Ringing in the NEW year!

**I drafted this blog on the new year of 2016. I just read it a year later and thought it was pretty good, so I decided to share it!

Hey everyone! I had a strong urge last night to go back and re-read some of my old blog posts. I am so glad I kept this up for so long because I really enjoy seeing the older posts. Its crazy how much time has passed and how much my life has changed. The main reason I created this blog was to share my life with others! It quickly became a blog about our adoption journey!! I was so happy to be on the path of adoption a precious baby and couldn't wait to see how the story would unfold. Then came baby! Adelyn joined our family in 2013 and life was never the same. The blog slowed down and I ran out of things to update because the adoption process also slowed down. However, when she was close to a year we began the foster care process. I sure wish I would have blogged better about that journey because it was really special. Difficult, but special. So...here we are. Starting 2016 and I have major updates! The first thing I wanted to address is our foster care story!!
A few days before Christmas we became a legal family with our two big kids! Our family had an amazing adoption party and we kissed goodbye the unknown we had the whole year of 2015. We are a forever family and we are so happy to be together!
Backing up a few weeks, we had an big Ethiopian adoption change. We got another email from our agency explaining that new updates would be needed and more money was needed to help cover new costs due to STILL increasing wait times. Ryan and I had pretty much been checked out of the Ethiopian process for awhile, but we still just kept an eye on how things were going. We knew it seemed like a long shot for it to ever actually pan out for the last few years, but we didn't official do anything about it. After this last email, I decided I had a clear and sure answer that we would withdraw our family from the Ethiopian program. We felt confident of this decision and although, we don't know the reason behind starting this process, we do know that we followed a calling and now it was time to let it go.
We felt very strongly that our family was now complete. We have Adelyn, we have our big kids, Anna and Ezra, and we also have another blessing on the way! Our fourth baby to bless our family is due this summer! We are so excited to have our fourth baby and to have this baby bond our family together in a way that only new babies can!