We were married in June of 2004, on the most beautiful day ever! Our wedding was picture perfect and as a bride I couldn't have asked for more. We had been together for 9 years before we got married .. so definitely kids and how many had been talked about. I always wanted 4 -- Nate on the other hand would have been happy with 2. Like most couples, you make the decisions to start having kids... and it just happens. (that is the way the birds and the bees were explained to me! LOL) When we finally moved to Iowa a year after we were married we started to get more serious about this baby thing and got tested. Unfortunately we found out that both of us have issues and together as a pair... it was going to be a little more difficult to get pregnant. We started seeing an infertility specialist and went over our options. In August 2007 we started our first IVF procedure. I hope none of you have ever experienced this because not only is it physically painful and time consuming, it is emotionally draining, and costly. The good news is we ended up with a BFP! In layman's terms that is a Big Fat Positive! I cannot tell you the joy Nate and I felt when we heard we were pregnant. The first time we saw our little angel on the ultrasound machine was amazing. We made it to 10 1/2 weeks before we went in for our third ultrasound and there was no heartbeat! To make matters worse, I had to have my first D & C three days before Nate's brothers wedding, talk about no recoop time. After recovering from that we decided to try it again that April. That IVF cycle ended in a BFP too! We were excited to find out that we were pregnant with twins. Sadly that pregnancy lasted until 8 1/2 weeks and then the dreaded D & C again. That June, we made the decision to adopt. We did our research (i don't do anything without mountains of research!) and prayed for guidance on where to adopt from. We chose Colombia, South America. Some of our deciding factors were that we could get a baby/ infant less than 2 years old, that it was a Spanish speaking country (which both of us felt very comfortable with) and the procedure from adopting from that country was what we were looking for. I think a little bit of "me" came back after making the decision to adopt. I was able to look to the future with hope and dream about our kids. The dream changed from "I wonder if the baby will have Nate's eyes?" to "I wonder what the baby will look like?" It was exciting!! We did our final IVF cycle that August, one last effort. Again that cycle ended in a BFP but by the first ultrasound we were met with yet more bad news. I have to admit that my heart wasn't in it at that point. I had already had my heart in Colombia and was looking forward to that so the news wasn't as devastating.
In February on 2009 we took a mission trip to Colombia with Opportunity International. It was an amazing experience and we met lots of wonderful people who do great work down there. It has turned into a great passion of ours to see with just a small loan of $100 how much that can help a woman with a business and that in turn help her entire family! Absolutely Amazing!! Then 6 months later on July 16th we received a call from our adoption counselor about a group of 3 children who didn't live very far away who had a pending family death situation and needed a loving couple to adopt them. Our initial reaction was no... but then after sleeping on it my husband woke up and said to me "maybe you could get a little bit more information on it today". That was the opening in the door I needed. 12 days later we were asked if we wanted to meet the children. I will tell you that I was a mess! The whole drive up there I was a ball of nerves and couldn't sit still. Entering the adoption agency we knew we were going in to meet our family! What an amazing feeling. They placed Gigi in my lap and I fell in love. It is one of the best days in my life when these 3 little angels walked into our life. And right then our family of 2 turned into 5!!!
Just as we were getting the hang of this parenting thing... we got another big shocker. I learned that I was pregnant. Craziness!!! Our family was overflowing!! Lil miss arrived on the scene on October 25th, 2010.
