How We Got Our Kids

Sometimes we get strange looks from people when our family is out in public. For one, our children look too close together in age to be biologically possible. Couple that with the fact that our children are not all the same race, and it does give people a legitimate reason to wonder just how our family was formed.

So for those who don't know us very well, or for those who have only met us recently, or for those who don't know us at all and have stumbled across our blog--this is the story of how God worked in our lives to give us our children. 

We'll start from the beginning (of our marriage, that is).

August 13, 2005--Aaron and I got married. We were both in college, and we both agreed wholeheartedly that we would like to wait a couple years to begin having children.

December 2007--I graduated from college with my teaching degree, and we both decided we were ready and excited to start a family.

March 2010--I was still not pregnant. During those two and a half years, I was teaching freshman and sophomore English and absolutely loving my job. However, more and more, I longed to have children. I can't say I ever despaired over not being able to get pregnant, though. Aaron and I were both open to adoption, so I knew that one way or another, we would have children. We were just waiting on God's timing.

Late March 2010--We decided it was time to start the adoption process. We knew that since I hadn't been able to get pregnant yet, we would probably be spending a fairly large amount of money to have children, whatever route we decided to go--either we would go the "fertility drugs/IVF" route and try to get pregnant, or we would go the adoption route. Both routes would be expensive, and both routes would be emotionally trying, to say the least. For Aaron and I, it wasn't a hard decision. We knew that many, many babies needed homes, so we decided to go the adoption route. (However, we know many people who are very dear to us who chose to go about it different ways, and we are so thankful for the way God worked to provide them with children!! We are not saying adoption is the only right choice, at all. It was just the right choice for us.)

June 11, 2010--We finally had our homestudy done, all of our paperwork filled out, our background checks completed, and we were officially on the waiting lists of three adoption agencies. We had been told to expect a wait of one to two years. The waiting began...

June 23, 2010--We didn't have to wait long! We got a call from one of our agencies in Florida, telling us that a birthmother and birthfather had chosen us to adopt their baby. The birthmom (Elena) was about halfway through her pregnancy at the time.

Late night June 23, 2010--Aaron and I wrestled with and prayed about a few of the issues that would accompany this adoption. We decided that night, though, to definitely say, "YES!"

June 24, 2010--We told our adoption consultant that our answer was yes. We wanted to adopt this baby!! We were officially "expectant parents" :)

October 22, 2010--I headed down to Florida (with my mom and sister) to wait for our baby to be born. We still didn't know if it was a boy or girl!

November 2, 2010--Elena was overdue. I was going crazy with anticipation and missing Aaron a ton. He surprised me and flew down to Florida to wait with me. (He had been planning to wait until she went into labor.)

9:00 PM, November 6, 2010--Elena went into labor. We spent the entire night with her at the birthing center. 

November 7, 2010--Our first baby was born at about 6:30 am. It was a girl! We named her Ivy Elena. 

November 2010 through May 2011--The next few months were so awesome. We loved being new parents, and we had waited about three years for it, so we were more than ready. Our transition into parenting was a smooth one. We were so thankful for Ivy.

May 2011-- Even though Ivy was only 6 months old, we decided to start the adoption process again, since we thought it could actually be a one or two year wait this time. At this point, I wasn't even thinking about getting pregnant... we loved Ivy so much and felt very comfortable with the adoption process. I figured all of our children would be adopted, and I was totally fine with that. In fact, we felt so blessed and privileged that God would choose to grow our family in that way. The parallels between Aaron and I adopting our children and God adopting us into His family are amazing, and we were (and are) so excited to relay those parallels to our children.

Mid-July 2011--We were interviewed by a birthmother who was due in August. She chose a different couple. We were disappointed, but we were trusting God that our next child would be the one He chose for us.

August 1, 2011--A birthmother whom we met "privately" (not through an agency) chose us to adopt her baby. She was due in October. We were SO excited. I may have been a little bit nervous that Ivy and our new baby would only be 11 months apart, but we couldn't wait for Ivy to have a sibling!

August 12, 2011--The birthmother who had chosen us changed her mind. She decided that she could not go through with the adoption, and she decided to keep the baby. We were very heartbroken, but we trusted that God was in control. I knew that even if God never provided us with more children, we were still so blessed with Ivy!

12:15 PM, August 17, 2011--Five days after our failed adoption, we got a call from our adoption agency in Utah. A baby boy had been born in an emergency delivery in an ambulance that morning, and his birthmother had chosen us to be his parents. Aaron and I quickly discussed some of the issues related to this adoption, and decided about three minutes later to say "YES"! Now instead of having two babies 11 months apart, we would have babies 9 months apart. Yikes! We were a little nervous, but beyond ecstatic.

10:00 PM, August 17, 2011--Aaron, Ivy, and I landed in Utah after an extremely hectic day of throwing clothes into suitcases and getting on the first plane available.

9:00 AM, August 18, 2011--We went to the hospital to meet our son! We were thrilled that his birthmother decided that she wanted to meet us, so we went to her room first and met her. Then we went to the NICU and saw our son for the first time! We named him Israel Ri (Ri is pronounced "rye," and it is part of his birthmom's name). Our transition from one child to two children was a smooth one, also. We were just in awe that we had been blessed with a daughter and a son in less than a year.

September 30, 2011--At this point, we had a ten month-old daughter and a one month-old son. Getting pregnant was now (and had been for the past year) the absolute furthest thing from my mind. However, after a few weeks of feeling very sick, extremely exhausted, and just plain weird, I knew something was wrong with me, so I thought I'd better take a pregnancy test just to rule that out. The test was positive. When I saw the second blue line show up in the test, I freaked out, just a little bit. However, when I showed Aaron the positive test, he was SO excited and calm, and that made me excited and calm. We thanked God that He saw fit to give us three babies in an eighteen-month period of time, when just a year before that, we didn't have any children! And I was so excited to experience pregnancy, since it was something that I had just grown to assume would never happen to me.

May 25, 2012--I gave birth to our third child. We named him Abel James. The transition from two children to three has been the most trying transition. :) However, it is giving us plenty of opportunities to trust God and lean on Him. We couldn't be more thankful.

And that is how we got our three precious children. We don't know what the future holds for our family. We don't know if we will adopt more children, have more children, or possibly find that our family is complete as it is. What we do know, however, is that God has been so faithful to us, and He will continue to be, no matter what the future looks like for our family.