our collective digital self
Posted by Michelle on Nov 14, 2004 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle
We planted two trees in the backyard on the day came to live with us. Both are magnolias. Hayley decided they should be named Muffy and Buffy – and so they are!
Posted by Michelle on Oct 29, 2004 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle
Tons of photos from the past four Hayley visits! The big news – Hayley will arrive for good November 3rd!
Photos from our second visit as when we headed up to Yadkinville Saturday for dinner with Hayley, her foster mom and foster sister and then on to watch them cheer at a football game.
Things went great again – five hours long, so we got to see Hayley cheer, play, goof off and even pout a bit! Her foster mom is just wonderful and we are so grateful for the chance to spend time with her. And her foster sister is great too – seems so mature for her age and such a nice kid.
I’ll write more later, I’m dead on my feet tired but I knew everyone wanted to see photos. I’ll post some video later, Hayley even had some fun taking some footage.
See more photos from the second visit:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
See more photos from the third visit:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
See more photos from the fourth visit
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
See more photos from the fifth visit:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
Posted by Michelle on Sep 25, 2004 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle
Saturday we met our daughter Hayley for the first time.
Our meeting was wonderful and Hayley is amazing – she was so funny and smart. She’s talkative, funny, headstrong and competitive – hmm, sounds like me! And they weren’t kidding about her energy level being high! But that was fun too – she was up for trying anything. I just can’t tell you how great it was – she started a bit nervous but that lasted less than 5 minutes.
She was already calling me mom and Jeff dad but she called him Jeff more, mostly because I called him Jeff. And she really loved playing him. That was most of what I was worried about, how she would respond to him. They got along wonderfully!
She colored some for us, wrote her name in print and script, and could even spell Jeff’s name with some help – she’s definitely not delayed. When I showed her photos of her room, she saw the door sign with her name and exclaimed with great joy it was spelled right! She loves the dogs already and is dying to meet them.
We brought the soccer ball just for fun and she was happy to see it and wanted to play! I want to put her in spring soccer but didn’t know if she had the skills and she does! She was kicking really well and even dribbled some.
Hearing her call me mom really was very emotional. After she left, I had a few tears and Jeff & I shared an emotional moment. You go through this infertility journey and it doesn’t work out, so you start down this adoption path and you just follow along it on faith and hope … and then yesterday, the path ended at Hayley – it was like the pot of gold.
I’m so glad we got the camcorder before this – we taped about 3-4 minutes of it, so we’ll have that on tape forever.
VIDEO:
Hayley doing her cheerleading routine
See more photos from this set:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
Posted by Michelle on Aug 23, 2004 in Hayley
Photos from a few weekends ago of Hayley cheerleading – she is one of the little cheerleaders for a local team, she’s sorta a mascot cheerleader with some other little girls for a bigger girls squad.
See more photos from this set:
Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print)
Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
Posted by Michelle on Mar 13, 2004 in Jeff, Michelle
We are finally officially licensed foster parents with a completed home study for adoption.
This should have been done like six weeks ago but the FBI couldn’t read Jeff’s fingerprints. So he had to go through all of that a second time and wait. But we finally got the clearance which means every t is crossed and i is dotted for us.
We have already been looking at profiles of kids but this just means we could be ready to do something as soon as needed. Of course, we have specific things that we hope for in our child/children that will make our wait longer but hopefully it will be worth it.
Who knows how this will turn out – we are open to kids from 2-10, from here, from somewhere else in the US and we’d even consider international kids in the same age range. Keep us in your prayers!
Posted by Michelle on Dec 22, 2003 in Jeff, Michelle
The big news is we have started the process to adopt a foster child.
It is a long road but one we are sure will be worth all the effort. We had a lot of options to adopt but something felt very right about helping a child here in our state who really needed parents.
After doing some research we selecting an agency, Children’s Home Society and then met them at a county open house meeting.
Our initial application was approved and we were assigned a social worker, Janice. And we met with her last week to start the process officially.
So now, we’ve got tons of paperwork to do as well as 30 hours of classes to take that start this Tuesday! Also medical, fingerprint and fire inspections too. FHEW.
Basically they’ll match us to a child who will come to live with us as a foster child and then after a certain amount of time, we’ll start the adoption process. Could take a month after we are done with classes or could take a year.
We really excited and ask for everyone to keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
love,
Michelle & Jeff
