It has been a little less than one full year since I've last posted on this blog and I think it's about time I brought you all up to speed on what Kelli and I have been up to! Where to begin, well I guess we better start by fast forwarding through the entire summer of 2016. If you remember from my last post we left things off heading into summer on a less than good note. And I think we can all agree that's enough said about that:(
So, towards the end of summer Kelli and I decided to contact a realtor who was referred to us by a friend, to put our house on the market just to "see if it would sell". Well, after being on the market for 6 hours we were under contract with a full price offer! I guess our question was answered! The good news was we sold our house for a very good profit, the bad news was we had no idea where we were going to go!! We considered renting an apartment or house for a while until we figured out at least which town we wanted to go to, but we couldn't find anything with less than a year lease that would take all of our animals. So we decided to start looking for a different type of lodging instead, a camper! That's right, we bought a 24' camper and thanks to an extremely generous sister and brother in law, had our place to stay. We set up camp at the Nagle ranch in the Mallard and began the search for our next house.
As much fun as it was living out at Jill and Ryan's and spending tons of time with the kids, we had to find a place to go before winter really set in. We moved into the camper in early September and wouldn't you know it, Spokane had the rainiest fall on record! Luckily our home on wheels never leaked a drop, just built up enough condensation to take a shower with, and we survived the endless rains. We quickly narrowed down the town we wanted to move to, Coeur D' Alene, and started scouring the market for a house that I couldn't pull with the truck.
In mid October we finally thought we were getting a house, we found one we liked and our offer was accepted, but when I went to do the home inspection there were some major structural concerns that caused us to back out of the deal. We were back on the hunt with the days getting shorter and colder! Less than a week after backing out of the first house, we found another one! This one had just hit the market so we had to act fast, we lucked out and were back under contract again. This time the home inspection went much better and we were all set to close in the middle of November. Now that we had a deadline for when we could move out of the camper we felt much better!
We moved into our new house out in CDA on November 15th! We couldn't have timed it any better as the wettest fall on record turned into the snowiest winter on about November 17th. After we settled into our house for a week or so, we started talking about what our options were for adoption in Idaho. We had wanted to wait a little while after the heartbreak we suffered in June, and after much consideration we decided that private adoption was the route we wanted to go. What that meant was we needed to get a home study done and then just "network" ourselves, basically tell every single person we knew that we were adopting in hopes of finding a birth mother. Well a few days after we contacted the home study folks I got a call from a buddy of mine saying that his Mother in law may have a birth mother she knows of who is looking for a family! We quickly agreed to meet with the mother in law to find out more about this birth mother and she said this one may not be the one as the birth mother had chosen to adopt her baby to a family member. No strangers to getting our hopes crushed, we took this in stride and just went back on our way. A couple weeks later, just before New Years, she called back and said the family member backed out! We immediately scheduled a meeting with the birth mother and she chose us!
We started going to the doctors appointments with her and about two weeks after being chosen, we found out we were having a boy! The next few weeks turned into a flurry as we basically did 9 months worth of nesting in three weeks. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention she was due mid February! Kelli and I were still in a little bit of a state of shock over the whole situation, we just couldn't believe how quickly this was all happening. Our state of joy was humbled very suddenly however when during one of the ultrasounds the doctor noticed that one of the babies heart chambers appeared to be slightly larger than the others. He said it's usually nothing to be alarmed about, but just to be certain he sent us to have a specialist look at it over in Spokane. The specialist was a pediatric cardiologist and she found a coarctation of his aorta. What that meant is his main aorta narrowed as it left his heart which could restrict blood flow and oxygen getting to his extremities. The cardiologist explained that he would be born in Spokane now and immediately get admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit so they could monitor the coarctation. Within the first few days there is a bypass artery that dissolves once the baby is born and as this artery dissolves it typically shrinks the tissue walls of the aorta. So they monitor it to determine whether or not they would need to surgically repair the aorta or not.
Needless to say anytime a doctor starts talking about a possible heart surgery on your unborn baby it's a bit sobering! Kelli and I simply turned to our go to in time's of need, prayer! We spread the word and turned it all over, trusting that God would not put this little guy through anything we all can't handle! A c-section was scheduled for February 17th and we settled in for what we thought was going to be a long two weeks of waiting. Well we were all caught by surprise when on February 7th the birth mother went into labor early! Kelli and I got the call, packed a go bag with everything we thought we would need, understanding that we had no idea just how long our son would be in the NICU. We called Kelli's parents and they too packed a go bag so they could come over to watch our animals while we were in the hospital, they even packed up their cat Olive so they wouldn't have to go back and check on her:) All of us were no doubt in the same state of frenzy any new parents are in when they are moments away from meeting their new baby.
We arrived at the hospital at 1:15 and went straight into the NICU room that our new baby boy had been moved to just 10 minutes before. When we walked in to his room there was three nurses and a doctor getting him all hooked up to the monitors and IV, as well as giving him the once over. In a matter of minutes we were flooded with information! A list as long as my arm was laid out of all the tests and checks that would be performed on our boy in the first few days of his life. So much was going on that Kelli and I completely spaced the fact that we would need to give him a name, until one of the nurses asked us nearly three hours after he'd been born! We took two names to the hospital with us and picked the one that fit this little guy the best. At 4 in the afternoon we sent out massive group texts announcing that Van Jameson Gannon had arrived:)
Getting our first echo gram minutes after birth
The cardiologist wasted no time in ordering the echo to check the coarc and after reading the results she said the narrowing looked about the same that it had on the ultrasound so she would order a follow up echo the next day to keep checking. Day two rolled around and after the cardiologist read the echo she came in to tell us the results. I will never forget the look on her face of complete confusion. She had analyzed the echo and physically checked Van out and somehow the Coarctation had went away!! This was nothing short of an answered prayer!! We had turned the coarc over to God and the care of our prayer warriors from the moment we found out about it and all of those prayers were answered! We were so ecstatic we could hardly contain ourselves!
The rest of our time in the NICU was spent learning how to feed Van and getting him to the point he was ready to go home. The folks at Sacred Heart were fantastic and such a blessing! We got released and brought him home on his original due date, February 17th, and to say the past few weeks have been a blur would be an understatement! Our days and nights revolve around eating, pooping and sleeping now and just like every other baby each day is capable of being different than the last:) We are slowly finding a semblance of routine though and Van just continues to grow. He was 7 pounds 9 ounces at birth and he's already 10 pounds!
First day home!
Dad's jealous of my hair:)
We could not put into words how blessed we are to have been chosen to be the ones who get to raise this child of God. We also cannot thank our family and friends enough, you all have stuck with us our entire journey, through all the ups and downs. You're prayers have not gone unnoticed and we will forever hold each and every one of you in our hearts! Van's finalization hearing is coming up in the next month or so and when we think about the fact that someday this little miracle will share our name and be loved by so many, it warms our heart and reminds us that our God has EVERYTHING under control! He has better timing than any of us could ever imagine and the handsome baby boy who's made us the big 3 is a glowing testimony to what patience in His timing can do:)
Remember, don't be afraid to walk through painful situations. Trust that the Lord has got a plan for all of us and if we take on the pain put in front of us He is always waiting to bless us on the other side!
