A short, but nice break

We've enjoyed the month of July, mostly because we went to Carolina beach for a week and we haven't been thinking about adoption too much.

We had a blast at the beach...it went too quick!  We rode the waves on our boogie boards, played pool volleyball, kayaked in the canal, rode bikes to new places in the evening, and ate Britt's donuts everyday!

Riding bikes on the beach around sunset

SML double-fisting Britt's donuts

Sunrise

Family poker night

Waiting for the fireworks!

Having too much fun capturing our adventures on camera!

We've had a few contacts, but nothing came of them.  One contact was from Alabama who was about 14 weeks pregnant. We chatted online/via email with her for a few weeks, but she never could call into IAC.  She told us that she's decided to parent. Another was from OK who has an almost 12 month old.  Everything was taken from her when the tornados went through in May.  She too couldn't build up the courage to call into IAC and was a little all over the place.

We had 9 letters go out in June.

I completed my physical and we had our FBI fingerprints done.

SML starts work in 1.5 weeks!! She's getting anxious but excited! We've continued to really enjoy CrossFit and have made new friends.  We can see small changes in our bodies. :)

Well we move into month 20 of waiting....

Changes

Changes are happening....

...in our personal life; not with our adoption journey.

SML graduated nursing school from UNC Chapel Hill in May!



She took the board exam at the beginning of June and passed!!!!!  So, now she's relearning what it feels like to do nothing.  She's focusing on getting herself in better shape and completeing little projects around the house. 
We joined Crossfit at the beginning of May and are LOVING it!  It's a high intensity workout that utilizes functional movements and incorporates olympic weight lifting and circuits.  It's a lot of fun and the community is amazing.  Everyone is so supportive and encouraging, we receive great coaching, and the workouts vary so much.  We're both getting much stronger!!
We plan on putting the house on the market come fall, so SML is doing small projects around the house to get it in great condition.

I was offered and will start full-time weekends at work in August; the same week that SML starts her job!  I can't wait...only 2 nights per week, on the weekends, and I maintain full-time benefits.  My life will be more balanced soon.

As for the adoption journey, we continue to receive about 2 contacts per month with no follow through.  We had 11 letters go out in April and 11 in May. 
We acutally received a packet in the mail from our adoption agency stating they're sorry for the longer than normal wait, now that we are at 18 months and counting...
They offered to look at our birthparent letter and websites to improve them, however, we are going to decline the offer.  We know that we are attractive to birthmoms; we just want follow through.  We don't want to spend more money on redoing the letter.
We are again, renewing documents.  We just got our county criminal background check completed and will get fingerprinted and have annual physicals within the next month or two. 

We still don't find waiting easy, but this experience has taught us one thing...not to plan for the unknown. 

Please keep us in your thoughts and pass along our information to anyone that you think could benefit from it or pass it along, too.

Better late than never...

Sorry it's been awhile, but we've had a lot going on, both in our adoption and personal worlds.

First we want to show you the finished products of our reupholstered couch and new ottoman - we LOVE them!

We feel like we have a new living room. :)

We have been busy getting SML through her last semester of nursing school.  She's on the home stretch now and only has two finals between her and graduation!
I've been really busy at work and trying to balance home life for SML.

With a busy schedule, we've been receiving on average 2 contacts from birthmoms per month.  Some have been scams, of which we only invested about 24 hours into two of them, and all have lead to nothing.  The other contacts have been legit birthmothers that ended communication with us or decided to parent.  We feel like we have been playing a dating game and each result is "it's not you, it's me."

So needless to say we have been emotionally drained and exhausted from being "on" every time we receive a phone call or email.  We needed to take a break from anything that wasn't essential for us to live, hence the break in updates.

We feel like we are starting to get back on our feet, but are still waiting.  We have stopped our Facebook ad, increased our monthly contribution to our google ad, and increased our advertising with Adoptimist.  Adoptimist has actually been a good lead in some of our contacts and displays banner ads online for us, like this:


Our letter count has been pretty consistent; we had letters 8 go out in January, 8 in February, and 10 in March.

We are trying not to focus so much on adoption, since it's been 16 months, and planning things we want to do.  We joined a crossfit gym and will start that in May! We are excited to have a workout routine again and finally be able to get in the shape we once were.  Running has been fun, but we need to add to it.  We just completed a zombie mud run, which was a blast! Check out our pics on our Facebook adoption page.
We are going to go see Jillian Michaels this week...which SML is very excited about!  Since she is on SML's "list," I hope we don't get too close to her...otherwise I'll have to find another ride home.  We bought tickets to see the Lumineers in June.  And the day after SML finishes her exams, we are going to stay at a b&b that we enjoy at Sunset Beach for a couple of nights!

So, stay tuned...we don't have to put our life on hold anymore. :)

Increasing our advertising

Sorry, this is a little late; we don't have a reason for not posting.  We honestly have just been enjoying time together and preparing SML for her LAST semester of nursing school.  We've spent a lot of time in front of the tv, but in our "old people" recliners.  We're having our couch recovered.  Man, do we miss it!  I think Avs does as well...she doesn't have any good napping spots downstairs.  :)  So, at times it looks like a bachelor pad in our living room or depending on how much stuff has accumulated around the chairs, it looks like an older couple lives here.

We had 8 letters go out to birthparents in December and were favorited by one.  That's better than October and November.  We've had a couple contacts, but nothing serious. 
One was a scam, but she only stole 24 hours of our life and we nipped that in the butt quickly.
The other was a contact that we didn't feel comfortable with.  She had a 6 month old baby that she had only been taking care of for 2 months.  He was an ex-26 weeker preemie and seemed to have a stable hospital stay, but doesn't sound to be thriving/growing well and may have neurological issues.  Without a developmental study, we aren't sure, but he's only 10 pounds, sleeps ALL of the time, and can't tolerate being unswaddled at all. 

So, with nothing serious happening at 14 months on the books (but who's counting), we decided to increase our advertising.  We are paying almost double for our facebook and google ads.  We also joined another online networking/advertising adoption page called Adoptimist.  We hope to gain more attraction from legit birthparents and find our birthmom.

We'll post pics soon of our new living room do. :)