals

You guys. If you've EVER even THOUGHT about meeting me, you know I'm what some may call "goal oriented". You'd also know that I'm very determined when it comes to meeting these goals and many of you have to slow me down and remind me that people have feelings and that it's ok to meet a goal in a casual manner, in a fun way. You may also know that I h.a.t.e./loathe/despise asking people for money.

The adoption journey tends to combine these two opposing forces. Dagnabit.

Our journey to Michael will end up costing about $30,000. We've paid about $20,000 from our own funds. And you guys, that was all God leading and providing for our finances over the past 4+ years. I can assure you we didn't just have $20,000 sitting around and were like "hey what do you want to do with all this money? I don't know. Adopt? Hey why not!" Both of us switching jobs near the beginning of this journey and actually making LESS money per year may have also seemed like an odd decision. There is more to that story, but that's for another day, another blog post. We needed help with the last $10,000. Rats. This meant I had to ask for help. And for money. My life is so hard, right?

We filled out more forms, more applications to apply for grants (secretly I like filling out forms and applications so this part was  not a burden...). We received two of the three grants we applied for and, for a variety of reasons, decided to only accept one of them.

Twenty two of you gave to Hand in Hand. You gave $4,100 and Hand in Hand matched $2,500 giving us a total of $6,600. WOWZA! This will take care of our airfare (heads up: no one at the airlines thinks it's neat you're adopting and offers free tickets)!

My friend Stephanie (we used to work together, but have both moved on to new adventures) contacted me and said "I sell Silpada jewelry, let me hold a sale for you and donate my  proceeds." Me, "What? Oh, but I couldn't!" Stephanie: "I'm doing this for you." An obvious paraphrase of our conversation, but she gave her time and talents to organize a fund raiser - it was such a huge help to us and she took it and ran with it at a time when I was feeling bogged down by so many other things. Stephanie - THANK YOU! So many of our friends look even more beautiful with their new jewelry...and we narrowly missed ruining one Christmas gift of someone who bought a piece of jewelry for his wife when we sent the thank you card. Luckily it was intercepted. Whew.

So many of you were just like "Hey we want to help, here's a check." You guys. For real. I get all weird in those situations because I missed the class on how to show emotions, so I get all choked up on the inside and then usually just make a joke or say something awkward and never actually say thank you in the moment and tell you how much you mean to us.

Our local Holy Yoga community came together and donated $655 to our family to help with this journey. It has been so great getting to know these women over the past year and hearing their stories, absorbing their advice, and sharing laughter and love has been incredibly encouraging to me. It's amazing how many adoption stories people have to share!

All that to say our goal was $10,000 and YOU helped us raise $10,125 in roughly three months.

We. Are. Blown. Away.

Why? I have no idea. It's not like we didn't KNOW you guys were awesome. That you loved us. That you were walking alongside of us. But when you see love in action, it's carries a huge weight to it, doesn't it? Words can get lost sometimes in life, but giving sacrificially of yourself, interrupting who you are, what you do, to give to us, to love us - that speaks volumes.

These are the stories I want to whisper to Michael in our quiet moments. How he was loved by so many before he was born. How he was loved by his  people when all we had was a picture of him to oooh and ahhh over. How God has been providing for him, for us, this entire time. That God has been writing his story - Michael may be frustrated by parts of his story, not understand the "why" of parts of his story, but it's a story that includes all of you. For that we will be forever thankful. You are loved. Not just by us, one day by Michael, but by God, who is writing your story too. Settle in and give it a read sometime. You might find you like it and want to dig in deeper.

Anonymous

To You Anonymous,

You're actually on my bad list because I don't know who you are (Marc said I wasn't allowed to tell you that). 

But seriously, your gift to Hand in Hand rocked our world. Typing "thank you" here doesn't seem like enough. How do I convey my  heart through my fingertips into a blog post that everyone else can read (that you may never read)?

Thank you for loving our family, for caring enough to give so generously of yourself. You helped us meet our goal - you helped us exceed our goal. I don't have to worry about travel costs now (which opens the doors for me to worry about other things! The world is my oyster!).

Thank you Anonymous, from the bottom of our hearts. We appreciate you and are so thankful for listening to the promptings of your heart. We are blessed by you, please know that.

Love,

Sara, Marc, and Michael

Eighty Three

Eighty Three. That is how many thank you notes we've written to people who have blessed us on this journey to Michael. That's eighty three acknowledgements in the past four months. In all honesty, it should have been more if we're including the people who have been praying, asking how we're doing, or answering our questions over the past 50 months!

We were (are) so blessed - old friends from high school wanted to help - there is a chance they may never meet the little boy they helped, but loving us and giving us a push on our journey was more important to them and that means more to us than we can express. People from our church gave to us, former co-workers helped out in incredibly generous ways, giving much of themselves. Friends have given toys and clothes. Literally the only clothing we've had to buy is socks. Michael has enough clothes to last him until at least kindergarten by our rough estimates :) Our family has been right there for us this whole way - even the far away family that had to send their love through the mail - their written words are cherished. Far away friends gave up an entire weekend to come celebrate with us and share in the joy - (loud) late night hang outs and lots of food made for the perfect weekend! (Also, as a side note, Marc finally believes that I'm not the loudest out of all of my Tuscarora friends. He hasn't believed me for years.)

I was a little grumbly while I was writing the thank you notes (I know, what an awesome attitude to have, right?). My hand hurt. I was complaining about what a burden it was that people liked us and were so generous to us. Why couldn't people not like us so I didn't have to spend time writing these notes?!

But you know what? Once I started writing out to each person what their generosity had meant to us, how it had impacted our growing family, my attitude started to change. My heart became full, then it started to overflow with love and gratitude toward our people, our community, our village, those who are on this journey with us, no matter how big or small their role has been or will be.

My hand was still dead at the end, but it didn't seem so bad anymore :) Marc and I long ago established that my handwriting is nicer so I handle the card writing duties in the family. He was a total champ though and brought us to the finish line by signing his name, putting cards in envelopes, sealing, stamping, and addressing each one.

This post can hardly sum up our hearts for you. Know you are loved, know we're so, so, so thankful you're on this journey with us, we want you to be part of it - even if life is crazy and we can't or don't express that in words often enough.

Drayke's Reaction

Our nephew Drayke had an epic reaction to finding out Michael would be his cousin. As a side note Michaelangelo is Drayke's favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.