2009 has flown by and we are already into 2010. Jonathan and I did quite a bit in 2009 and through its ups and downs, we had a great year. We started off the year like every other year, a birthday bash with my family and the Medlin’s (My other family) to celebrate my dad’s and Bob’s birthdays.

In February Jonathan and I went on our first cruise to Cozumel and Progresso, Mexico with our friends Josh and Shalyn.

Jonathan and I completed our first bike race, Tour Dallas, with our friend Todd. We had a great time and hope to do it again this year.

A few months later, we rode in another bike ride, Mesquite Rodeo Ride. We attempted this one but about 10-12 miles in I was done, my heart couldn’t take anymore.

We took a visit to the Ft. Worth Botanical Gardens on Memorial Day Weekend

Our good friend Tami got married to Michael in May and Jonathan and I were the photographers.

In July Jonathan and I went on another cruise to the Bahamas with my parents, his parents and his sister and brother-in-law. We had a great time with everyone!

In August we put our house on the market so we can move closer to both our families. We are hoping to move to the Forney or Rockwall area. Hopefully our home will sell in 2010 and we can move closer to our families.

In October we started the process to become foster parents so we can adopt through CPS. We had to do about 32 hours of classroom training, we filled out 1000 pieces of paperwork, done drug screenings, got our fingerprints done with the FBI, and have completed our homestudy so we are just playing the waiting game now. For our homestudy we had to have the babies room set up with the crib and everything so we moved our guest room into the office and set up the babies room.

Throughout the year we went to a few of my nephew, Jake’s, soccer games and spent time with my niece, Brooklyn.

We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with both of our families and rang in the new year with some friends. We started 2010 the same way we started 2009, a birthday bash with my family and the medlins.

We finally got an updated picture of all the Turner-Medlin “kids” and their significant other.

So here’s to the New Year and a happy and joyous 2010. We anticipate 2010 to be a big year for us as we bring a little one into our home and hopefully adopt a child this year. I wish all of you a wonderful new year and hope your dreams and goals of 2010 come true!

Things are a changin at the Blundell house! Changing for the better, of course. We are well on our way to becoming foster parents and that much closer to adopting a kiddo. More and more, raising a child seems to be an immediate reality and not some nebulous event in the hazy future.

We have two weeks left of pre service classes, we have to get all the million papers turned in, get our fingerprints done with the FBI and then one of us has to get his drug test (I already did)…after all that is done we can schedule our pre service visit and homestudy. They told us that there is a very good possibility we could be licensed with the state by January!! The agency told us we needed the room set up with the crib and all for the pre service visit so we went out and got our crib this weekend.

We decided to use the room we had been using as a guest room for the nursery so we had to combine the guest room and office. So we moved the bed into the office and cleared out the other room to complete the transformation.

Since we are still trying to sell our house, we didn’t want to paint the room so we found these wall decals that just stick to the wall – there pretty awesome! They were pretty easy to put up, just a tedious task as each of the leaves had to be individually placed…and for a perfectionist like me, that took some time.

I also re-painted and re-stained a small chest of drawers I had in my room all growing up so we can use it in the nursery. And after that, repainted it…long story short, I bought flat paint instead of semi-gloss, not sure what I was thinking when I bought it but it’s ok now, the world is all good again.

It’s very strange to think that within the next couple of months, we could have a little one in the house. But it could also take a while before we get a placement so we are trying not to get toooo excited. Who am I kidding, I can’t help but be excited!

This has been such an emotional time in our lives (well, mine anyways) and I feel sad, angry, disappointed and every other emotion that comes along with infertility, but at the same time I am excited, happy, joyous, hopeful and thankful at the thought of bringing a child into our home and family that we will care for and love at the time they need it most.

We are supposed to read 3 books that the Baptist Home recommends and then write a “book report” on what we learned from the book. The books we are reading are good books and bring up topics you may not think about in adoption. One of the books talks about how the whole pre-service time prior to an adoption (or in our case, foster care) is like a pregnancy. They call it “pregnant by adoption”. The author says “If I were six months pregnant, people would be drooling over me, but since I’m expecting by adoption, I get so much nonchalance, shock and plain old rudeness. Adoption is sometimes treated as not being ‘real’ (and, of course, with all the hopes and fears, some of us hold back our excitement) therefore, it would be helpful for those around us to understand our need to be treated as if we are expecting, or pregnant by adoption.” This is very true…if I were pregnant, I’d have a big belly and people would just know that we were expecting, but because I don’t have that, people don’t know or get excited about it. Don’t get me wrong, the people we are close to have shown their support and excitement. A few months back when I made a comment about us adopting on facebook, I got several comments from people, but my favorite comment and the one that meant the most to me was from my friend Amy…all she said was “How exciting, I didn’t know you were ‘expecting'”. I don’t think she’ll ever know how much that simple comment meant to me! I will say, it was kind of strange going into babies r us to buy our crib and nursery stuff not having a baby at home or knowing one is on the way. But it is an experience that mothers and fathers-to-be get to go through, so why shouldn’t we?

As we are preparing to bring a child into the home we are doing the same stuff most parents would, setting up the nursery, getting excited and thinking of what the child will be like. But for us, there are some differences from those who are actually going to give birth. We have to go to parenting classes, we have to have the fire marshal come and do a health/fire safety check of our home, we have to have someone come interview us and ask us all kinds of personal information to make sure we will be “fit parents”. We also have to think about some of the struggles that come with adoption. Adoption has positive and negative elements, none of us wants to acknowledge the negative, painful side–which is, loss. But the truth is, the very act of adoption is built upon loss. For the birth parents, the loss of their biological offspring, the relationship that could have been, a very part of themselves. For the adoptive parents, the loss of giving birth to a biological child, the child whose face will never mirror theirs. And for the adopted child, the loss of the birth parents, the earliest experiences of belonging and acceptance. To deny adoption loss is to deny the emotional reality of everyone involved.

We are very excited and can’t wait to see what the next few months will bring. We just ask for your continued prayers and support as we wait for a little one to join the family!