Finally

Our daughter is only a few days old and not an hour goes by that we don’t think of our adoption experience and how absolutely amazing her birth mother is to have chosen this life for her. Part of us wishes we would have found domestic adoption sooner than we did and saved some heartache, but if we had, we would not have "our perfect daughter" and we can’t imagine our life without her. After all these years, everything finally makes sense and it was all worth it!!

We are not sure if there are any words to describe the joy, happiness and love we have for our daughter. We have a feeling of completeness. Our family is complete.

Please continue to pray for us and our daughter. However we ask that you say a prayer for Elle's birthmom too. Pray for her health, her strength, and the void that she is feeling. Ask the lord to give her peace, comfort and calmness over the next few day, weeks, and years. It is through her courage and love that we were able to fill a void in our lives that we will cherish everyday.

We would like to thank everybody for all the support and encouragement you have given us over the past three years. Thank you to our neighbors who helped watch Cody and Owen, made sure Ryan was at the bus stop each morning and provided us with dinner. Thanks to my sister who stayed with the boys on Saturday and Sunday night instead of going out on the town. My mom for letting me use her flyer miles so we didn't have to pay $900 for a same day ticket. I'm sure I'm missing some, but most importantly, thank you to Katie, who stayed with our boys during the week. We put so many responsibilities on Katie and she handled them all with a grain of salt. She not only had to get the four boys ready each day, but had to get herself ready too. I hope she wasn't late for work too many days :). I can't began to tell you how wonderful it was to call home and everybody was happy, telling me how Katie took them to the park and Katie colored with me and Katie took us to McDonald's, and Katie played games with us. At some point I really thought I was going to have to tell Katie to just yell at them just to snap the boys back into reality. Thank you Katie.

Now that the 10 day waiting period is over, we still have more adoption paperwork to complete. Iowa requires 3 post placement visit, 1 month, 3 months and 5 months. After all post placement visits are complete we can file the papers with the court for finalization. After finalization, we will receive a new birth certificate with the name we gave her along with our names as the parents. We will then be able to apply for her SScard, Georgia will seal the adoption record and Elle will be our daughter....officially.

That's all for now, I will continue to update the blog often, might not be everyday, but we will keep our journal going.