Fingerprints, tiny onesies, and baskets galore

Found this on another adoption blog I follow and I loved it! "Adoption is very messy. It is beautiful and full of God, but it’s not simple or tidy. There is lots of stuff to sort through and many miracles must take place every time adoption happens. It’s such a beautiful picture of the way God has adopted us. Our adoption as sons and daughters in God’s family is messy, too. It involves repentance and brokenness and usually some tears. But in the end, this way that God has provided through Jesus, this way back to him after things were messed up by sin, brings a perfect reconciliation of broken things in our lives and our relationship with him. Just as adoption is a perfect reconciliation of physical brokenness: a husband and wife who are broken because they can't conceive, and a child born without a whole family. It all comes together to create a new, whole, un-broken family. Two broken things made whole, for the glory of God. God adopting us – children who sinned and messed up his perfect original plan – is the ultimate reconciliation of what was broken in the Garden of Eden. It all comes full circle in some crazy, mysterious way.I think that those who are touched by adoption will agree that it is a miraculous and blessed thing to be a part of, one that changes you and opens your eyes; one that leaves you forever imprinted with the image of God and the whisper of his love in your life.Our God is the God of miracles, and I am so blessed to be adopted into His eternal, victorious family!"
Awesome right??

So our profile has been "live" for a couple of weeks now. We have no idea if our profile has been shown to any families yet, but we are hopeful that our call will come anyday. Yesterday was an antsy day for me. Not sure why, just waited for the phone to ring. I probably looked at my cell phone a million and one times. Not to mention scoured the adoption angels website at the 6 waiting families to see if any had been matched yet. It's not that their "competition" so to speak, but it is interesting to read their profiles and look at their photos. I try really hard to not compare our profile to theirs. Continue to trust that God has our baby picked out and there is absolutely nothing else we can do to our profile to make a family like us, make her want to pick us. So we wait. We did receive word from TX that they had received our fingerprint cards and will be sending directly to NC ASAP which is great. Most agencies won't show your profile until your background and prints are cleared. But our awesome agency started showing us a couple of weeks ago before our prints were received.

Last week we were overwhelmed by kindness and generosity, again. I work with some amazing folks and they so generously created 15 beautiful gift baskets of various themes: beach, garden, cooking, baby, etc. They then sold raffle tickets for one week. I had the great honor of pulling the winning ticket for each of the fifteen baskets. (My Mom won a great basket complete with a giant giraffe which will be great in the nursery, this was not RIGGED!) All of the raffle proceeds went to our adoption fund. They raised $1040.00!!! Isn't that incredible??? I tried to say a few words to practice for Spaghetti dinner next week, and I couldn't hold it together. Tears everywhere. I don't think I was the only one though. :)

Bought 2 tiny onesies today. We have collected a few little things (non gender specific) to take with us when we journey across state lines. My fave so far is a yellow zippered sleeper that says: I love Mommy. Ahh I LOVE it!



Thank you everyone for your continued prayers, generosity, kind words, and for being our cheerleaders!!

We made it on the big screen...

Have I mentioned lately that I am thoroughly impressed with our agency?? Since we made the first phone call to them in the beginning of February, things have really moved at lightening speed. (Compared to how things had previously been moving..) God has really moved things right along for us!! In just a few short weeks, we have completed all our paperwork, received our official waiting family letter, and today our online profile was published on the agency website!!! This is HUGE!! So huge, that when I was scrolling down the waiting family list on the website (something I do frequently), and I saw US, I was almost sick. Ha Ha I couldn't believe it! Whoo Hoo. I know they have been showing our profile for a couple of weeks now, but being listed on the website means even more birth families will be able to see us.

I can't even imagine!!! Our birth mom could be reading our profile online right now! She could be considering adoption, browsing the agency site, read our profile, and hopefully she will see our hearts. She will see our desires. We know and trust that God has already chosen the baby we are to adopt. I can't wait!!

