Happy New Year's!!

Happy New Year's!! Jerrod and I are very excited for 2012...hoping for BIG changes!! We wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to visit our site and especially those that have become followers and that have shared our blog on facebook...every bit of exposure helps us to become parents! Although we are very excited to be going through adoption, it wasn't always the plan! We had tried for 2 years to have our own children, but infertility on my part kept us from having our own. Well, that...and it apparently wasn't God's plan! :) We now have dreams of a baby that we will love and cherish and also possibly grow our family with the birth parents too! It was a strange concept to us...open adoption, but we have learned so much already that our views and thoughts of our relationship with the birth parents has formed to mean anything! it could be letters and pictures or the baby or meeting them here and there during the year. We are ready to do whatever is best for the baby-to-be. We started this journey thinking about international adoption because we really wanted a closed relationship...but then we had a change of heart! We really want to give a child in the U.S. a great home with lots of love and support! We also decided the possibility of having the birth parents involved helps our child to have a sense of identity...quite a change, right?! Like I said...we have learned sooo much through LSS! We also would like people to know that we are home study approved...they say that's important to pass along! We had no idea what to expect when it came to the 'home inspection'...in fact we cleaned like crazy people! I thought Jerrod was going to kill me over light fixtures! :) But, our social worker was great!! She makes things so laid back and she is so easy to talk to! We are thankful that she is here to guide us through the process! Well, I just wanted to help get everyone up to speed...and a bit more understanding on where we are at with everything!! More to come! Hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year! May 2012 bring you many blessings!

Our Family: Jerrod, Kate, Gunner (Black Lab), & Rudy (Golden Retriever)

Our First Blog!

Jerrod and I have decided to blog our adoption journey! We have learned so much about adoption already...we figured we should share all that we have already learned along with what's happening next! The blog updates will more than likely be coming from me, Kate, but you never know...Jerrod could surprise us every now and then! I am technically and computer challenged...so you will all be learning with me! We are really hoping to post pictures and video clips that show who we are as a family in hopes that our future birth parents will see this and decide that we are the "ones"! It was amazing to both of us that over 50% of placed children with Lutheran Social Services (LSS) this past year were done so through word of mouth! Wow!! We are hoping to get in touch with our birth parents the same way! Please feel free to pass the word that we are adopting to anyone and everyone...you just never know who God has planned for us to meet and who we will meet them through! We will also be creating adoption cards...which are a good way to let people know we are adopting. If you would like to have cards or know of someone that would, please let us know and we will get you some! We have also set up a new email for our adoption purposes and you can email us there at jerrodandkate@yahoo.com. We hope that you will enjoy learning about adoption as we are learning...and if you have any questions or stories you want us to share...please feel free to let us know! We ask that you continue to pray for us on this journey and that God will guide us through this to our first baby!
God Bless,
Kate