Welcome

My journey in adoption and foster care started just months after we were married in 2000. We decided to start trying for a family right away which wasn't happening nearly as fast as I wanted. We sought out help right away and were told to try for a year and if we didn't get pregnant come back. Well a year past and then some and still nothing.  We went back to the doctor who thought maybe I had a blocked tube due to a surgery I had when I was in 8th grade.  The fix would be surgery so in I went to fix my blocked tube.
After surgery I learned that my tubes were fine but instead I had stage two endometreosis.  I had no idea what that meant but felt positive that it had been removed and we were one step closer to starting a family.  The doctor told us we had a year to be more aggressive in our attempts to become pregnant so we should consider doing fertility treatments.  I then found a fertility specialist who preformed several tests and started me on my first round of medicine.  After several months I still wasn't pregnant so we moved to IUI shots.  I remember how awful the shots were, I literally ran around the house screaming because I didn't want my husband to give me the shot.  He finally caught me and the shot was administered.  We continued this course for about three months with no success.  The next step according to the fertility doctor was IVF.
My husband and I went home to consider our options.  We both felt IVF wasn't the right path for us and quickly started talking about adopting.  By this time two years had passed and I was desperate to become a mother.  I never really cared how it happened I just wanted a baby and I wanted it now.  So I started researching adoption.  I was so discouraged to discover how much it cost to adopt realizing that this new road wash't going to be fast.  After several months I learned about Catholic Charities and their domestic newborn adoption program, this path seemed to be a better financial fit for us then  international adoption or other domestic agencies.  So I called to sign up for their classes and was told we probably wouldn't be accepted for various reasons.  But the very next day I got a call that we could start taking PRIDE classes to become licenced foster parents (the first step to becoming adoptive parents.)  We spent the next 8 weeks going to class and learning all about foster care and adoption.  At that point we knew some day we would foster but the goal was to complete a domestic newborn adoption first.  We put together our birthmother letter and began our wait.
Meanwhile I signed up to go on a mission trip to Honduras with my dad.  We went at the end of January 2004. My trip to Honduras opened my eyes once again to the idea of adopted internationally and I desperately wanted to take home so many of the beautiful children I was blessed to meet.  When I came home I told my husband we should look into adoption from Central America. With in two days I had received a referral of a newborn baby girl in Guatemala and 5 months later she was home!
 I never would have guessed that God was going to bring our family together through international adoption or that I would be parenting children of a different race, from a different country.  Two years later we brought our son home from Guatemala.  Our life would never be the same.  Several months after our son was home we got our first foster care placement, an 8 week old baby boy. Our journey through foster care and adoption was well on it's way.
My hope is that I can use this blog to write about our experinces as foster and adoptive parents,  the joys and struggles.  I intend to be myself because that's all I can be.  I'm not a perfect parent and I make mistakes everyday with my kids, but I'm a real parent dealing with very real kids.  I hope I can be honest about what this journey is like and how I wouldn't change it for the world.