My sweet dear friends at work made 15 beautiful baskets to be raffled off with the proceeds going to help our adoption. We can't believe how much participation there has been. I can't believe there are so many people that desire to help. I am overwhelmed and I don't know how to properly thank everyone. Our Sunday School class is hosting a spaghetti dinner for us on April 6th. I'm gonna try to speak, gonna need to pray hard to hold it together.

The nursery is coming along so beautifully. Last weekend we put the bedding on the crib and it looks fantastic. My whole adult life I have only ever purchased things for other people's babies, I can't believe that it will be our baby one day, hopefully soon.

Please continue to pray for the birth family, our agency, our social worker, and for the whole process. Thank you so much! Love - J & K XOXO

Parents in Waiting, Paper Pregnant or whatever you wanna call it!!

YAY!!! One of the most important dates in our adoption journey has finally arrived!! In the mail this evening we found a "Parents-in-Waiting" letter from our agency!!!....


Dear Mr. and Mrs. Clayton,

We would like to congratulate you on your new status as Parents in Waiting with our agency. We have found your home study to be complete and received clearance on your criminal background check. At this time, we will begin to present your profile to Birth Parents. We will also continue making contact with you throughout the adoption process to ensure we have all required documents in place.

When selected (I love that it say WHEN and not IF), a committment packet will be mailed to you containin all the birth parent information, including all available information that we have gathered (Birth Parent profiles, medical records, photos, info on siblings of unborn child, etc) You will have five days to review the birth family information, ask questions, and talk with your family before you make your decision.

Another section read: This will probably prove to be the most trying and difficult time of your adoption. You have worked hard to get this far and now all you can do is wait. :)


WOOO HOOOOOOOOO When we ripped the letter open at 9pm in our dark front yard, squinting to read the print, I screamed! A loud, squeal of joy! So excited to be Paper Pregnant!! I received an email from a good friend yesterday filled with encouragement. She closed the letter with a specific prayer for begging for some kind of confirmation to ease my mind - an email, a phone call, or a letter to show things were progressing. Today, we received this great news. Thank you Lord for always sending things at the right time and reminding us that you have everything in your control.

Braxton Hicks (again), Lemon Parfait, and a Test of Endurance

Well....it has been an interesting couple of days. I've hesitated in sharing this but decided I would although names will be changed and vague details will be given. If you remember back in October I wrote about a Braxton Hicks of Adoption instance that occurred when we were made aware of a potential independent adoption situation. Well, it happened again!! A friend contacted me yesterday with some crazy news. She knew of a situation a few months ago (unbeknownst to us) where a woman was pregnant, already had a couple of children, and she was considering adoption for this baby. My friend contacted her and told her that she had a friend (us) that were trying to adopt and if she chose that route she could introduce us. She didn't hear anymore more out of her until Sunday night when the mother called her from the labor/delivery room sobbing that she wanted to place the baby girl for adoption and she wanted to meet us!!! (We still did not know this was going on) However, the boyfriend (bio father) is adamant about not placing the baby for adoption. Here in lies the problem....this makes for a legal risk situation. It's her right, he could contest, etc. Also, the woman's mom has stepped up and said she would help support the baby if she chose to keep her. It was an exciting little while. But mostly it makes me sad knowing there is a baby girl lying 5 miles down the road whose family is fighting over her. One wants to give her the kind of life that she admittedly is unable to provide, the other not allowing her that chance. Pray for this whole family as they need peace and healing, and strength. We have not heard anything else. We told our friend that we would speak with her if she wanted to. But we really don't feel like this is supposed to be our baby.

This posed a very interesting question though. Are we still interested in an independent adoption? The answer is possibly. Depends on the situation. We are working with Texas, we are deep in their process, but we will have to consider all opportunities as they arise. Who knew this would happen again??? I am so thankful for that friend who thought of us, who prayed for us, and was willing to help in any way.

