Home again home again jiggedy jigg

I am so far behind on this but I will try to get everyone up to speed. We made it home safe! We finally got clearance to come home Thursday February 24, 2011. We waited to come home a bit because we had the opportunity to meet Abigail's birth mother. Because this meeting is so precious and private I will not be posting pictures or say much about her. I will say that she is someone I am proud to have a part of my family and I feel good about Abigail having a relationship with her someday if she chooses. We feel that God was all over this the whole time!
On Saturday February 26, 2011 we started our journey home. We flew from Texas to Washington and had an overnight layover. Then got up the next morning and did it all over again! We felt so nervous taking her on a plane being so young! But she is a trooper and handled it all beautifully. She slept the first leg of 4 hours and then the second of 2 hours. We felt very blessed from on the first flight. One of the flight attendants was so kind and gave us a DVD player to help the flight go by faster! THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! This really did help. 

We arrived home to a clean and decorated home. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Hart for taking the time to do all of that for us. They also watched ALL the animals for us.
I am not sure there has ever been a child that was so anticipated or loved. We got home Sunday February 27, 2011 and we had a very warm welcome. The Hart grandparents came to the airport and tears were shared by all. I remember landing and thinking WOW we made it! She is really OURS! I just was so overcome with emotion. We have waited so long to this little one that each leg of our journey has brought us to this point. As we drove home I just was in awe of how amazing God is and how he never for a second forgot about us.

Well since getting home we have had a few surprises. The first was that I found out I had to return to work on Thursday March 3, 2011. This was a HUGE and disappointing shock. We had planned to have me stay home for 12 weeks and then found out that because I have not been at my job long enough that I was not eligible for ANY time off. So I went back to work :( But we have managed to have it all covered. She is with family all the time and that is what is important. I just have a little trouble concentrating at times.

The other surprise we had was the List family :). Some of the List women made it over for the baby shower. Grandma List, Elizabeth, and Natalie made it over to Idaho for the shower.  We also had some of the Hart family with us too. Drew and Maja made it over for the shower as well.

Oh the baby shower. I have to say that this was so wonderful! I am not sure I can put in words how meaningful this event was. When I walked in and saw all the people, decorations, and gift I was overcome with joyful tears. I NEVER thought I would get the chance to have a baby shower. I have been to some over the years and not to others because it was just too hard. But oh my goodness how meaningful and precious this was to me. It was so fun to see some of my family and friends meet Abigail for the first time. Everyone was so pleased and she was so good during the shower. She got a little fussy toward the end but she was just hungry. So we fed her and got on with it. We are so blessed to have such a supportive system of friends and family. I am just in awe of how much this little one has touched the people in our lives. She is really something special. If you have not had the opportunity to meet her please do. Here are some pictures from the party :)

Thank you to Sharron B. for hosting our shower!

To Zion

The following us a song written by Lauran Hill. I used to listen to this song when I was younger and am just now coming to the realization about what it means. How perfect that our little one shares this name! Enjoy! Click on the link below to listen to this song.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktgHNJ4RmIY

Oh how we have waited to not get any sleep! Days 1-6

So I think you can be told over and over and over again what it will be like to have a newborn. But none of that will sink in until it happens to you! After we left the agency and started to drive back to the hotel it started to sink in the we had been given the much anticipated opportunity to be PARENTS! Over the last 6 days we have experienced all the firsts.... First feeding, diaper change, change of clothes, being puked on, peed on, and first middle of the night feeding. I had no idea all of these things would EVER happen for us and we have enjoyed every single one.
I forgot to mention in the previous posting about Abigail's stats... She was born February 14, 2011 at 8:42pm. Thats right this Hart baby was born on the national day of love! She weighed 7lbs 4oz and was 19 inches long. Her APGAR scores 8 and 9. We found out at our first peds visits that she was a preemie at only 34.6 weeks gestational age! She spent no time in the NICU and was given a clean bill of health from the Doctor and clearance to fly home to Idaho.
We got good news this morning our interstate compact ICPC was cleared!!!! This means that we are allowed to take her out of Texas home! This is huge for us and was so exciting to us. We have been anticipating our travel home all week and are so excited to get her home to meet our families and friends that are so anxious to welcome her. She has no idea yet how much love is awaiting her.
She is just a miracle! We are so thankful to have been given the opportunity to be parents and will NEVER take that gift for granted! We will be traveling home Saturday and Sunday with a small lay over in Seattle Saturday night (Grandma List is SUPER excited about this!).
I would just like to take a moment to say  a big THANK YOU for all the support we have been given. It has been really hard to be away from home at such a time as this. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. We never thought this time of life would come and I think we forgot that our infertility and adoption process affected not only us but so many others. It brings tears to my eyes to think of everything we have been through to get to this point. Thank you thank you thank you for your love and support. We couldn't have ever gotten through it without.

Our daughter is so much more amazing then we could have ever imagined. She is just BREATH TAKING. Thank you Lord for this amazing gift. We promise to treat her with love and respect and NEVER NEVER take her for granted.  Here are some more pictures of the last week!

Praise the Lord Abigail Zion Hart finally has arrived!

Our many years of prayers have finally been answered! Over the last month a lot has happened for us. We got a call from our agency February 3rd, 2011 about an adoption agency in Texas that was in high need of adoptive parent. So our profile was overnighted to Texas. One week went by and we didn't hear anything. Then we got another call on February 11, 2011  about a baby in New Orleans that needed adoptive parents. We had our profile Fed'ex overnight to and were told that our profile would be looked at the following Monday February 14, 2011 by that baby. We were told that we would hear if we got picked that day for the following day. We didn't hear anything and became very discouraged! We got an email from our adoption coordinator February 16, 2011 that we did not get picked for that baby. Needless to say we both felt sad and frustrated because we were so hopefully. 

