Excuse Me Ma'am, Your Personal Life is Showing.

First up, I had a dream last night that I went to a Mongol Horde show and Frank Turner got too into it and punched me in the face. I woke up with a sore eye socket...someone tell me what this means!!!  Imagine my confusion upon waking up.

Oh man, the feedback I have been getting from keeping an adoption/life blog is surreal. You love me, you hate me, you think I "TMI" a little too often, you want more, you want less. Well, I have made a choice to share our adoption process - good and bad.  I think that being real is extremely important in life. I am always real with people, I see no point in pretending John and I are people that we are not. That being said, yeah, it's a little weird for me too. I know one day I may wish our faces weren't plastered all over the internet and it would be fruitless to try to remove every picture and personal note ever posted.  I am okay with that. So... onward to the latest updates.

It has officially been 9 stinkin' months of waiting live with the Independent Adoption Center.  That is long enough to have had a full-term baby, if my body would have allowed such growth of human life. Let's all remember one thing though, 9 months is still not that long to wait to adopt. I would feel incredibly lucky if our baby came to us at 9 months. Our home study renewal has been written and submitted, so now we just wait for the IAC to approve it. We continue with life and wait and wait- distracting ourselves with trips, yoga, records, seeing bands play, free HBO preview weekends and nights out with friends. Most days are filled with positive thoughts and optimism, others are really just hard as hell to get through.

We traveled to Wilmington, NC over the weekend for another curling bonspiel and some much needed beach time. This was a one day bonspiel, as opposed to Knoxville's two day event. I have to say I was pretty unimpressed with the city of Wilmington. There were some pretty sites, the beaches were nice, but mostly we sat in a lot of traffic. For a city of just over 100,000 in the summer (meaning UNC Wilmington was not so crowded), the roads sure were slow moving. The time spent at the beach was fabulous. I got a little beach cabana (because us pale people burn in like 2 seconds) and we made it our home base for half of Sunday.  Here are some pictures of the weekend, because what is a blog post without pictures, right?

Yep, they are all curlers.

John and his team getting ready to curl

Us at Wrightsville Beach (Siri calls it Riotsville which is kind of awesome)

John in our little cabana

Sarah in our little cabana

Carolina Beach- super crowded

Us on Carolina Beach

That really sums up the trip. No good pictures of food, because we didn't really have any unique meals whilst vacationing this time around. We all know I like food pictures too, so it is a quite a shock that there are none.

On the life agenda for the next little while is to keep up the hope that we will become parents soon and to not forget about the women out there who are having to make quite possibly the hardest decisions of their lives- to place their babies or to parent. The big plan is to be grateful that we do have this option, no matter how long it takes or how difficult it feels sometimes. Shall I end this with the usual?  We are ever so hopeful to become parents through open adoption, though our strength waivers, our hope never does.

Summertime (and the livin' is easy)

Let's talk about vacations and luxuries while being in the midst of the adoption wait.  I think it is absolutely necessary to still enjoy some of life's luxuries, even if we are a little nervous about the costs we are enduring for the adoption. We can't sit at home and think about nothing but waiting.  Distraction is the best coping mechanism I have found to get through this ever dragging process.

We do not have a "real" vacation planned for this summer, but we just went on a long weekend trip to Knoxville, TN for John's curling club.  For those who need a reminder or who for some crazy reason missed the winter Olympics, curling is an olympic sport that is played on ice. John is a part of Atlanta's first curling club and they happened to get into a bonspiel in Knoxville called the "Rocky Top Open Bonspiel" which is hosted by the Great Smoky Mountains Curling Club .  I had never been to Knoxville and I have to say I was really impressed.  It was a smaller city with big city features.  We ate some of the best food I have had in a while.  I would really recommend the French Market which is downtown on South Gay Street. We had some delicious crepes for breakfast our last morning there and got chocolate croissants to go! Did I mention they had free refills on iced coffee?  They know the way to my heart for sure. I thought I had more pictures from around town, but they turned out to be mostly food.  Shocker!

Chocolate croissant, fresh out of the oven!

Crepe!

John out on the ice (note the curling pants)

Spielin'

In a little over a week, we will be traveling to Wilmington, NC for another bonspiel.  The good news is that there is a beach in my future! The bad news is that I need to find a bathing suit (just about every woman's worst shopping nightmare).  We will pack up an emergency baby bag (because we can hope right?!), some SPF "insanity level" for the beach (because I basically glow in the dark), and some winter gear for the ice rink!

