Hello October

Wow - It is October, a beautiful time of the year. Last night, for the first time in a long time, I journaled. It's great to be back to pen and paper. I started this new blog to start this newness I feel inside. A restart of sorts. The old blog catolouged our journey to becoming parents. As it is an exciting story, the journey to become parents is over and now we are just trying to be parents! Struggling along everyday with parenting struggles from trying to get our 4 year old to NOT pee her pants at night, to dealing with young boy love in our first grader. {yep can you believe it we have to worry about this at 6 years old!! Yikes}

We started the Far and Away blog on July 28th, 2008. At that point in my life (it seems like an eternity ago) I was extremely sad, depressed, asking why all the time, and looking for a break in the clouds in my life. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 4 years and after countless tests, 3 IVF cycles, 3 miscarriages, and 2 D & C's we were both exhausted. The blog started a month after we put pen to paper and officially made the decision to adopt... that in its self was a HUGE thing for me. We had exhausted all other avenues of concieveing a baby on our own and I finally gave into going down the adoption path. It was very hard giving up the dream of having a baby that looked like me or my husband. To never have a stranger come up and say "she has your nose." Somewhere back in my mind I always thought we would adopt, but maybe after having a few of our own. But only God knows the plan that was instore for us. I couldn't imagine our life any other way.

Since that moment -- we have adopted 3 children (all from the same family, domesitically) and miracously had a little baby girl the "old fashoined" way too! My how things have changed. And it is easy for me to sit here now and say everything worked out the way it was supposed to, but tell that to the Lynn 3 1/2 years ago.... NO WAY. I would have shut down and felt sorry for myself and been mad at everyone around me that was saying everything will be okay. My husband, God bless him, did the best he could to make me feel loved unconditionally no matter what happened. And he was the one to first talk about adoption. I was unreceptive at first, but once I started really looking into it... I was hooked.

Life went from just the two of us to a house full of noise. Everyday is exciting and challenging with our 4 little munchikins running around, but I wouldn't change my life for anything. I am the luckiest person in the world. And so.... (quite a long explaniation to why) I have started to create a new blog. Also an added bonus is that eventually I will delete the far and away blog so that when sometimes I goofed up and put the kids names on the blog by accident those won't be there anymore. My husband's be weary of everyone's attitude will be calmed. He won't be nervous of people creeping on the web trying to google our kids names. So from now on they will be Rosie, Bubba, Gigi, and Lil Miss -- their nicknames around the house.

I hope you continue to stick around the blog and follow what is going on around in our household. Don't think for a second that now that the adoption process is over that our life got any less crazy. It is completely the opposite. The last 3 months have been filled with moving to a new home, starting school, learning a new area, and random thoughts and actions of 4 VERY rambunctious children.

For those of you who would like.. please follow the blog (on the right hand side of the blog) so I know someone out there in the big world of the web... someone is listening to me. I have made a pledge to myself to make sure I journal more things that are happening in our life. From adoption know hows, to parenting dos or dont's, to crafting, to pouring out my heart and soul just to make myself feel better that is why the blog was created. I can't gaurantee that there won't be spelling mistakes or bad mommy moments, but it is my life. Here is the start of my next journey.... a house full of insanity!

And yes, to my brother kurt, anyone can start a blog.... look I have two now! LOL