So..continuing on....we have painted the nursery a delicious Lemon Parfait! It is beautiful!! We also repainted all the molding and trim a lovely white. It looks so fresh and clean! Next, my friend Lora will begin on the Noah's Ark mural. Can't wait to see the zebras, giraffes, monkeys, oh my! The crib bedding came in today too, and I almost broke down. It is precious. Never in my life did I think I would be purchasing baby items for us. But here we are, still no match, but preparing as though baby will be here tomorrow! Crazy I know!

We stood in line today for over an hour waiting to get fingerprinted. We had to leave before we made it through the line because I was already way over on my lunch break, but the kind guy said we could come back on Thursday and he would move us to the front of the line. Yay, for kind people. You would not find that kind of service at the DMV! ha ha "Back of the line"!!!

Next week our amazing Sunday school class is hosting a spaghetti supper for us with the proceeds going to the adoption fund. We are overwhelmed. We don't know how to thank people enough. I would love to be able to stand up pour my heart out to all in attendance, but I know I will be reduced to a blubbering idiot. No one wants to see that before they dig in to their spaghetti. I am not one of those pretty criers, nope, I'm the red eyed, puffy lips, snot nosed, snorter who gets choked up easily and words fail to flow. Hmm, people might attend just for show. ha ha Gonna have to pray big time.

I'm getting tired of the race. I know there will be a happy ending to this journey (yes, I'm that optimistic), but the last few days I have really been exhausted. For months we have been working so hard to prepare, plan, process, and push things to happen. And I don't regret it at all!! But maybe I will feel differently when the fingerprints are finished and the background check is in so the HS can be finalized. Then we really won't have anything to do in the process except wait. Oh, more waiting. haha We are hopeful that when we are officially official with no red tape in the way that we will be matched quickly.

Thank you for the prayers, texts and msgs of encouragement, and for following our journey. We could not do this without you all.

Fundraising clarifications, concerns and criticism

Hello all,


I thought it was probably time to clarify a few questions regarding our fundraising. This post isn't really for those that know exactly what we are trying to do and why we are trying to do it. This post is more for those people that may not quite understand and in turn, they say some pretty offhanded comments. To us, and you.


1. "Why don't you just go through foster care, those kids are free?" Yes, I have actually been told that we should "get" a waiting child in foster care because we wouldn't have to raise money, and wouldn't have to wait long. Does our desire to raise an infant together make us selfish? I personally don't think so.  God's plan has not included the miracle that allows me to carry our child in my womb, but His plan has led us to adopt. At this point in our lives we desire to adopt an infant. Perhaps, later on in life, we will feel led to adopt from foster care but for now, we desire to adopt the infant that God is forming for us.


2. It has been hinted that perhaps we should have made the decision to adopt if we could not afford it. This one probably bothers me the most. Because, yes, we don't have $20K plus laying around, I don't know many people who do. But, we did not just wake up one day and decide, hmm, we should adopt. Years of failed fertility attempts left us broken. Exactly where God needed us to be before the plan could unfold. Adoption was everywhere we turned and we finally realized what we were supposed to do. And it felt good and right. And every day closer heals my broken infertile heart.


Over the past 6 months we have raised several thousand dollars that have gone directly to our adoption expenses. We are eternally grateful for every person who purchased a T-shirt, a cheesecake, dipped fruit, or just handed us a check or cash. We don't feel worthy or good enough to accept the outpouring of love and generosity that has been shown to us. In the beginning of this process we knew that we would have to rely on God to help us raise the funds for this adoption. But it has not come easy. It has been a labor of love. We have sold our boat, are in the process of selling our Jeep, baked for over 120 hours through the holidays, and designed and sold t-shirts. We have not sat back and just assumed $20k would simply fall in our lap. The funds raised have gone towards our home study, agency fees that include building our profile, "advertising" our family, assisting the birth mom, legal fees involved in termination of parental rights, etc.


