Gotcha Day!!

     April 28th marked a very big day for our family, Vans gotcha day!!!  For those of you who are new to the adoption lingo a gotcha day is what some folks like to call the day that their childs adoption is finalized.  Van's was on Friday the 28th and it was everything we'd hoped for and then some!!  The ceremony is very brief, it's held in general court in front of the judge who reviews all the documents that have been submitted for accuracy.  Once this is done the judge says a bunch of words that didn't make sense to me, and then she announces Van to the courtroom as Van Jameson Gannon!

     All told it took about 15 minutes to get to the point of cheers and applause, and I have to be honest, at times throughout this journey we both doubted whether or not we'd ever get to those precious 15 minutes!  After the ceremony we came back to our house for a small brunch with a special cake Grandma Donna and I made for the occasion, celebrating the official arrival of Van!  We knew that today was a special day already, but when we got home from the ceremony and the new Prana catalog nearly matched the cake perfectly it just got better.

     When it was all over and everyone had gone back home we sat down for a minute and took a moment ot catch our breath!  Van's gotcha day had felt like our wedding day, one big blur and it's over in a flash!  Now that we're officially a family we are settling in to the fact that from here on out we just have to be Van's parents.  I know that probably sounds silly to some people, but when the only parenting we knew prior to this was parenting under the watchful eye of the state of Washington, being able to "just parent" Van like a normal parent would is a pretty big deal!  It's still a little hard to believe sometimes that we don't have to get anyone's authorization to take family vacations, or if he gets a fever we don't have to document how many doses of tylenol he's had.

     So as we embark on this journey of parenthood be prepared for some shameless gloating on this blog about Van's achievements:)  And of course plenty of pictures to go along with the gloating!:)

  

We're back!!

     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!

Kiah

     For the past 15 months I have written about our foster-to-adopt daughter on here, but I have yet to put any photos of her on here.  If you follow me on Instagram you'll notice there's an ample supply of photos, just none of her face.  This is because the state highly discourages doing that as the birth parents could potentially find out where the child is then.  Well it is with great sadness that today that all changes.  

     Little Simba's real name, as most of you who read this already know, is Kiah.  And this morning the social worker for Kiah's case came and picked her up to go live with her birth mom.  Lord knows Kelli and I have gone over every single detail of this situation, and we've certainly been left with quite a few unanswered questions as well as enough frustration to keep our heads spinning for months.  But today I'm not going to talk about any of that because frankly, none of it matters.  In the 15 months that we were lucky enough to have Kiah in our home we have experienced so many great joys, a few trials of course, but the joyful times far outweigh the tough times and I think today's post should echo that.  Only God knows what is in store for all three of our futures, and we have come to understand that He's the only one who should know what they hold!  Over and over again throughout this journey we have continued to fall back on our faith, family, and friends to get us over hurdles.  We have really been the lucky ones, not only did we get the great privilege of caring for one of God's most precious creations, we got to share her with others!  Each and every person that Kiah comes in contact with has experienced the joy in her little heart, her piercing blue eyes and glowing smile leave people wanting what she has!  Sometimes I would look into her eyes and swear that I could see God, her gaze would immediately wash away the chaos of any situation.  And as long as I live I will hear the joyous sounds of her laughter, showing us with each breath what the important things in life truly are.  Throughout the past month I have repeatedly turned to a country song for encouragement, cliche I know, but Randy Houser's "In God's Time" is perfect for moments like this.  His last verse talks about waking up with wings, learning to fly, and seeing our loved ones on the other side.  We continue to take comfort in those words and that truth, we truly will see Kiah again!!  It may not be until we are all in eternity, but no matter what we WILL be reunited!  We genuinely believe and trust that the foundation we have given her will be with her for the rest of her life.  I'm simply going to end this post with a couple pictures of the greatest thing that's ever happened to Kelli and I.  We will continue to pray fer her every single day that we are alive, trusting that God has glorious plans for her, and thanking Him every day for choosing Kelli and I to be a small part of that plan!  We truly are honored!

Remember, sometimes it can be the hardest thing to do in the world, but unconditional love is the greatest gift any of us could ever give to another person!

