It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Ghouls and goblins are put away for another year- thank goodness- I am not a big fan of Halloween! However, November and December are two of my favorite months. Two months in a row that give me an opportunity to really think about the blessings in my life, reflect on the year that has gone by and be grateful...I love it!
This is also the time of year when J.D. and I were dating. We have traditions that we have tried to do every year that started when we were dating. One is driving the Alpine Loop (I think it was our second or third date) to look at the leaves after they have changed. Last year it snowed before we were able to go on the drive so when J.D. noticed the leaves were changing this year we made a point to go on a Monday night for our drive. It did not disappoint- absolutely beautiful!


I love the fall colors and the crispness of the air. Hot chocolate and soup weather and best of all snuggling up with the Mister. I wish there was more time for that last one because I sure love that man! I so love making memories with him and creating traditions that we can share with our children. I can't believe it has been three years since we met and started making memories together. If I really think about it I remember life before I met J.D. but really it seems like we have always been together. As we are filling out our adoption paperwork there are quite a few questions about our relationship and it's strengths and weaknesses. I don't know if other people sit around and think about these questions but it has really given me (and I think J.D.) time to think about our relationship and marriage. I am just so grateful for the good man that asked me to marry him and I'm glad I was smart enough to say yes!

About the adoption...we keep getting questions about how it's going. Honestly it is a slower process than we expected. The average time to fill out paperwork and have a home study and get approval is 6 months. We are done filling out hard copy paperwork and now it is just questions that we have to answer- about us, our marriage, families, our thoughts on adoption, parenting philosophy- mine is perfect by the way because I don't have children yet ;) Some, well many really of the questions are things that I hadn't put words to before. I know how I feel in my heart but putting words to those feelings is more difficult that I thought it would be. We are in Phase Two of the application and once we are done with the questions we will have individual interviews with our caseworker. We set a goal to have all the questions done by the end of November so we can hopefully have our interviews done by the end of the year.
While it wasn't a smooth beginning with LDSFS because of some miscommunication to us from the office we are so glad that we are able to work with them. We just love our caseworker, Hayley. We also like the support that is offered to both birth families and adoptive couples. They have a monthly chat night with different topics each month. We were able to attend our first chat night on Thursday. The topic was open adoptions. There were a couple of birth parents and an adoptive couple that have adopted two little girls are waiting to adopt for the third time. It was really informative and we had questions answered that we didn't even necessarily know that we had. Neither of us have had a concern about an open adoption- I had other concerns but they have since been resolved and even put more to rest during the chat night on Thursday.

Until next time...