Build it and they will Come

"Build it and they will come" well, that is the quote from the movie Field of Dreams. Our hopes are the same is true for our baby nursery. For the last couple of weeks we have been working on our Baby room. Since Justin and I love to camp and are avid out door lovers we have decided to go with a woodland theme. I have this awesome digital Craft cutter called the Silhouette machine and it cuts vinyl wall decals so I have designed a cute tree and owl family for the wall.We'll show more photos When the room is complete. :)

Mother's Day Tears and Design fun

Sunday was Mother's Day my first thought was ughh.. just another reminder that I am not one yet. My second thought I have been blessed with the greatest mom ever! I have also been blessed with a pretty awesome Mother-in-Law. Both have become very important women and role models in my life. And for that reason I was going to try and not be sad about Mother's Day but try and make the best of it.. I woke up somewhat tired on Sunday morning walked into the kitchen and there was my sweet husband standing there with a grin on his face, I then took a look on the kitchen table where there was a cute little Giraffe gift bag inside the gift bag was a little shirt that read my mom rocks and a bunch of cute little bibs and a mother to be Mother's day card for me. Immediately tears start running down my face. Justin looks at me and says "What?" as he smiles ear to ear.. Yep! you got it this is why I married this man he is the biggest sweetest guy ever! He just knows how to make me happy when I am sad and is there with me through think and thin. I know he will be the best Dad ever!

So after the tears and hugs Justin informs me that there are not a lot of  designs for mother's to be that don't have a pregnant lady on them.. I thought humm I can fix that, well maybe not this year but maybe next year. So my next design project is going to be to make designs that are geared towards those of us who are building our families through adoption. I started working on this today. Here is an example of a baby shower invite that I have been working on.

And the waiting begins...

Last weekend was a busy for us as we celebrated family birthdays. Which seem to creep up fast every year.  I guess that is part of having large families but none the less we love seeing and celebrating with everyone.
 Our week has been full of anticipation as we got everything ready to bring to our meeting with our social worker yesterday. We got all of your paper work in the books are being sent out next week which means we no being our Official waiting period. Which is the start of our "Pregnancy" well non traditional pregnancy that is lol..   Best part for me is no weight gain and if I want my steak a little raw and a glass of wine I can! :) Oh and I don't have to give up my herbal tea which I love! Yes Justin tells me I am Teavana obsessive. I have to agree that I have become quite the tea snob.
So the next leg of our journey begins.. waiting.. While waiting we hope to prepare the baby room and get ready for our new arrival which could happen with in six months, a year, 3 months, who knows.. that's the thing we just don't know it is out of our control and something we just have to roll with. Which is not new to us, we consider ourselves to be pretty easy going and a go with the flow type of couple which we have been told will help us along the way.

Our "Baby Moon"

Back in December we were struggling with infertility issues and holiday stress. We then decided that we were in great need of a vacation. We decided that instead of getting each other birthday and Christmas presents we were going to go on a cruise.

 In January we made the final decision to move forward with our family building option of adoption and decided that this vacation would be our "Baby Moon". The best part is I could have a margarita, go for a dune buggy ride, hike, snorkel and kayak on my baby moon! How many pregnant women do you know who can do that he he.. We found time to relax and rest up and prepare for our journey of waiting to
be matched.

Adoption 101 for family and friends

Justin and  our niece Haidyn hunting for Easter eggs

Happy Spring everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! I know I did it was great to spend time with my family and of course be a part of the wildness that goes on when all of our nieces and nephews are together. They have a blast and we have so much fun watching and playing along with them.

Last night Justin and I attended a speaker event at our adoption agency. The speaker was Elisabeth O'toole who has recently published a book called "In on it: What adoptive parents would like you to know about adoption A Guide for Relative and Friends". The introduction in the book goes as follows: One afternoon while I was wondering through the neighborhood grocery store with my son, an elderly woman approached us. White-haired and cardigan-sweatered, she was the whole package: sweet Little Old Lady. She looked intently at my baby, who was calmly surveying things from the seat of our grocery cart, then at me, happily basking in my new motherhood, and said, "look at that beautiful skin, is he adopted?"
Sigh. I was just there to pick up some fruit. Maybe a loaf of bread. I opened my mouth to respond with a irritable "you know, that is really none of your business." And Stopped. Having spent my formative years being told to repeatedly to mind my manners, I had developed a Pavlovian response to respecting my elders, even the annoying ones... The introduction then goes on to say that the elderly woman only wanted to let her know that her niece too was also adopting from China and they were all very excited. Elisabeth went on to tell us that people usually mean well when they approach you with odd questions. The Elderly woman wanted to let her know that she too was soon to be a part of the
adoption community and she was very excited about it.

That being said all of you whom are close to Justin and I will also soon be a part of that adoption community as well. Because lets face it! Adoption is different. We don't have a timeline, We don't know the sex of our baby, and as of now we really don't know a whole lot and just like you were on a pretty big learning curve. We have truly enjoyed this learning process.. I've been thinking of things and correcting myself as I speak about adoption to friends and family.  But it is now our job to learn and then share some of that with you as well as point you in the right direction to more information if needed.

One thing that was brought up by Elisabeth and in our adoption classes is positive adoption language. Below is a list of positive adoption language. Which we hope you will all think about as you too enter this adoption journey with us.

If any of you have questions about our adoption please feel free to ask us via this blog. I have found that a lot of people are sometimes afraid to ask us about it or to show an interest for fear that they may say something wrong.

For the most part everyone has been very supportive and we really appreciate everyone's love and support! We feel so blessed to have such a supportive and loving group of friends and family. We look forward to sharing more with you as we learn along the way! :)

It's Arrived!

 It was a week full of anticipation while we waited to get our finished profile book from blurb.com. I think I checked my tracking number every day. I worried about if the color was going to come out right. I worried about having the images just right. Even though I had several people proof it I still worried about typos because you all know I am the queen of typos lol.. And of course as usual Justin just sits there and laughs at me and says "You Worry Too Much", I then proceed to tell him that it's not my fault it's genetic.. Then we both chuckle and go on. Needless to say we now have our finished profile book and it looks great! We have ordered the mass quantity of 20 books which is required by our agency so they have enough to send out to the other agencies they work with. Once we get the books which will be in about  two weeks or so we fill out some more paper work, then we are officially "waiting".. Waiting for that call that will change our life!

Almost "waiting"

Our home study and  profile is finally complete. YAY! We would love to send out a special thank you to our family who helped with the editing and supplied some photos! Jeremy your the best, we would've been lost without all of your awesome editing skills! :). Some of you may be wondering what the heck is a profile book? A profile book is a book about us, kind of like a scrapbook, that our adoption agency will send out to other birth mother agencies such as http://www.hearttoheartadopt.com/ .  The birth mother agencies then will show our profile books to birth mothers and they choose the parents for their child based on this book. So it's important to have an awesome book. Which put a bit of stress on us to create the best book we could.

We have ordered one book and should get it sometime next week. We are very excited to see how it all turns out! After we return from vacation we have some more paper work to fill out for the birth mother agencies then we hand our profiles and paper work over to crossroads (our agency) and then wait for "the Call".. 
Here is a sample of our book.

Justin & Amanda by Amanda & Justin Zoss | Make Your Own Book

We are ordering our  Profile book through Blurb.com. If you are ever looking for a great place to get a custom high quality photo book produced I suggest using them.Oh and if you need a designer to help you design one I just may know one :).