And we are getting so very close. Again, thank you to everyone that has been so supportive from the very beginning, who have never doubted our intentions. Thank you for the encouragement, prayers, concerns, questions, creative ideas, for loving our family.


We continue to wait....we are so close to becoming an official waiting family....we are so close to meeting our birth family, we are so close to bringing home Baby Clayton.

I've got a feeling...

It has been a couple of weeks since we last updated. Although it seems to have flown by! We had a very successful Valentine's adoption fundraiser. Vesta and I dipped strawberries, pineapple, apples, oranges, blueberries, pretzels, and graham crackers in chocolate, and boy was this popular! We had over 50 doz orders!! Here is a pic:

We spent the last week gathering the necessary documents for the new agency in TX. Amazingly enough for us they are willing to take copies of all our docs that we had already obtained for the NC agency. Birth certificates, marriage licences, medical records and physicals for the 3 of us, reference letters, etc, they will take them all! This has saved us much time!! We forwarded them a link to our birth parent letter and photo album for their review before we actually ordered the book, and they LOVED it! Whew, what a relief! So we forwarded all docs, the original photo album that we ordered from shutterfly, 4 color copies, and now...we wait. But it is a different kind of waiting than even a couple of months ago. A couple of months ago we did not even know that this agency existed and we were putting all our eggs in one basket so to speak. We were working on our home study and waiting to get on a waiting list for NC. We were optimistic but were starting to get wary of the process only because there seemed to be no progress. But now, things are coming together in such a way that we can't help but feel encouraged and see how God is working. Soon, we will officially be paper pregnant, or parents in waiting. Soon we will be advertised to birth families facing a huge decision. And we pray that soon, we will be receiving a call that will change our lives. In the meantime we are working on a few things....

1. Preparing to paint the mural in baby room - Noah's Ark
2. Painting big sister Amber's Room - her choice of colors
3. Making a huge calling tree of sorts to most efficiently get the word out when we receive the 1st call and when we receive a call that our birth mom is in labor. Although, we could only get one call, that our birth mom is in labor! WOW! That would be intense!
4. Making a travel list - not the obvious things but those that we would not normally think of - car seat/with base, stroller (grateful we have these 2 things already), hoping to borrow a GPS from someone so we can navigate our way around the 6th largest city in the country
5. Researching hotels, rental cars, and flights in San Antonio, TX
6. Packing a diaper bag

What else are we missing?? What else should I be working on if I were actually going to give birth?

Jeff and I both have a "feeling" that things are going to start moving even faster. Things have really been going so well that I know this would be a great opportunity for Satan to jump in and attempt to steal my thunder, but our God has this totally under control!! And we are choosing to be optimistic!

Thank you for your continued prayers, encouragement, generosity, and simply your interest in our story. We love and appreciate every one of you. Love - J & K

A mind and spirit revival! Things are unfolding!

I want to stand at the top of the tallest mountain and scream at the top of my lungs.

WOW! Things are unfolding in an awesome way, filled with little affirmations that some will no doubt say are purely coincidentally. I wholeheartedly, without a doubt, know that God has heard our prayers. He knew that we (okay, mainly me) needed a "sign", something to occur to let me know we are on the right path. I re-read my last post, and it makes me sad. And excited to see how things have changed in just a few days. OK, you can exhale now, we have not been matched yet, but....and a very serious but..... we are so much closer than we were before. And the amount of peace that surrounds the new developments is tremendous. Let me begin....