Stop trying to figure it out!

     Over 13 years ago now I was in the apex of my alcohol addiction and it seemed like I spent most of my time trying to figure out how I could get myself out of my own way.  I was convinced that I was smart enough to figure a way out of the mess I had created.  Turns out all I really had to do was stop trying to figure it out and give full control of things over to God!  It was when I finally did this that His miracle was worked on me and everything suddenly made so much more sense!

     Today, so many years and life experiences having passed by, I find myself in a very similar situation.  As most of you know Kelli and I took in our first foster placement exactly 14 months ago today.  She has been an answered prayer and miracle for us in so many ways, and yet there is so much more going on around her that she is oblivious to yet dictates her entire future.  Any one who has gone through the foster-to-adopt process will most likely refer to the journey as a roller coaster of emotions, or maybe a pendulum that continues to go back and forth.  No matter the analogy they would use the purpose is the same in every case, to remind you that these situations often times go back and forth for quite some time before the child involved ever has any permanency.  

     We've affectionately been referring to our daughter as Simba, because we can't use her real name as long as she's in foster care, and since the day we've had Simba this particular roller coaster has been in constant motion!  To give you an idea of what I mean this is literally how the state's decisions have gone since March 10th of last year, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, wait for it...transition back.  I think you get the idea.  Naturally this process has more or less turned what few brain cells I had left in my head after a solid career of drinking into a gelatinous slurry that can barely remember what day it is!  My thoughts once again seem to be constantly consumed with trying to figure it all out!  I feel like both Kelli and I have gone through every single phase of anger and frustration with each time they talk about a transition back home.

     The reason for this frustration is simple, when the state talks about transitioning back home they're not talking about sending Simba back to a nice little 3 bed 2 bath in a cute little sub division within walking distance of a great school, they're talking about sending her back to first a transitional housing program, second a long term in patient treatment center, and last but not least the most recent one a half way house!!  We have been told by the state that they do not consider homelessness as an endangerment to the child!  That makes about as much sense as saying swimming with sharks is not considered an endangerment to my having functional appendages!  

     So today when the judge went completely against what the state wanted to do and granted a transition back home, yes to the half way house home, my first reaction was how the heck can I figure this out and get Simba out of this situation.  After thinking about it for the last 7 hours what I have come up with is the same thing I came up with thirteen and a half years ago, STOP!  I have nothing more I can do about this situation but to stop trying to figure it all out and literally enjoy every single second I have with this little girl!  She has grown so much since we've had her and she learns more in one day than I ever have in a month!  If I spend my free time stewing over how to get the system to work the way I think it should then I'm taking precious time away from Simba.  

     We quite literally have no choice but to turn it all over to God, ironically much like I did with my drinking, and trust that He has a bigger plan that was never intended for me to figure out!  Even if that plan results in Simba not being a part of our life any more, as hard as that is to wrap my head around, I have to trust that He's got something bigger planned for all three of us and have faith in His plan.  "No matter where you go, no matter what you do, we're gonna love you through and through"  These are the lyrics of the last verse of a song Nana GG wrote for Simba and they carry so much more weight than I think GG ever intended them to in this moment!  Stop trying to figure it out, and trust in God's plan!!

Remember, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11 

Wild ride!

     What a wild ride the past few weeks have been!!  I know many of you can probably relate to the organized chaos that is the holiday season.  Our holiday season got kicked off to a bit of an unexpected start as the week before Thanksgiving the Spokane area saw 70+ mph winds!  Now I know if your in Eastern Montana reading this your thinking to yourself, that's just a little breezy, however when your area is filled with 100 foot tall 2000 pound top heavy toothpicks(also known as Ponderosas) I can assure you that little breeze can carry with it quite the punch!  The winds blew at that speed for about four hours and in that time countless numbers of trees were either uprooted or snapped off, causing what appeared to be every single power line in the city to be lying on the ground.  By the time it was finished, over 200,000 people were without power, roughly 75% of the power companies customers! 

