There's no place like home

We talked to the birth mother and the agency again this morning. The birth mother has decided to keep the baby. While we are disappointed, Katie and I both support her in that decision. We wish her and the baby the best. We have no regrets about how things have worked out. Since we are not going to get the baby, we decided to come home as soon as possible. We drove from Shreveport to Dallas then flew back to Salt Lake City.

On the flight home, I was reading the April General Conference Ensign and read Elder James B. Martino's talk entitled "All Things Work Together for Good". In this talk, Elder Martino says:

We may never know in this life why we face what we do, but we can feel confident that we can grow from the experience.

We are not sure yet what all we are supposed to learn from this experience, but are grateful for the opportunity.

We got our baby...

....just not the one we were expecting!

Its rather fun to go into Walmart down here and see lots of black baby dolls. This one doesn't look to girly.

On an even lighter note, I had promised my children some pictures and these are what we have.

This picture is for Joseph, he has been fascinated with golf carts and this one has four benches! Imagine the possibilities! It was parked out in front of the hospital.

This is our rental car. Rather nice I must admit. I was telling Mat that if we ever try this adoption process again, we just might end up with a Lexus or Mercedes. The cars just keep getting nicer!

Yesterday we took a bit of a road trip to see Aunt Betsy and these cute guys. At first Harrison wanted nothing to do with us. After a while, as you can tell, he couldn't stay away from us.

Benjamin was lots of fun and is starting to say a lot more words. It was alot of fun to see them and we hope that all goes well with you in the next several months. Thanks Betsy for a great afternoon.

Mat and I are doing well. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and we will keep you posted with what is happening.

Lean not unto thine own understanding

We spent most of the day with the birth mom and the baby at the hospital. We got to hold him and got to know her a little bit. She is having a hard time making the decision whether or not to place the baby with us or to keep him. She was discharged from the hospital this afternoon and ended up taking the baby with her. She cannot sign adoption papers until Monday, so she is going to keep him at least until Monday and make the decision. Katie and I have done a lot of talking and said a lot of prayers. We are still hopeful that she will place the baby with us, but we realize it is her decision. We tried to encourage her to make the decision that she feels is right. She asked how long we will be here and says she will call us soon. So, we do not know whether we will come home with the baby, but we do feel peace about the situation. Either she will end up keeping the baby and we'll know that we did all that we could, or she will end up placing the baby with us and she'll know it was her decision. At this point, all we can do is pray and hope for the best. We appreciate any thoughts and prayers you may have on our behalf and hers.

Over the river and through the woods

The flight from Salt Lake City to Dallas was fairly uneventful - which is good as far as flights go :). We rented a car, ate lunch with Katie's brother, then motored our way across eastern Texas and into Louisiana. There are a lot of trees here ... I like trees. We have not yet had the opportunity to communicate with the birth mother directly; all communication has been through the agency. That being the case, we did not quite make contact with her tonight (we made it as far as the hospital parking lot). We look forward to meeting her and the baby tomorrow.

Our new addition!

We have a new baby! On the 25th of August we received a phone call from our adoption agency. They inquired as to how life was going for us and if it was crazy enough. My reply was that I like to refer to life as "organized chaos"! Our agent then told us about a baby boy that was due in two and a half weeks in Louisiana. As you can imagine the last couple of weeks have been crazy. We were told that the birth mother was due on the 14th of September and with her previous pregnancy she was a week early. So we have been expecting her to come early and then she was late! Not just a day or two late, but eight days late and then they did an emergency c-section. The baby was born on Wednesday. Yesterday, being Thursday, we found out he was 6 lbs. 2 oz. We have had to wait for approval from the agency before we could leave. So here it is Friday morning and we are sitting at the airport waiting for a flight to Dallas and then we will rent a car and drive the rest of the way. As we find out more info we will let you know, and of course post pictures when we have them.

My Favorite new thing to suck.....

Jacob's new way to play piano...