Spring is one of my two favorite season. I really enjoy watching all the changes that seem to happen overnight. Last spring we planted a new crabapple tree. It had already bloomed by the time we planted it. Now it is full of dark pink blossoms and so pretty. It's nice to look out the window and see nature take its course.

                                                                                                    

Spring Break '09

We had a great Spring Break. It was sooo nice to be away from school for a while. We went to NC and VA. I finally got to hold my new nephew Buxton. He is so sweet and beautiful. We spent a few days in NC before we headed to the Eastern Shore in VA. Ed's parents built a new house and it was nice to see it. Grace and the dogs loved going for a walk in the woods there. We also closed on the rental house that we bought, so it was a busy 7 days. On our way back home we stopped at our favorite spot in the NC mountains to watch the kayaks and let the dogs take a dip.

Adopting Grace-The beginning.

I guess I'll start where any story should start... the beginning. 

May 2004: Ed and I wanted a child. We tried several different options, but we were unsuccessful. (I'll skip the personal stuff and leave it at that.) We had already decided that we would adopt a child, we just had always assumed that it would be later. Well, it didn't quite turn out the way we had planned. 

June 14th, 2004: We received some disappointing news from our Doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Hosptial. There were a few days where I was very sad and upset, blaming myself for our problem and thinking that I would never be a mommy. Well, after Ed and I talked about it we decided that we would move ahead and adopt. It was not a hard descision to make since we had already talked about it before. It did not take us long to choose Russia as the country that we would adopt from. The only request that I had was that I wanted to adopt a little girl. After letting everyone know, we started looking for an agency. It took about 3 months to finally decide on one. We chose Frank Adoption Center(FAC) in NC.

Sept. 2004: We drove the 2.5 hours to visit FAC for an seminar. On 21 Sept 2004 we officially sent in our application to FAC. 

Oct 2004: We chose Coordinators 2 in Richmond, VA to do our home study.

Oct 2004-Feb 17,2005: One word sums of this time in my life-PAPERWORK. Since I had done so much research earlier, I was prepared for the amount of paperwork that I was going to be doing. The problem I had was waiting on things to come back from the various agencies-the VA State Police, our marriage certificate, updating passports, fingerprint appointments, ect. I would have liked to hand carried everything and had it done on the spot. The waiting, at times, was terrible, I would rush home to check the mail hoping to find the things I needed. I wanted to get everything finished so we could be placed on the waiting list at FAC. Along with all the PW needed we also had our home study to do. That included even more paperwork and visits from our Social workers. On Dec 7, 2004 our home study was completed:). It only took a little over 3 months to complete our paperwork and on February 17, 2005 we were officially waiting for our little girl. 

Conquering the balance beam

We are so proud of Grace and watching her grow is amazing. This was a few weeks ago at Little Gym. She was the first girl in her class to conquer the BIG balance beam. She was so happy. She said "I did it all by myself."