Showers/Adoption Celebrations

Whether you want to call it a baby (or not-so-baby) shower or an adoption celebration... I was certainly surrounded by so much love and support in November to celebrate our adoption of the twins! Lots of pink, tasty things to eat, people I love, and adorable & generous gifts. It was such a nice distraction from the emerging reality that the girls won't be home with us for Thanksgiving. It was so nice to be excited and celebrate and to feel so much support from so many people.

On November 14th my friend Natalie threw an adoption celebration for me and invited our neighbors and church friends. Everything was so nice and I found myself feeling really overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. My jaw hit the ground when I got home and realized that I hadn't remembered to take pictures of anyone at the shower... I think it was a combination of having such a nice time visiting and talking about the girls and the fact that I was, like I said, a bit overwhelmed at all the attention and generosity. I'm so glad that I snapped a few pictures when I got there to capture a few of the details and to jog my memory of that special celebration...

Natalie showed me after the shower that there was a framed picture of Mark with the girls on the mantle too, but just before people started to arrive it fell and broke. I love that she thought to include one of him with them too...and I really LOVED that she printed the girls' names and put them up with their pictures so everyone could see them and know their names.

Everything looked so pretty and tasted so yummy!

One of the most special touches to the celebration was that Natalie went to all the effort to learn about Soup Joumou and spend the entire day making it! That was really special to me. I loved it. And it was delicious!

I just have to mention that when I was a girl I did NOT like the color pink. It wasn't until I went away to college that I decided to embrace it. I've waited a LOT of years to incorporate it with anything related to my kids though...bring on the girl stuff! And, as a side-note, Natalie sent me home with these flowers and they stayed gorgeous forever!

I received so many generous, thoughtful gifts...books, darling clothes, gift cards, bed sheets, aprons, crafting supplies & smocks, hair products, dress ups, pillow cases with their names on them, snack containers, scarves and TWO CAR SEATS! Are you kidding me?! That really blew me away. Both the generosity of it all and that I can bring our sweet girls home in those two car seats. Hopefully soon!!! I went home emotional, happy, and full of so much gratitude.

A couple weeks prior on November 2nd my mom and sister-in-laws threw a family shower too!

I know how much time and effort goes into planning an event like this and there were so many lovely details to appreciate. That gorgeous naked cake with the beautiful flowers was the best tasting cake I've ever had in my life thank you, Amy! (I think she said it had Chantilly cream in the middle? It was sooo good)...the cookies were so darling, the decorations were so pretty, there were ranunculus from my very favorite flower shop, and so many tasty things to eat!

I loved that by having a shower game centered around Haiti it gave us all a chance to talk about the girl's heritage.

People that came included aunts, my grandma, cousins, my mom (obviously), Mark's mom, my sister-in-laws, a niece, and three of my childhood friends who are more like family honestly...

Aunt Linda, Grandma Shirlene, Aunt Lois, cousin's wife Andrea

Me with my cousin Jeanette (and Dalynne behind us!)

Mary and me

Becky and Allison

My niece Audrey

Sister-in-law Amy touching up the cake she made

 I absolutely LOVED that my mom strung together these banners of pictures of the girls. Love, love, loved it!

My grandma Shirlene with her sister Lois

Aunt Barbara & my cousin Dalynne

How adorable are these dolls that my friend Allison gave me for the girls' birthday???

My SIL Miranda (who drove 5 hours to come all the way from St. George!) and my niece Audrey.

How pretty is this?? My niece Audrey painted it! So, so thoughtful and such a meaningful gift! It will be perfect in the girls' room and I'm trying to figure out the perfect spot for it still (these kind of decisions take me a while...)

How darling are these purses my mom bought for the girls?

My friend Becky gave me such BEAUTIFUL dresses for the girls

We passed several of the gifts around so people could see them. I received so many nice things not shown in pictures here including: clothes, shower caps/detangler for the girls, blankets, bike helmets, ballet clothes, security blanket/toy, snow gloves/snow pants, books and toddler-proofing locks!

Me, Aunt Barbara, Aunt Lois, Mom, Grandma Shirlene

Miranda, Me, Katie

Al, Becky, me & Jenny

What an absolutely perfect afternoon. I am so, so very blessed and I can't wait to introduce these sweet girls to so many people that have been praying for them and already love them too.

October! My very favorite month of the year!