Thinking all hope was lost we returned our daily activities. On February 17, 2011 I (Katie) was on my way to a doctors appointment and received a call from our adoption coordinator. She said "Katie are you sitting down, I have some information for you?" {I at this point really didn't think anything of this call just thought she was calling to process with me about not being picked for the other baby} I said, " Yes whats up?" 

Lori: "I am calling to let you know that I received a call about a birth mother in Texas that has picked you and Brent for a little girl!" 

Katie: " WHAT???? ARE YOU SERIOUS???"

Lori: " I am serious. Are you interested?"

Katie: " Oh my God yes!!!!"

Lori: " Call Brent and then come and meet me over at the office so we can sign some placement paperwork"

Katie: " Okay. Oh MY GOD!!!! Thank you so much!!!!"

At this point I am balling! I hung up with Lori and called Brent right away

Brent: "Hello"

Katie: "Are you sitting down because we have a daughter!"

Brent: " Really??? WHAT!?!"

Katie: " Yes really, she is in Texas and we need to go get her. I need you to leave work and come meet Lori and I at the agency to sign papers".

Brent: " OH MY GOD! Okay I am on my way."

So we went over to the agency and met with Lori. We found out some information about this little girl and about her birth mother. After this meeting, still reeling from our great news, we went home and started making preparation to leave town to go pick her up. We got lucky and were able to get a flight from Boise to Houston with only one stop for Friday February 18, 2011. At this point we were asked to come up with a name... Okay... In a matter of 2 hours... WOW! We had been told that the birth mother had named her Zion Angela. We had planned on asking our child's birth mother to help us give our child a middle name. We LOVED the name Zion and decided to give her that as a middle name. Zion means The Holy Land or Heaven. When then decided on Abigail after many phone calls to Lori and much discussion. Abigail means Father's Joy. We found this out from my mom. Thanks Grandma List. So her name is Abigail Zion Hart. We hoped this would fit her well and anxiously anticipated our flight the next morning. 

 The photo above is when we got to the airport in Boise at 5:30AM ( thanks to Mom and Dad Hart for taking us to the airport.)

With very little sleep from being SO we flew from Boise to Phoenix and then Phoenix to Houston and arrived in Houston at 2:00PM. We had been told that we would not be able to pick our baby up until 4:30PM.  So we had time to find out hotel and then go get a car seat. At this point I should say NEVER and I repeat NEVER trust a GPS that is not updated. We drove about 30 minutes out of town to a Babies R Us... Needless to say when we arrived at said store the store was no longer there... OH BOY! We then turned around and looked it up on our phones. Turns out there is a Babies R Us literally right behind our hotel... So we drove the 30 minutes back and by this time we were running late to pick our daughter up. We finally got the car seat and made it to the agency. 

As we walked in the agency door there were three children playing and one said, "Oh there here there here! Come see your baby!" At this point it became very real what was about to happen. Denise (our coordinator in Texas) took us back to the "placement room" and said "Okay give me your camera and I will bring her in." We got the camera ready and handed it over and here is what happened:

This was so amazing. I am not sure I can put into words how amazing this was. They brought her in and then put her in our arms and said here is your daughter. WOW! We have waited over five years for this moment and it could not have been more perfect or amazing. 

Please help us in welcoming Abigail Zion Hart to our family and to her new life with us. 

Infant training class

Today we had our first class. I was under the impression that this was going to be a parent training class... Not the case at all! Most of the morning consisted of going over the home study process... AGAIN... I don't want any of you to think this is not important information but my goodness. We have been over it so many times I could probably quote it word for word. Thankfully after the morning break we moved on to a video that was really interesting. It is called "A struggle for Identity". It was all about trans-cultural adoption. The video consisted of a group of adoptive adults that had been adopted by white parents. It really caused some good conversation about our adoption, what we want, the motivation behind adoption of a child of a different race, and how important it is to be educated about our future child's heritage. 

After we got back from the lunch break we talked about openness in adoption. I think when Brent and I first started this process we had the idea that once we had been matched and our baby was born that we would run out of the hospital and never look back. However, after listening to what was talked about today I feel very differently. As apart of the openness training they had a panel of  individuals that have been touched by adoption in someway. It was fascinating to listen to all the different perspectives. It also caused me to feel better and not so scared of open adoption. I want my child to be loved by all of our families and friends. Also by their birth family. This class caused me to have a greater respect for birth parents! My child's birth parents will have a special role in our child's life. Not sure what that will be at this point but I am looking forward to exploring this. Over all it was a great learning experience. Now to get the letter to the birth parents finished and the profile!

Parenting Class and Updates

Today is our very first parenting class. We are both really looking forward to it as it means we are that much closer to being done with the home study process. Our parenting class is about infant training. I will write more after we go. We have completed almost all the home study and had our home visit. For any of you who know about the adoption process this has to be the most nerve wrecking part of the whole thing. Even more so then telling a stranger everything about you! However, our home visit went very well. Christy didn't even really look at the house. Little did she know I spent three days straight cleaning and organizing in preparation. All in all we both felt it went well! Thank the Lord that is OVER!!! 
We got some very sad news last week. We had be talking with a potential birth mother for about a two and a half months and she let us know that she decided to keep her baby. This is just one in a long line of disappointments and we both took it hard. I do wish her the best in her decision. It opened my eyes to many things and how I want the adoption process to work. I do believe everything happens for a reason and I know that God has our baby out there somewhere. A good friend of mine told me that once. I believe that there is a baby out there it is just a matter of time. So we wait.