Tonsillectomy Adventures

Our sweet little OG had her tonsils removed this past Saturday. Oh my word, that was a loooooong day. She woke up so cheerful at 345am to go to the hospital and by noon we were home resting with her. P was so excited to finally get those "massive, gigantic, enormous" tonsils out! (She's got a little bit of her mother's ability to exaggerate I suppose). 

It seems so routine but for me, it was terrifying! The whole 38 minutes she was in surgery were a roller coaster of emotions, fears, and freak outs (by me, never Steven the steady one). Poor P woke up so upset and kept claiming that "they added extra bones in my body, it's so heavy!" So bummed I didn't get video of that part, sorry friends to let you all down. 

Today is day 5 of recovery and I was warned days 3 and 4 would be the worst, but it hasn't been bad yet. Waiting to see if it will be unexpectedly difficult or if she really is as tough-as-nails as I think she might be. Her teacher sent home homework and all the worksheets for the week. She completed ALL of it in just a couple of hours while she was in the office with us. How on earth am I supposed to keep this one busy for another 10 days?! Help!

Anyways, life has been pretty slow during the recovery process, which I don't hate. Still plugging away on adoption paperwork with the goal of getting all of it to the agency by the end of the year. Yikes! I should get back to work! Thanks for all the love!

Adoption Fundraiser and Christmas Gifties!

You guys, adoption is ex.pen.sive.

So, I'm making some cute stuffs for you to buy at an overpriced awesome price to help us support our adoption fundraising goal. ;)

I'm so happy to put my new Cricut to use for you all! It's seriously the most fun way to raise money I could have ever come up with!

Here's some freaking adorable pictures of my children modeling these funzies for you:

Check out my etsy page; I'll be adding more this week. And I can definitely get things shipped to your door (and gift wrapped if you'd like) well before Christmas. HANDMADE PRESENTS ARE THE BEST PRESENTS! :)

Steven says I should tell you you can also donate directly to our AdoptTogether Profile page by clicking here or the button to the right.

So grateful for all the love and support you've all given our family!

Our family is GROWING!

It's been about a hundred years since I've published anything on here. I'm long overdue. Reading through the last few posts almost makes me laugh. Life looked so different.

The past few years have been fraught with pain, tragedy, change, and difficult times for us and for many of our family and friends. Being on the giving and receiving end of linking arms with one another to rally around a broken-hearted friend or family is the most beautiful part of humanity. Our tribe has taught us how to truly love - as a verb - and we could never thank them enough.

Last week we went "facebook official" with the fact that we have begun the process of adoption through Dillon International. We tried for a year and a half to go through LA County but throughout our process, we discovered they were changing policies to mandate foster first. After hours and hours of talking through it and thinking on it, we decided foster care wasn't best for our family and chose to pursue international adoption instead. We expect to have our homestudy complete soon and will keep pushing forward from there. We are SO EXCITED!

It's super scary to talk about this in public (read: online). After all, it's not exactly affordable to adopt internationally. There's a lot of guilt I carry around for choosing this path since I'm capable of having a child naturally. I'm told by my close friends to "shut up" about that because there is no need for guilt. But we all know how powerful guilt can be. I'm working to banish it from this process.  I also H A T E asking for help/money/assistance. It's by far one of the most humbling things I've done. But I realize that it's just unrealistic for us to pay so much money just to bring our child home. We cannot do this alone. It is not possible. That is both humbling and empowering to admit.

So now we ask for a little help. Boy, this is scary just typing it. We need to raise so much money. I'm working on revamping my Etsy shop to fundraise by selling handmade items, but it's taking a minute to do. We are also planning some crazy fun activities for fundraising as well. But, in the meantime, the link to our adoption profile is just to the right of this post. Please be thinking of or praying for us as we walk through this process. We are so excited for the end result of bringing home another minion, but there's much work to be done until then.

Thanks for your love and being a part of our tribe. We are forever grateful for the place you hold in our lives.