As you all know we have been waiting to wait for months with the NC agency. In October we were told there were so many waiting families that it they were not able to take any more at this time, but hopefully by spring. Well, we decided (after the braxton hix situation) that we would proceed anyway and hire the agency to independently handle our home study. So glad we did! Our amazing social worker Dawn is incredible. Caring, generous with her time, flexible, and so much more. She has been excited for us since the start and it has been a real pleasure to work with her. We completed 3 HS visits in December, and the last one in January. Dawn has been busy finishing for approval. During this time we have become more and more disenchanted with our current agency. When we asked if we would be able to attend the required meeting that is ONLY held in April and September, we were told that they were not sure yet. Zero communication. That bothers me. So the disenchantment continued to build which led us to start second guessing the path. Not the path of adoption as a whole, just the path to the end result. We started looking at other agencies. Others had great advertising and wonderful appealing aspects with promises of more communication, quicker results, etc. But we still had no real peace about any of them. By the end of last week, I was ready to ban myself from the Internet. I felt really down. This is probably a good place to plug my awesome husband. He is amazing. He is a tough and strong but a soft place to land. He keeps me hopeful. He doesn't show his excitement and enthusiasm the way that I do. But I see what most people don't. The glances in the baby room, the talks about baby names, him declaring "I just want the little person here already!" I love him.

Anyway.... we decided not to pursue one particular agency that we had been discussing for several days. The very same day we spoke with a couple that we have known inadvertently for awhile. They began to tell us their adoption story. They had also been through the battle of infertility. They said they could not tell us what to do what they suggested we look into their agency...in Texas! My first question, is why Texas? Several reasons really. First, the agency in Texas only deals with families that have documented infertility. Second, the laws in TX are much different in NC. In NC, the birth mom can terminate her rights after birth, but has 7 days to change her name. In TX, she can terminate her rights at 48hrs, and there is NO 7 day waiting to see if she will change her mind. HUGE!

Agency facts that I learned from the director today:

Work with only about 15 or so families at a time.
Average wait time is 6 months, could be shorter, could be longer
Place about 60-65 babies per year.

Large majority of babies are Hispanic due to the population. These babies are often hard to place. When the director told me that today, I promptly said "We'll take two!"

The women are tested for every disease known to man, taken to prenatal appointments and counseled weekly. Communication between us and agency would be very frequent.

WHEN we get matched we will also receive a profile on the birth mom to make sure we won't to proceed. This is great! When it is time for delivery Jeff and I will fly to San Antonio and will probably have to wait a few days, possibly a week for the interstate compact between TX and NC. During that time we can explore the city and enjoy every minute of our new baby. I pray we are able to spend time with baby's first mom.

So, I can't wait to tell you about the ways God is working, even in the smallest ways!! When I emailed Dawn to tell her about our intentions of looking into TX, I included the whole story about the couple who told us about the agency in the first place. Her reply was great! Not only does she know them, she helped facilitate some of their paperwork so that they could come home by Easter in 2008! How awesome is that??! She also got the stipulations from TX that need to be included and incorporated them into my HS now, instead of having to get an update later. BONUS!

Then, I discovered that an old friend/co-worker of mine now lives in San Antonio!! Another BONUS!! She is already excited about planning some things for us, what a huge relief it is to know that we have at least one friend in the city!

Then, while talking to my friend at work about hoping that the hotel has Internet because I want to be able to check flights, send pics, etc, (we don't have Internet on our phones), she easily said "Oh, well that's easy, I have an old laptop you can have!!" Seriously!!!

Then, my dear friend Kristyn, who is going to be a fantastic Thirty-one consultant asked me to host a party, which of course I would. Then she said a % will go to our adoption fund. How amazing!!

We can't explain the peace we have. The excitement we have. The love we already have for our birth mom and baby. The awe in how God works. We choose to be optimistic.

The finances will work out, the agency is exactly the amount that I can withdraw from my 401K. Praise the lord.

Now, we can focus on raising funds for the attorney fees ($2k), potential birth mom expenses (in case she doesn't have insurance,etc), and travel expenses. (Flight,hotel, car) But we have some fundraisers in mind, but more important than that, is that GOD always provides a way!

I know this post is all jumbled, sorry about that.

So, occasionally we allow ourselves to envision traveling home, stepping off the airport, and seeing so many of our family and friends who have come to welcome us home. I only allow myself a few seconds of picturing this. But one day, maybe one day soon, our homecoming day will be a reality and not just a dream.