In super awesome adoption news, all of our home study renewal stuff has been turned in and our home visit is complete!  We now wait for our home study to be re-written/copy and pasted/tweaked a bit and wait for approval for another year of waiting.... good lord, please no!  My zen state only comes easy when I picture baby with us.  On that note, let's all share our adoption Facebook page ! Hey, good idea! I promise to better about making update posts.  I know it is pretty boring at times.  OR here is an idea, follow us on instagram where I am attempting to post 100 days of happy stuff.  I thought it would be really easy and it would be IF I could just post cats, Frank Turner mega-fan stuff and coffee. I guess I could, but it might run some people off.

On the topic of life's luxuries and cutting back, I am doing living room yoga rather than going to a class, but hat could change if I find the right priced studio. I will also be attempting to make my own iced coffee with this recipe from the Pioneer Woman- rather than purchasing one every day (which I am so guilty of).  My apologies to my local coffee joint, which I single handedly keep in business.  I promise to visit you on special occasions and when I have friends to meet up with.

Everyone, please send our kitty Spike good vibes.  He hasn't been well and was still acting a little off this morning. The vet wants x-rays and blood work.  He means the world to us and we hate when he isn't in tip-top cat shape.  12 years old and still my baby.

A few more pictures from Knoxville.  The skies were beautiful the entire time.

We attended a party at the Concord Yacht Club

A rainbow greeted us as we drove in to Knoxville

Thanks everyone for reading and demanding more! Love getting comments and requests from everyone!  I am open to writing about topics that people want to hear about, so bring 'em on!

Struggling

I am not going to lie, some days of the adoption wait are just hard. There really is no rhyme or reason to which days are easy and which days are hard. I don't want to lie to those who are considering adoption to complete their families. Some days you wake up and feel like your baby is so close that you almost expect a phone call or email that day. Other days, like too many of my days lately, you wake up and see no end to the waiting in sight. Adoption and the quest to parenthood in general changes you. It makes you reevaluate your past, present and future choices.

I had such an amazing weekend and thought I could fly happy off of it for months. I finally got to meet my favorite musician, Frank Turner. After his show at the festival we went to, he played a surprise sidewalk show in Little Five Points. We found out about it on Twitter and rushed over immediately. I was in heaven (my swamp feet from the monsoon that nearly washed out the show were in hell, but I was on cloud nine). After the sidewalk show, which only had about 75 people in attendance, I weaseled my way over to him and said "Hi, can we take a picture together?" He said "sure"! Then he talked to John a bit about hardcore, because John was wearing a Botch shirt. Apparently Frank really "botched" Botch's tour in England years ago (see what I did there?) I didn't say much, as I was just kind of in shock that he was so cool about talking to us and taking a picture. Regrets! But really, what would I say that he hasn't heard? Your music rewired my brain? I may be either a better or worse person because of said rewire? Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from that evening.

Why yes, we are BFFs now... right?

Just completely amazing. But here is the thing, I just couldn't keep that sense of excitement and energy the following day. I woke up feeling empty and anxious. Not because Frank Turner isn't really my buddy, but because life was back to worry worry worry. Back to unanswered questions and uncertain timelines. Back to a job that really just doesn't cut it as far as making a difference in anyone's life. I know, I know, students need transfer credit applied to finish school and graduate and become engineers that advance humanity and save lives! (or whatever. yada yada yada). I'd much rather wake up each day and impact those around me on a much higher level.

The thing I am noticing is that I never had these feelings of uncertainty about my life path until I decided to become a parent. How can I make myself the best version of me so that my child has something to strive for and be proud to follow? How can I ensure that the struggles I have overcome so ferociously give hope to others and impact their lives in a way that helps them to keep going and never look back? How can I ensure that a woman who is looking to place her baby can also see that I am not a weak person who was once sick, but a fighter, survivor and mentor?

As much as I only want to show strength, this adoption journey is hard! I could not deal with it today. I tried. I actually tried multiple times to man up and deal. Instead, I retreated home and thought about how to make this process easier, quicker, happier, and less anxiety ridden. I am still working through those thoughts, but with John as my anchor, we will get through it. My calm, solid anchor who keeps me from floating away into the depths of the sea of stress that swirls about constantly. As much as we are stressed over everything, there is a woman out there who will one day find us, who is in a much more stressful situation than we are. Having to make a choice no one should ever have to make. It isn't just about us and our family. It is about her, her baby, her family, her life. Keeping that in mind, we trudge on. We know our lives will all mesh one day and a new leg of this crazy journey will begin. So for now, we have bad days, we have good days, we even have apathetic days, but each day that passes is another step closer to the wait being over and the next chapter of the story to begin.