I could gush on and on about everything I love about October/fall... cocoa & cider, changing of fall leaves, fireplaces, crisp sweater weather, pumpkin everything, cozy blankets... and Halloween! Anyone that really knows me is aware that Halloween is my very favorite holiday. I really could write paragraphs about how October has always been my favorite month for reasons relating to the season and the holiday, but let's delve into a few other points down memory lane:

***Back in October of 1994, while in highschool, I met Mark! Yep! I've known my handsome man for 25 years now! (Thanks, Tommy!) The first time I saw Mark he was a teenager with long hair tucked behind his ear and he was playing a game of chess. A quarter of a century later... here we are!

***In October 2005 I got to be in the audience of Oprah's 'favorite things' show! Yep. That makes the list! Not only was this an awesome experience, but is what we have referred to as the turning of tides in what had been a really rough few years of undergrad & medical school, failed fertility treatments, failed adoptions, surgeries, car accidents, our apartment being robbed and our apartment burning down. After the Oprah show/giveaway though things in our lives took a turn for the better, and it wasn't long after that we found out that we had been chosen to become Noah's parents!

***During October 2006 we got to go to Disneyland and the beach as parents with our sweet little 8 month old Noah while Mark was on rotations in California. This may sounds trivial, but some of my best childhood memories growing up surround either Disneyland, the beach or Halloween...so for all of those to collide on our first Halloween as parents of this child we waited so long for - it was magical for me. Oh, and Noah was a lion for his first Halloween.

***During October 2010 I found out that our IVF procedure using our last remaining embryos was successful (I was pregnant with Max)!

***October 2011 we were moving into our new home (first-time home buyers!) and getting settled after moving here from Arizona when Max's colic miraculously stopped after several months and he became a calm, happy baby!

***October 3, 2012 we officially started this adoption process! We figured that since it would likely take a couple of years (hahaha) to complete and Max had just turned one that it felt like good spacing to have him and his sister be about 3 years apart. Little did we know...

***October 2017 my cousin Lauren & friend Natalie both separately told me about a fitness girl on Instagram that I should follow who was in Haiti on a Haitian Roots trip. I did start following her page and because of that I saw a picture of her and her husband holding the sweetest little baby girls at an unknown (to me) orphanage. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the picture and I ached to find out who they were and if they had been matched to a family...I wasn't given any information on the twins, but was told they were in the process of being adopted. Later I would find out that those little girls were our twins! They certainly were in the process of being adopted when I saw that photo... by us (we just didn't know it yet)!

***October 11, 2018 (one year ago today, and a year after seeing that picture of those precious twins) I got the call we had been waiting on for 6 years! We had been matched! I had just changed our adoption facilitator's (Chareyl's) phone number to ring as the Hallelujah chorus for when she would call me. So, later that morning when my phone actually started belting out that song as if from heaven I was weak in the knees. When I answered the phone Chareyl said, "Well, Holly, today is the day you have been waiting for. You are the proud mom to 2 year old twin baby girls!" I fell to my knees and cried. Chareyl waited patiently. It was such an emotional and joyous day! Throughout that day, and the next few days, we relished in sharing the exciting news of our match. We documented a few people's responses and compiled them into this short 30 second video. It makes me smile every single time I watch it. I definitely recommend watching it with your sound up...

***Lastly, right on Halloween 2018 we received our official referral from the Haitian government for the twins! That seriously couldn't have been more perfect for me! I was literally dressed up at Max's Halloween party at school when I found out!

So! You can see why October really is my favorite month of the year! I also look forward to having the girls home to enjoy next October together as a complete family. To sharing their first time crunching autumn leaves and dressing up in Halloween costumes together. In the meantime I will relish this trip down memory lane. I'll remember the amazing, euphoric day that was one year ago today. I will hope for more amazing news and memories yet this October. And I will enjoy everything that I love about October with my boys right now.

Happy October, everybody!

7 years ago today

Today is a perfect day to pay our final adoption payment for our girls!
7 years ago today we began this adoption journey! We knew starting things that it would be a rollercoaster (adoptions each are in their own way), but we had no idea what was ahead of us. We certainly had no idea that our boys would go from 6 years, 4 years and barely 1 year old...to 13 years, 11 years, and 8 years old!! These boys grew up hearing about their little sister as if she were a fairy tale - the "baby girl that would someday come, when the time is right".

Over the last 7 years of waiting to complete our family we changed from looking like this:

...to looking like this:

***That is the most recent snapshot I have of our whole family...I'm waiting to get this year's family portraits done until we can do one of all SEVEN of us. Yep. Seven is officially my new lucky number.*** 
We waited 7 years to become a family of 7!

When starting this journey we had no idea that 2 years into our process that we would be changing from adopting from Ethiopia to Haiti, no idea that it this process would be another 5 years after that - or of all of the other unpredictable struggles there would be along the way, BUT...

