Today for our memory, we decided to post on how we decided that adoption was the right choice for us.

After we had been trying to have a baby for a couple of years without any success, we came to a point where we had to make a decision about which path we wanted to choose to start our family. We have always felt that we were going to be able to have a family, we just weren’t sure how our children were going to come into our life. We had been thinking about it quite a bit, but we weren’t quite sure what to do. One day Amy had the thought that we should look into adoption. We were hesitant at first, and all the normal concerns went through our minds. After we had been thinking about it for awhile, we read an article about adoption from one of our church magazines, The Ensign. While reading this article, we felt strongly that adoption was how our Heavenly Father wanted us to build our family. So we started the process to get approved for adoption. Each step that we completed, led us to feel even stronger that this was the path that we wanted to take. Along the way, we’ve gained an even greater love for the process of adoption. We have seen how it can be a blessing to everyone involved. It isn’t an easy process. It requires a great sacrifice on the part of the birth mother. For this reason, we have a huge amount of love and respect for those women who make this tremendous sacrifice for their child. Although it is a sacrifice, we believe that it will be a blessing to all involved. We are now VERY excited to be a part of such an amazing journey! We feel strongly that adoption is a tender mercy of the Lord, for everyone involved in the process. We can’t wait for this miracle to happen in our family!!

I also have great memories of Steve’s graduation from college! He has been graduated for a little over a year now. Both he and I were really excited when he finished! It has given him a little extra time, so we’ve had more time to spend together.

One of my favorite places to visit was Adam-Ondi-Ahman!! It was incredibly peaceful and a fun place to relax on our preparation days.

Many of the cities in Kansas had murals on the buildings. This was one I thought was amusing being that I was in Kansas. (There’s no place like home!)

Although Brazil is known for its warm temperatures, during their winters we would often get cold, because there was no indoor heating. This is how I liked to study in the cold mornings.

As everyone knows, I’m not usually a really tan person, but my feet sure got some crazy tans lines on my mission.

Here’s a few pictures of our summer vacation fun!

A family water fight on our river rafting trip.

Hiking to Delicate Arch in Moab, UT

California Trip

I think that these vacations really helped my family to grow closer together. Steve and I plan to continue this tradition with our family. So far, we’ve been able to go on a vacation each year together, and we plan to continue this when we have kids.

You’re never too old to have fun!!

To play the game, each of us would think about the girl we had a crush on at the moment, then we would pretend that the “bad guys” took them away. That was always how the game began, then we’d run around pretending we were on ships, motorcycles, or something else and save our babes from the bad guys. Sometimes we would play for hours at a time before we were able to finally “save” them. As we shared our newly invented game with some of our other friends, they joined in on the fun and swore to secrecy that they wouldn’t reveal what the code word “ebalebs” really meant.

I think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was our inspiration as it was all the rave back in those days. Except they fought for only one girl (April), and we each decided it would be much funner for each of us to have our own girl to fight for. Oh, and we weren’t turtles haha . Still aren’t thank goodness. Anyway, we enjoyed playing that game many times. We were always heroes of course, although it was always last minute rescues and very suspenseful moments .

Don’t make too much fun .

When I was just about to graduate, I heard about this amazing opportunity. I found out that I could do my student teaching in an inner-city school in Washington DC. When I heard about it, I decided that it was something I really wanted to do. Everyone thought I was a little crazy, but it turned out to be an incredible experience. I learned a lot and I had the best time exploring Washington DC and some of the surrounding areas.

Teaching in an inner-city school was a lot different than I had ever imagined. All the doors are always locked and there is security in the front of the building. Also, during this time, there was a sniper in DC, so the kids couldn’t even go out for recess. (Indoor recess for a month is never a good idea!)

My cooperating teacher didn’t really like teaching. My first day, she told me that I needed to learn to yell, before I could be an effective teacher! I wouldn’t say that I learned to yell, but I did learn a lot at that school. The kids were great, definitely not an easy class, but they were very loving and responded well to us! By the end of the four months it was difficult to leave them.

Here’s a few of my favorite comments from some of the students.

“Teacher, can you tell Joshua to move his bush, I can’t see the board” (speaking about one of the student’s afro)

“Teacher, my momma needs to do your hair for you.” (one student speaking about my flyaway hair, she thought it needed to be in braids).