Isabella's Adoption - part 2

Ok, so I left the story yesterday that we had just sent our profiles in -- that was the second week of December. For the first time in years this Christmas was better for us. We always enjoyed Christmas, but it was an extra hard time because it made us wish for children more. We enjoyed our Christmas at home with my family and then were able to make a trip up to Michigan and spend time with Kenny's family. It was such a fun time up there -- not that we hadn't had fun before, but the weather was perfect! Normally we would get snow and freezing cold weather so you can only be out for so long or there would be no snow when we went up, this time there was snow but the weather was also nice and the whole family was outside riding the snowmobiles and 4 wheelers. Anyway, one night we decided to take a ride on the snowmobile alone and as we were sitting at the top of the hill I remember us talking about how much fun it would be to finally have children and how fun it would be for them to play in the snow and "wouldn't it be so cool if we actually were able to adopt before next Christmas" (this was all said at the beginning of January 2004). When we got home we had Kim come over for our homestudy on January 6th. Actually all during the holidays we kind of had our own little secret because we hadn't told any of our family yet that we were going to adopt and we had only told a couple friends that had to do recommendation letters for our homestudy. We did this for a couple reasons. One, we weren't really sure when to tell everyone because we didn't know how long we would have to wait and didn't want everyone constantly asking us "have you heard anything yet?" Two, I , as the dramatic or creative that I am, had always wanted to tell my parents in some "unique" way that we were pregnant -- and I decided I still wanted this for adopting too. We decided to kind of start decorating the nursery - neutral, of course, so we painted it a pistachio green, painted a very small little armoire white, got out the decorations I had collected for years and we had found the crib I wanted cheap, so we bought it and put it up. We knew this was probably pretty early, but we decided we wanted to start telling people and by golly if I wasn't going to get my creative way! We had planned on Sunday afternoon, January 18th, that we would invite my parents up for dinner have them go back to the room (we would have a video camera set up for this) and have them walk in to a nursery with a sign saying we are adopting! Well, they decided to go out of town for the weekend and weren't getting back until Monday night, so we would have to wait. On Monday, January 19th, Kenny had gone up to our church to play indoor soccer so I was home alone. At around 7:30 or 8, I got a phone call and it was Cathy. I thought she was going to ask me about something or better yet, maybe a birthmother would like to talk to us..... Instead she said "I have a birthmother who just had a baby girl." Then she told me about this beautiful little girl who was only 4 pounds 11 ounces, born a little early, she had big brown eyes and a head full of black hair. She explained the situation and how Isabella's birthmother, I'll just call her "E", had spent 7 hours looking at profiles and that she had chosen us. Then she asked if we wanted this little girl? I probably screamed "YES!!" She said, "Why don't you call Kenny really quick and let him know and then call me back" So I did, I called Kenny and he immediately thought something was wrong because I sounded frantic. Instead I said "Cathy called, we have a baby girl and we need to be in California tomorrow!" He said "What?! You're kidding! Are you serious?" He started to come home right away, but I told him to stay and he was able to pray with some of the men there. When he came home, we called my parents to see if they were home yet (remember our planned surprise - now it was even bigger!) and asked them if they could come up to the house because we had something to show them. (My dad later said he thought it was a new puppy. :) When they came up, Kenny was in the nursery with the video camera. I opened the door and we had a sign on the crib that said "We're adopting, sooner than we expected....You have a Granddaughter!" All I remember my mom saying was "What do you mean?" over and over. Cathy then called us and said she was going to e-mail us some pictures of the baby. So Kenny and I and my parents were all here to see the first pictures of our baby girl. And these are the pictures we received: (It was obviously love at first sight!)


The only problem we had was that since we had only sent our profiles in a month before, we just finished our homestudy 2 weeks prior, we hadn't finished our home equity line to be able to finance things. Cathy had told us that we needed to be out there Tuesday because E was getting discharged so they would be discharging the baby as well. For the next few hours Kenny was frantically trying to figure out what we could do - the next morning! As much as I wanted to be out there right then holding my baby, I remember saying "Well, lets just pray that maybe there is some way that we don't have to go out tomorrow." Shortly after we prayed, Cathy called and said the hospital decided to keep the baby for a couple days because she was a little jaundice and they also needed to have her on some antibiotics, so it would be better for us to wait for a couple days to come out. That way, they could also get the relinquishments signed before we came out, etc. As much as I wanted to be out there and I definitely didn't want her to have to be in the hospital long, I knew God had intervened. This gave us time to buy a few things to take out there, get the tickets, get the money in order, etc. The next couple days were filled with answers to prayer. I'll tell you all about those answered prayers tomorrow. :) (Oh and I forgot to mention up top, that Isabella was born on Sunday, January 18th, the day that we had planned on telling my parents!)