...thankful...

We can't believe the generosity we have felt and received through out our adoption. From the very beginning we have been overwhelmed with blessings. We have received very generous donations from individuals that wanted to remain anonymous. We are just pouring out with gratitude and it is so remarkable that anyone would donate to our adoption and not want to have any recognition. We hope that whoever has given to us is reading this and knows how grateful we are.

When we were at church one day, our Bishop came over and handed us an envelope and said that someone had wanted us to have this. There was a generous donation and a beautiful card inside that said,

"Do you dream of the joys

of your new little baby -

The dreams

that you'll see come true,

The marvelous moments

of laughter and fun

That lie in the future

for you?

Dream on and be happy,

Parents-to-be,

As your time

of fullfillment draws near,

Dream on and look forward

to still greater joys

When your precious new baby

is here!

Hope this gift will bring that

'Dream' a little closer to Reality!"

The card was unsigned and all typed, with no way for us to figure out who did it. As the weeks turned to months on our journey through adoption, we have been surprised and again, overwhelmed at everyones generosity. We would be at church and people that we hardly knew would give us $10 here or $60 there. Friends we hadn't spoken to in years donated through our paypal account. We have had 3 garage sales where we raised just over $2400 ($700 of which was due to a raffle we had at the first sale, with all donated items from local businesses). The garage sales wouldn't have been possible without the items donated from many friends and families. We also had the ladies, we hardly knew, from my brothers' office donate items and even stopped by to show their support at our first garage sale.

We had one amazing woman who was a friend of a friend donate $100. We had (and still haven't) ever met this person, and we came to find out that her husband had just recently passed away. We were amazed that during her time of struggles, she had the desire to still help those around her. We had one of our friends baking and selling cookies to raise money, and through her, one of her sister-in-laws made a couple blankets for us to sell. Every extra cent we had went into our adoption fund, and our wonderful families gave to our fund as well. Then another person came forward and gave us such a large donation that we actually could almost see the finish line to reaching our goal.

And the other day we found an envelope in our mailbox with just a blank card and $50 inside. We were shocked. Then last night. For some reason Brandon just went to the front door and opened it to look outside. There on the front step was a large manilla envelope. Inside we found another anonymous donation with a book titled, "From God's Arms, To My Arms, To Yours". This book is really just the lyrics to 6 songs that are about adoption - each song is either from the birthparents perspective, the adoptive parents or the childs.

It was wonderful to read the lyrics to these songs and feel like someone understand and was able to put how we felt into words. So many people don't truly understand the heartache we have felt these past 8 years wanting so badly to have a family. The many nights we would just hold eachother and cry. Pouring our hearts out to God asking, "why?"

We have been so blessed by everyone around us. We aren't just grateful for the donations, but also the kind words we have received - they are just as equally important. Whenever someone gives us encouraging comments, we feel so enormously loved. This experience has been so emotional for us. And to realize that we are loved by many, helps us to get through each day. From the beginning we wanted to share our story to be able to try and help those that may feel they are alone, because we have felt that way too. We found a whole new family of people that were going through the same things we were and we have been able to talk with them and hopefully one more person will realize they truly aren't alone.

We don't know if it's because we are getting so close to the end, which is really only the beginning, but we are so much more emotional than we have ever been in this journey. We are blessed to have such beautiful and wonderful birthparents. It's starting to become real what is happening and yet we can't even imagine what it will feel like to actually be able to hold our baby girl in our arms. It makes us cry to just think about our dreams coming true. Have you ever felt that deep down hurt in your soul? Our hearts have ached for so long to be able to have this. We are deeply appreciative to you all and hope that we haven't forgotten to thank anyone that has helped us. We thank everyone for helping us on this journey physically, emotionally and mentally. We look forward to hopefully being able to pay it forward somehow to you all.