We also had no idea that we would be double-blessed with twin little girls, we had no idea how grateful we would be for the crèche our girls live in and caregivers they have, we had no idea the depth of love we would develop for the other children that live at the crèche with our girls, we had no idea of how much our love for our children's country of birth would increase, we had no idea how much our perspectives on things in life would change, and we had no idea the things that would happen in our family (like Max's diagnosis) during this wait that would make the spacing of our kids just perfect like this.

We just had no idea...
...but I believe that God knew all of it fully. HE knew all of how things would unfold for us & HE knew the heartbreaking way things would unfold for our sweet girls. HE knew how to take a situation of tragedy, heartache and loss and turn it into something full of beauty. Truly beauty for ashes. Our girls will never be "lucky" to have been through what they have in their first few years of life that led us together, but we are all blessed to have a Father in Heaven that knows how to orchestrate beauty from even the greatest heartbreak and loss we can imagine. My heart will forever be broken that in order for our sweet girls to come to our family that they had to endure and lose so much, but I will also forever be grateful for the blessing of being able to have the privilege of being called "Mama" by these two beautiful girls.

This very end of our adoption journey has proven to be more heart-wrenching and more faith-stretching than I could have imagined. To have our girls bear our name, but be separated from us and living in a place so riddled with turmoil is often difficult for my heart to navigate. In my human-ness it is difficult to be patient while having no idea how long the current political/economic situation will delay our girls from coming home.

Having no idea has always been the hardest part of this process. It has also been the part of the process that has grown my faith the most. It is the part that has allowed me to lean more heavily on my savior. It is the part that reminds me that HE knows. That forces me to trust Him. To remember that as much as I love these girls, He loves them even more. And so I write these things down, so that on the especially hard days I can go back and read the things my heart does know. So I can lean on those while I wait for my heart and our family to be whole. While I wait for our real journey to begin.


*Just for fun, I do always like taking a look down memory lane at posts from prior years on this date:
6 years into this journey (8 days later we were matched to our girls!)
5 years into this journey (this period of time was one of the heaviest for my heart in this journey)
4 years into this journey (our girls were 11 days old & Hurricane Matthew was bearing down)
3 years into this journey (the last line in this post makes me giggle now)
This & this were written around 2 years into this journey (as doors closed on our Ethiopian adoption)

September visit - last day (day 6)

September 25, 2019

There's always a different feeling when I wake up on the last day of a visit to our girls. I have an urgency to soak up every moment with them and a lingering sadness at the impending goodbye that is inching closer later that day. We started off the day with some tasty oatmeal and fresh pineapple and then were on our way to go pick up the girls from the orphanage.

Some clips from some of our playtime...

The girls really enjoy talking about animals and the sounds they make...

...and they really like stacking and building things.

The twins also love singing "A little girl went walking" over and over. I love it too...

My hair is often something of interest too...

And we made cards for papa by tracing their hands, coloring and putting stickers on the paper...

I don't remember why Abigaïlle was looking in El's mouth...

We had a little time to hang out with Mama Tita (Rosita) before food was brought up to their room. I'm so grateful for these ladies that love our girls so well (and our girls sure love them too)...

She stood there with her hand on her hip until I took her picture...

...and then she asked for her picture on the stairs with her little legs crossed. I love our sweet Abigaïl.

Just hanging out on the porch with my girls.

Bubbles with grandma!

Snuggles with my El.

You would think I would be able to prepare my heart for these goodbyes after having done it so many times, but it just seems to get more and more difficult. Each night that I dropped the girls off at the crèche I told them in Kreyòl that I would be back tomorrow. This night, just after I told the girls that tomorrow I wouldn't be coming back tomorrow (and my heart was breaking into a million pieces), my mom snapped this picture. The girls just looked confused, a little wounded and then gave my long hugs (atypical for this time of day). It physically hurts my heart to look at this picture.

Dinner was quiet and sad that night.

The next morning (September 26th) we left at 5:30 in the morning thinking we'd have an excess of time at the airport. The lines were so long and things were so crazy at the airport that we didn't even sit down once and just made it on the flight not long before takeoff. The airport still had a bad burned smell from the fire two days earlier and there was a tension from people in the airport that I hadn't seen and felt before. People were quarreling and sometimes yelling at each other, trying to cut in lines and just generally tense. Little did I know that things were about to peak in chaos there in Haiti and if we hadn't left when we did we would've been caught in the lockdown and still be stuck there. There is so much that needs to change in this country that we love...