Daryl's Tattoo

Almost exactly 16 years after his cousin Melinda passed away, Daryl's tattoo was completed. Mindy was artistic and was often drawing. The fish tattoo was based on a sketch she drew shortly before she passed away. The drawing remains on an easel in Daryl's parents house in memory of Mindy. Now, it's on Daryl's ribcage!

P.S.

We are still pursuing fertility treatments along with pursuing adoption. Some people think this is wrong. Some agencies don't allow you to be going through fertility at the same time or will terminate your adoption if you get pregnant. While I understand that both fertility and adoption are mentally, physically and financially draining I still feel that each couple needs to decide what is right for them. For us, we just long to be parents however God works that out. We still hope to experience being pregnant, childbirth and having a newborn, but we also have a heart for adopting. Regardless if we get pregnant or not, we will pursue adoption. Most agencies will put you on hold if you get pregnant, which is understandable. But, there are some people and at least 1 agency that I spoke to, that doesn't feel like you could possibly love an adopted child as much as a natural child. I won't lie-when we first started the adoption process we wondered what it would be like to love a child that you didn't give birth to. That thought didn't last long at all. Once we dove into the process there was not a doubt in our mind that any child-biological or not-that was in our home would be loved unconditionally. If you haven't experienced our situation, you can't fully understand. I believe it would be unfair to judge us because we are choosing to pursue adoption and fertility at the same time. To us, we are just hoping to grow our family and will love any kids that we are blessed with. Most everyone has been supportive, encouraging and helpful during our process and we greatly thank you for that!

International Adoption

Our adoption paperwork expires soon so we've started re-evaluating our adoption process. I've been feeling for some time that we should pursue international adoption. I didn't mention it to Daryl at first, but over the past few months it started coming up in our conversations. We have recently decided that international adoption is the path we are going to pursue. We will always be open to private domestic adoption if someday we find a birthmother, but we will focus our paperwork process on international. Currently, we are in the process of finding an agency and deciding on a country. Our top country choices are currently going through some major changes that may significantly decrease/close adoptions. We are trying to gather as much info as we can on the changes as well as other countries that we may be eligible to adopt from. As overwhelming and uncertain as it is, the more I read and learn about international adoptions, the more it excites me! I love adoptions and I'm so thankful that God has put the desire to adopt in both of our hearts even before we were married. I've become a bit obsessed watching people's videos of when they first meet their child. It's amazing! The process is long and there is alot more paperwork than domestic. Each country has their own rules, each agency has their own rules, so there is alot to figure out. I joke with Daryl that we are either going to be old, broke and have a house full of cats or we are going to be blessed with a house full of kids from lots of different places!