A Year Ago Today...

I did one of these types of posts on the one year anniversary of completing our homestudy, so I thought that THIS special day also deserved the same kind of post...

A year ago today was a pretty special day. It was the day I found out that I might be a mom soon.  You know, because nothing is ever definite when it comes to adoption.  It's always the possibility. 

June 29^th, 2011 was a Wednesday.  I remember coming back from my lunch break and sitting down at my computer to do some work. I left my desk to run to the printer and came back to see that I had a missed call from our adoption worker.  I KNEW something was going on. After we finished our homestudy back in April, we didn’t really have much contact with our adoption worker. Not that I’m complaining. There wasn’t a reason to have a lot of communication with her, and I most certainly didn’t want her calling every day to tell me that nothing had happened.

So when I saw the missed call, I knew it was a big deal. And, boy was it. Her message said “Kelley, Hi this is Jean*. Please give me a call back when you get this. If there is any way you could get Kevin in on the call also, that would be great. Talk to you soon!”

I immediately walked outside and called Kevin. Neither of us knew how to do 3 way calling on our phones, so we just decided that I’d call Jean* and then I would call Kevin to let him know what she wanted. When I called her, the first thing she said was that we had been selected by a young couple to parent their child. She gave me a bit lot of background information. Then I called Kevin to tell him everything, and then I told Kevin to call Jean* because I couldn’t remember everything. It was crazy. It was exciting. It was scary. It was CRAZY. Our baby was due in just 5½ weeks!

We knew it wasn’t a done deal by any means.  Nothing is ever for sure in an adoption until everything is signed and finalized. We still had to meet the birth family, and then of course go through the birth, revocation period, etc but on June 29^th, 2011 everything became very REAL.   

 And exactly 6 weeks after finding out about her, our daughter, Kate, was born.

She’s a pretty special little girl, and she comes from two very special birth parents. I can’t imagine what they had to go through to make the decision for adoption, but I’m so glad that they chose life for their daughter and chose Kevin and me to be her parents.  We are definitely blessed.

Since she was born, I've been working on typing up the complete story of our journey to Kate, and of her birth, placement, and adoption.  I think I'll share it today, so I've posted it under a new tab at the top of this blog.  It's called "Kate's Story".  Here's your warning- it is very long.  And I mean VERY.  I've said all along that this blog was meant to document our lives, as sort of a scrapbook.  It's only fitting that Kate's story be included too.  Her story is already ALL OVER this blog, but it's in bits and pieces over several different posts.  So, I've put it all in one place and if you care to read it, it's there.  I didn't go back and proof-read it, so sorry for the typos and grammatical errors.