Adoption: First Installment!

It has been a long while.  Today my sister Caryn called and asked me to write our adoption story for her.  SO I thought our family blog would be the place.
We dated during our senior year of high school.  At some point it came up that Joel's step brother was in a group home.  I didn't know what it was and thus began conversation about orphanages, foster care, and group homes.  It was a huge eye opener for me.  It was then that I said that one day I was going to adopt kids from foster care.
Fast Forward eight to ten years, Joel and I are married, and just moved to Texas. (This is when our older adopted son was Born) I had been ready to have kids for A LONG TIME.  We discussed our family planning process and decided that we would adopt before we birthed any children.  We looked at agencies and decided on Arrow Project. We filled out paper work, attend classes for weeks, were finger printed. Then Labor Day 2007, as Joel is in the back yard it comes over me, I'm late.  Hmm.  Yipee I'm pregnant.  A few days later I called our worker and happened to mention that I am pregnant.  WHAT!?! She said we would have to put our adoption on hold!  I was DEVASTATED!  Why does this child in my womb preclude us from giving a home and family to some very well deserving kids?
We learned our new one was to be a boy. (And now our younger adopted child is born). Jacob was due to arrive May 10, 2008.  On March 19th Jacob had to be delivered.  He was with us for six weeks, on May 4, 2008 Jacob died.  I've never known such devastation.  to add to my ache I knew that Arrow or any agency would make us wait at least year before restarting our adoption.  I was devastated because I  felt that I made my kids wait a year by getting pregnant; now we have to add another year!  I was so Frustrated!
Then the fall of 2008- we are pregnant again.  Another boy- Ross Jacob.  He arrived June 2009.  At this point we decided that maybe God wants us to have our birth children first and then adopt.  We decided that rather than begin the adoption process again we have attempt to birth the last baby my doc said my body could handle.  When Ross turned 3, June 20012 I looked at Joel and said, "I don't think this is going to happen."  We mull over our family planning ideas, yet again, and decide that maybe we should walk both roads simultaneously: Adoption and Birth.
We had moved churches and some of our friends were adopting through Gladney.  They were happy so we thought lets see how Gladney's process compares to Arrow.  Gladney had training compacted into less time than Arrow, so we chose them.  After all, all groups pull from the same pool of kiddos.  A year after our beginning, we are home, with our kids.