Its Official!

We are pretty excited at our home!  After a grueling 4 months of filling out mountains of paperwork, having a background check completed, and a walk through of our home, we are HAPPY to announce that our home study is complete and we are eligible to ADOPT! We can’t wait to ADD a BABY to our FAMILY! Below is the link to our adoption profile. Help us get the word out by sharing our profile link with your family and friends. 

https://itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/30894566/ourMessage.jsf

Valentine’s Day

This year, I want to make the holidays a little more fun.  Maybe decorate a little for them, have a fun dinner centered around the holiday, etc.  So far, I’ve failed.  I came down with a terrible cold the end of January and it is still with me!!  some days going to work is about all the energy I have. 

 

We spent Valentine’s Day differently than we normally would have.  Most of the time, it is a low key day.  We may go out to eat or give gifts and then watch a movie together at home.  However, this year Jared accepted the assignment for us to be committee chairs for the refreshment portion of the Stake Valentine’s dance.  Neither Jared nor I are much into dancing, so we were hoping for some great company and good food to graze on during the night. 

 

Halfway through the dance, Jared offered to go out on the dance floor with me and give me my ONE dance!  Haha  As we left the table to go out on the dance floor, I turned around and discovered that the tablecloth with all the decorations (some glass) and water cups (still filled with water) were now on the floor!!  How embarrassing!!  Needless to say, we spent the rest of that dance cleaning up the mess and redecorating the table.  Another embarrassing moment to add to my list…

 

Jared has been craving chocolate dipped strawberries.  So I decided that a fun post Valentine’s day date would be to dip strawberries and bananas!  YUM YUM!

 

 

I love spending time with Jared.  We seem to always have fun no matter what we end up doing.  I'm so glad that he has the opportunity to finish his education and begin a career in something that makes him happy.  He LOVES helping people, and I know that he will succeed.  He is so excited to start our own family!  I know our children will be spoiled rotten with love by their daddy.  I hope that once we get our adoption profile active that our wait time won't be too long.  We're ready to share the next holidays with a new bundle of JOY!

 

Happy Valentine's Day Love!

 

 

Tammy

HATS, HATS, and more HATS!

My mom is the humanitarian specialist in her home ward.   One of the projects she and her ward have taken on is to provide 10 baby gift bags for the local hospital every month.  The bags include a receiving blanket and burp rag, a package of diapers, wipes, trial size shampoo, powder, lotion, destine, etc.  During the winter months, she includes also includes hand-made baby hats.  Aren’t they cute?  Over the holidays, I had my mom teach me how to make them so I could help her.  They were so easy to make that I jokingly told Jared that he should join in the fun.  He actually agreed on one condition—the first two hats would be for him to keep for our own children.  Since we don't know if we will first adopt a boy or a girl, he did one of each.  Didn’t he do a great job?

 

 

We thought about making to sell as a fundraiser for our upcoming adoption.  But I wasn’t sure how to get the word out or where to put them for sell.  So, for the time being, we just enjoy helping my mom make them for her care packages.

 

 

Tammy

Jared’s Surgery

Earlier this summer, Jared was working out at the gym and heard a big “POP” in his knee.  He tried to ignore it and continue to run, but the pain kept getting worse.  So he decided to take several weeks off and see if it would heal on its own.  But it didn’t.  It hurt every time he worked out.  He also started babying the knee and limping on it.  So I finally made him go to the doctor to get it checked out.  The first doctor said it was due to getting old and normal wear and tear.  I wasn’t satisfied with this opinion.  You don’t go from running a marathon with no pain to just getting old.  So I made him go to another doctor.  This doctor immediately ordered an MRI and told him that he had a torn meniscus and needed to have surgery to take care of his problem. 

So here he sits getting his knee prepped for surgery.  Jared was sad to see all his knee hair gone. 

 

 

I saw the doctor after surgery.  He said that everything went well.  The meniscus was torn more than he thought it was, but that his knee is in great shape for a speedy recovery! 

I have never been around Jared after coming off of anesthesia.  He was quite the site.  As he was being rolled down the hall, he started chanting, “Go Adrian!”  The staff worker and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.  Then Jared said, “Do you know what I’m talking about? “  I said no.  Apparently, that was something that Rocky chanted to his wife…Goofball.  When we got to the room, he proceeded to say many more things that left me laughing and rolling my eyes,  but Jared said I can’t share them with the world. 

Tammy

Jazz Game

I have always been a Jazz fan, but I’ve never been to a live game.  I told Jared that now we are back in the Salt Lake area I would like to go to a game.   Someone from work promised me lower bowl tickets to a playoff game last year, but it fell through at the last minute.  I was bummed!  A few nights ago, my brother-in-law, Adam called to see if we’d like to go to a Jazz game next weekend.  Someone in his ward had extra tickets and didn’t want them to go unused!  AWESOME!  

There is just something fun about being “THERE IN THE MOMENT” instead of just watching it from home.  Although the Jazz lost the game, we had a great time with the nieces and nephews and will look forward to more games in the future.

Tammy, Rachel, Joseph, Adam, Anna, and Jared!
Now let's go get a treat at McDonald's!

Tammy

Canning Applesauce

This year mom and dad’s apple trees produced lots and lots of fruit.  So instead of Teresa, mom, and me canning our own apples, we all got together to can.  What an experience!! 

Jared and Anna                                                                                                                            

We started cleaning, cooking, and smooshing apples at 8 a.m. and didn’t finish sealing and washing dishes until 11:30 p.m.   In fact, we finally had to quit cooking the apples because we ran out of pans and bowls to put them into.  It was quite a site and required everyone’s help.

Cindy                                                Tammy

We had cooked so many apples that Jared even had to make a late night run to Walmart, Keslers, and Ridleys to find more canning jars.  When it was all said and done, we ended up with over than 150 jars of apple sauce (50 jars per family).  Jared said that he doesn’t plan on doing this again for quite a while.  While he’s grateful to have this for his food storage, he’s not sure it was worth all the extra work.  I’m sure that once he has rested, he will look back at it as a fun time and might even consider doing it again! Lol

                                                                                                              Teresa, Mom, Cindy, and Tammy

Tammy

OUR ADOPTION APPLICATION

Today, our adoption application arrived in the mail!  We are so excited to get this process going that we immediately filled it out and went to put it in the mail.  We have set a goal for ourselves to have everything done by December 31, 2014. 

The decision regarding how to start our family has been a topic of discussion in our home for quite some time.  We have been to lots of doctor appointments and done many tests (both in Germany and the US).  We are at the IVF Adoption cross road with money being a factor.  Do we pay the money and try a round of In vitro fertilization with 50% chance that it may work or do we skip it and start filling out paperwork for adoption??  This is not a question that I thought I would ever have to face.  I just always assumed that we would conceive and have biological children.  On the other hand, Jared has a brother who has adopted three beautiful children and has known for quite a while that this could also be the way that we gain our family.  Thus, he was ahead of me in the decision making process.

Then one day, I received a note from a friend asking me, “Do you want a pregnancy/baby or do you want a family?  An eternal family.  In the end, we are all related by blood thanks to our Father in Heaven.”  This was something that I had never really thought about.  When I read this, I had an overwhelming feeling of peace come over me.  Yes, I wanted an eternal family, but I just never thought that it would come to me in this way.  Jared has been very loving and patient with me as I have “grieved” the thought of not having my “own.”  I KNOW that there are children waiting to come to our home.  I have turned my will over to Heavenly Father, trusting that HE is in control and will lead us to the children that are meant to be in OUR family. 

 

 

 

So, here we are.  Excited and ready to move forward!