     The area of Spokane we chose to live in, the South Hill, has so many of these trees it feels almost forest like, the morning after the storm however it felt more apocalyptic!  We embraced the outage like we have many others in the past, with a sense of adventure and comments like "this is bad, we could be out of power all day".  As I lit a fire the following morning to break the chill, outside temps had dropped to the low 20's at a not so convenient time, we still talked about how this could be kind of fun.  Sort of like camping for a few days but a little better cause we had running water.  As day one turned into day two, our optimism began to fade some as we had not seen any activity going on in our area, other than the neighbors cutting trees off their houses!  Never the less we carried on, little Simba keeping our spirits up with her never ending zest for adventure.  As the next couple of days went by we kept watching the core temperature of our house drop along with the temps outside, our fireplace doing less and less each day, eventually we made it to the weekend.  

     Saturday morning, day four with no power, we started the day with our new routine, fired up the camp stove to boil water for coffee and sat Simba as close to the fireplace as we could for some cheerios and a 42 degree banana.  Shortly after finishing her breakfast, Simba started limping, so we took her to urgent care and long story made short returned home four hours later and packed our things to head to the Nagle ranch in search of power and heat!  Turns out each of us has our breaking point and ours came that Saturday afternoon:)  So we finished out the weekend at Jill and Ryan's, giving Tatum and Simba the best sleepover they could ever imagine!  Then on Tuesday morning when Jill and T headed to the airport to fly to Glendive for Thanksgiving, we stayed at their house as day 7 without power passed.  We headed to Billings for Thanksgiving ourselves on Wednesday morning, still with no power, and told the kitties to sleep close to each other to conserve heat!  Finally Friday morning we got power back to the house and a friend of ours checked on the house to make sure the heat came back on!

     This was the longest power outage either one of us has ever gone through and although it was not all fun and games, we were very thankful to have places to go to get out of the cold weather and have a hot shower, some of the finer things in life!  We learned quite a bit about ourselves through it all, like cooking by headlamp is far more glamorous when it's not in your own backyard, and that running water doesn't do you much good if the toilet seat is roughly cold enough to make a penguin shiver!  As much as we appreciate learning these valuable life lessons, we are even happier to have power and heat at our disposal again!  We definitely look at power in a whole new light now.....see what I did there:)

Remember, don't take comfort for advantage, you never know when you'll have to make adjustments to it!

    

Time!

     Six months, twenty five days, that's how long it's been since my last post!  I suppose when I started this blog, intentions of posting a bit more frequently were what I had in mind, but life has a tendency to alter our plans from time to time!  There's an interesting word, time, I seem to remember a time not long ago when it appeared I had all the time in the world to do the things I had on my agenda.  Things like golfing, fishing, elk hunting, and updating this blog.  Now there are days where I don't even have the time to blow the dust off my golf clubs, let alone attempt to use them, and I wouldn't have it any other way!!

     I have often wondered who "they" are, but they say there is no greater joy in the world than being a parent.  Any parent who's honest with themselves would also include words such as frustration, trial, happiness, sadness, challenge, and faith test to the list of descriptors.  I believe these are all true and yet every last bit of it is worth it!  As I shared with you six months and twenty five days ago, Kelli and I have jumped into the parenting game and considering the circumstance of how we became parents, we could probably add a few more words to the previously mentioned list.  We became foster parents with the hopes of adopting a 9 month old little girl way back in March, now she is one day shy of becoming 17 months old and she has given us more joy than words could ever describe.  Others who have gone down the foster to adopt path have told us to expect the unexpected and just hang on because it will be a roller coaster.  Of course if I were to share every single detail of our journey thus far you all would be reading this post for another two hours, so instead I'll give you the short version.  If you know anyone who has gone through the adoption process then don't be surprised if our story sounds very familiar, unfortunately this is the norm, or so we've been told:)  Also don't be alarmed, her name isn't Simba, it's just the nickname Aunt Jill gave her that we use because we're not allowed to share her name or photos until things are official.

