The past few weeks have been weeks of rejoicing! On Monday, February 27th, 2012, we were sitting on the floor, organizing Bethany's gospel art picture kit into chronological order (her idea)for Family Home Evening, when I stood up to stretch my legs and walk around a bit. I happened to pass by our computer, and as usual, I jiggled the mouse to see if I had any new emails (a very firmly entrenched habit of mine). Well, I noticed I had an email from a person I didn't know. So I wondered who it was from and started reading.
To my GREAT surprise, it was from a birth mother who had been working with Sandy at our Logan LDS Family Services. (To protect her identity, I won't use her name.)She was trying to find the right family for her baby boy. I just sunk down into the chair in front of the computer and said, "Oh my gosh! We just heard from a birth mother!" James was startled, "WHAT??" and rushed over the computer. So we read her email aloud, together. After nearly every paragraph, we had to stop to gape at each other--everything she said was so perfect and felt so right. We couldn't believe it. By the time we finished reading the letter, we both had tears in our eyes. We both felt an incredible rush of "rightness" about her, about the baby, about the birth father--about the whole thing. It was an email straight from Heaven and, after reading it several times, we spent the next couple of hours responding. Best Family Home Evening ever.
And then the next morning, we woke up and wondered if we had dreamed the whole thing. So we had to read everything all over again. And then pinch ourselves.
We corresponded (by email) with this wonderful lady over the next 10 days or so, and then on March 9th, we got to meet her at LDS Family Services. We were so nervous and excited! After hearing in one of her emails that she had been craving fruit--especially strawberries--we put together this strawberry-themed basket as an "It's great to meet you!" gift:
We even scrapbooked a card to match--all three of us doing our part. We were actually pretty proud of the results--we've never made a card before but we patterned this one after one designed by a friend of mine:
As the clock ticked down to 3:00 (our meeting time) we got even more nervous and excited. (I actually was so nervous I walked around with hand towels under my arms to keep myself dry and powder fresh, which Bethany thought hysterically funny. But hey, it worked.) Then, just before three, James came to pick me up. We dropped Bethany off at a friend's house, then headed to LDSFS.
As we sat in the lobby and waited to go back to Sandy's office (and looking very conspicuous with our strawberry basket), an absolutely beautiful young woman walked into the agency. She immediately knew us from our pictures and we all hugged and started talking, right there in the lobby. When Sandy came to get us, she was surprised to see we were already there and talking to each other! We all went into her office and talked for an hour or so--it was a wonderful meeting. In fact, we were so enjoying talking with her that we completely forgot to take any pictures. (I'm still kicking myself for that one!)After the meeting, we walked her to her car and then we all left. We were on Cloud Nine, because this meeting was when our birth mother told us she had chosen us "for sure." We were told to get ready for a baby boy!
We were going to wait to announce our news to family and friends, but we were DYING to tell somebody! And we needed to celebrate! So we picked up Bethany and went to eat out at Costa Vida. At this point, I remembered that I had forgotten to take pictures so I started snapping away. Here are James and Bethany at our "celebration" dinner out!
After the dinner, we still felt like shouting our news to the world, so we considered our options. We didn't have much time, because we had somewhere we needed to go that night, so we couldn't climb the tallest mountain and shout into a megaphone. So we settled on surprising my parents with some balloons. Bethany just walked right into their house with balloons. It was a great reaction!
That's all we had time for before we had to rush to (ironically!) an LDS Family Services workshop. Bethany came with us, as there was a child care class during our meeting. Then after our meeting, she started telling everyone who would listen that she was getting a baby brother! She's so excited . . .we all are!
Since that day, we've been able to meet with our wonderful birth mother AND our wonderful birth father. Last week, our birth mom came to Sunday dinner with her sister and her husband--we had such a great time and we did remember to take pictures! Then this past Sunday, our birth mother brought our wonderful birth father (again, no names to protect identity) to our home for dessert. We had a great time with them and my face hurt from so much laughing!
We are just feeling incredibly blessed. This situation feels so different--so much better--than what we experienced last fall. This just feels so right. We've already started working on the nursery and preparing in other ways, as this little guy is due on May 9th! We ask our family and friends to please pray for our birth mother and our birth father, that they'll have comfort and peace and strength. We already love each of them so much! And we'll keep you posted . . .:0)
