Friday, June 17, 2011

The Book...

So many of you left comments on THIS POST that I wrote a few weeks ago about our Adoption Book. So I thought it would be a good idea to share some things with you about what we did.

We used Shutterfly and it was GREAT! We had actually put our entire book together though Scrapblog and then uploaded each of the pages onto Shutterfly and then realized that Shutterfly has pre-made photo books that have background pages, designs, stickers, and much much more, so we decided to ditch our first book idea and use what Shutterfly had to offer.

The morning I placed the order for our book, I got a text message from my hubby letting me know that he wanted to change some of the wording on one of the pages. So I frantically called Shutterfly and they were so great and allowed us to cancel our order. David fixed the wording on the pages that evening and then I turned right around and ordered the book the following night...WHICH, turned out to be better for us, because they were having a sale on photo books because of Father's Day :)

Our book came in about two weeks ago and I was a little disappointed that one of the pictures we used had low resolution. Before you order your book, Shutterfly tells you all the pages that have photos with low resolution or if you have some photos too close to the edge of the page or if some of your wording is too long to fit on the page. Unfortunately, I ignored that warning, only because when I previewed our book, the photo looked fine to me. But, because this photo was the FIRST photo of our book, I just wasn't satisfied with that and wanted our book to be PERFECT! So I changed the photo and ordered another one :)

David and I talked and decided that we didn't want to share our entire Adoption Book with anyone. We feel as if it is very private and something that is very serious to us. AND, you never know who might see this book through my blog. So I have chosen a few pages that I think are safe for us to share with all of you, so those of you in the adoption process or for those of you considering adoption, this might give you an idea on how you can go about creating your Adoption Book...


This is the cover of our book...it is a hard cover and is glossy.

This is the section in our book where we explained how we met and how long we dated.

And this is the section where we talked about our nephew and how much we LOVE being his Auntie Lianna and Uncle D.

The quality of the book is top notch...I was SO pleased!

AND...I was filled with JOY when I dropped our book off on Wednesday this past week and sat down with our Social Worker to go over all the pages and to give her a little narrative about who everyone was in the photos and a little history about some of the people and things we decided to share with our birthmother. She kept commenting throughout our meeting about how great she thought our book turned out and felt as if it was PERFECT!

It's only a matter of time...and Lord knows we are READY!!!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The Sweetest Words...

I have been diagnosed with colitis since I was a junior in high school. I have been taking pills after pills after pills for over twenty years now. Although I haven't had any physical symptoms of colitis in years, my colonoscopies always come back showing some inflamation and redness.

BUT, now that I have started this new medication, I am proud to say that I heard the sweetest words from my gastrointerologist today...You are completely healed. Your colon is 100%!!!!

I couldn't believe my ears...I have been waiting to hear these words for over twenty years now.

We aren't sure if my colitis has any part in our infertility, but my gastrointerologist has a feeling it does. He has seen research studies that indicate that colitis flare-ups can interfere with pregnancy. But now that I am healed, we are hoping to pursue more treatments.

Praise the Lord!!!!