     The day little Simba came into our home, I'll pause for you to process the visual of me holding her up high above my head for the rest of the kingdom to witness, we were told that there was a strong possibility we could be moving towards adoption soon.  The birth parents had not done much to lead the state to believe they could right the ship so the state was looking at other permanent options for Simba.  We found out two days later, during our first of many monthly visits with the state social worker, that things can change rather quickly.  The birth parents had  both done enough work for the state to "give them some more time", fast forward to June and all of a sudden we had gone from most likely going towards adoption to talk of transitioning back to birth parents in just a couple months!!  Naturally by this point we were completely attached to little Simba, those of you who have been lucky enough to meet her understand how easily that can happen, so news of things going the opposite direction we were hoping for was pretty devastating at first.  But the more we thought about it and the more we prayed about it, we slowly began to think that if Simba's birth mom could get things back together then maybe that was what was best for her.  Just about the time we had made our peace with the fact that this little sweetheart wouldn't be with us forever things took another turn!  Over the course of the first couple weeks of October we were informed that the birth parents had finally had enough second chances and the state has filed for termination!  We were quite shocked at how quickly things transpired but we have been on this roller coaster long enough now to know not to put our cart too far ahead of the horses!  We still take things one day at a time as we wait for the court system to run it's course, and even though everyone involved is telling us its just a matter of time before we will be adopting Simba, we aren't getting too excited until a judge gives us a reason to:)

     Obviously that is the very abbreviated version of what our summer was like, but I think it gives you a good idea of why we are looking forward to fall!  This journey we've gone on has definitely been a huge test of our faith as we really have no control over the outcome.  Our only option is to quite literally turn it completely over to God and trust that He has a plan for this wondrous child of His.  Simba has already brightened our lives more than we could have ever imagined and she has been welcomed into our family with open arms!  It is very common for us humans to think that we make the choices we make in life completely for our own plans and desires, we are finding out that really everything we do is part of God's greater plan for us and those little decisions we seem to come up with on our own rarely are solely from our own design.  Kelli and I would have told you the reason we moved over to Spokane was for the opportunity for a career change, we understand now that Simba was the reason all along.  No matter what happens with her future our lives will never be the same again!  She truly has been the greatest blessing we could ever ask for!!


Remember, don't put all of your attention into your own plans, there is always a far bigger plan in the works!

New chapter

     Once again it has been a while since I've posted on here, but at least this time I've got a valid excuse:)  The past few weeks have been a whirlwind to say the least!  Most of you know about the changes that have happened to us in the family department but if you don't I'll summarize it quickly, we recently became a family as we took in a foster to adopt placement!!  We have a long way to go before anything will be finalized but in the few short weeks that we have been a family we have been changed in ways we never could have imagined!!  We truly understand now what people mean when they say becoming a parent changes you, we became parents quite literally in a matter of hours and the changes we've encountered are indescribably awesome!  We continue to turn it over to God and pray that we will be able to share more about this little angel very soon and we thank you all for your prayers for our family as we continue to watch God's will come through this child!

     As one chapter is just beggining in our lives, another one came to an end last night.  As you may remember we had to let my dog Duchess go meet God back in January and we chose to have her remains cremated with the intentions of spreading her ashes in her home state of Montana.  I had a training for work in Billings this week so I brought her with to bring her back home.  One of her favorite hunting partners, Ryan, came with me as I took her out to the Yellowstone river.  She loved this river more than any living being I have ever seen, some of the best retrieves I will witness in my lifetime have been made by Duch on that river, so it only seemed fitting that it was where she would want to be.  As we stood on the river bank reflecting on the great times we've shared there, I knew I was in the right spot as Duchess showed herself to me.  Just before sending her ashes into the river a small flock of five geese flew overhead and as they went in to land on the river jsut downstream from us, one of them flared out to the right and made a loop directly over the top of me before completing the  and rejoining the rest of the flock on the water.  Since January 9th 2015 on I will forever believe that my beloved Duchess will show herself to me through geese, simply because this was her favorite bird to chase and every time I've seen geese since she went to heaven I can feel her presence!  So when this lone honker swayed from her routine behavior to fly over me there was no doubt in my mind that it was my baby girl showing me she approved of her final resting place.  I finished letting her go, placed her collar name tag in the rocks, and sat there for a few moments in silence as I listened to the geese voice their joy across the river.  It could only be summed up with one word, perfect.

Remember, as Norman MacLaine once famously said, "eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it."