A New Year

Friends and Family,

We hope you are all doing well with the start of 2015.  By now, you have probably eaten all the cookies, taken down the Christmas tree, and are well into the new year.  With the start of a new year, we wanted to take a moment to send you an update on our family. 

The year 2014 was a very defining year for our family, filled with many high and low moments that seemed to change the trajectory of our lives.  There were many challenges and yet those challenges turned into opportunities for us to paint a clearer picture of what our family would look like in the next chapter of our lives. 

Our youngest daughter Merritt is now 3 going on 16.  The highlights of her year include ‘nastiks’ (gymnastics), attending her ‘school’ four days a week, and copying, following, and trying to beat Stimson at everything he does.  Our son Stimson turned 7 this year and has officially requested the job of disciplining, calming, and helping his younger sister. He does a great job and often knows better than his parents how to handle Merritt.  He started first grade and enjoyed numerous outdoor activities including hiking, biking, camping, running, and cross-country skiing, which meant Merritt also enjoyed the same activities.  

Katy has continued her professional career as an accountant, although this year was especially challenging as she not only performed her typical tax season routine, but did so while working two other jobs at the same time.  It’s a long story and one that we hope we never have to repeat as the ripple effect from tax season didn’t subside until around October.  Starting in 2015, she will be doing her same number crunching but at one firm.  I continue to work as a Product Manager at LexisNexis and enjoy the opportunities I have had there to learn.  Outside of work, Katy and I were also able to enjoy a lot of camping, running, and biking.  We both ran several races, with the most memorable being the Venice Marathon that we did together this past fall. 

While there were many other events that defined our year, a big reason for writing this letter was to provide an adoption update to you.  Our quest to adopt started around five years ago.  Those five years have been filled with a lot of bumps along the way and a lot of waiting for the adoption process to complete so that we could move our family forward together.  In the meantime, we attempted to prepare for the changes that would be coming our way – prepping the house, creating new beds, talking to the kids, and emotionally preparing for the challenge of adding another child to our family with an unknown past.  At this time last year, we had indicated that we had been assigned a referral.  That meant we had a name, a picture, and a somewhat unclear history of a girl who was to become a part of our family.  When the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) placed a suspension on all exit visas last October, we knew we would be waiting at least until October of 2014 before anything would happen.  Despite the suspension, we jumped into 2014 making monthly payments to support an additional level of care for our ‘daughter’, theoretically making her life better than what it had been, and awaiting any news that might indicate a change of status in the DRC.  Things began to change in February, when we were told that we lost our referral.  While we had prepared for this possible event like many had told us to do, it was still emotionally challenging for us to consider starting over.  We were in the midst of a hectic tax season and we were trying to understand why an attempt to improve another child’s life had to be so difficult.  Things continued to compound when our agency decided they would not be supporting new adoptions from the DRC and it was recommended we consider switching countries.  We had already switched countries once, paying and losing a lot of money in that process.  We decided to put everything on hold temporarily as we considered the next step.  Around mid-year, our adoption agency in the US went bankrupt, leaving us with no option to move forward with them.  In the midst of all this confusion and the many setbacks, we realized that all of our adoption forms were or had expired.  This meant that all our time/money/emotions and blood/sweat/tears invested in our adoption journey were gone and that we would technically and practically be starting over. With this series of setbacks, it had become more of a struggle than a dream. Frankly, we had a lot on our plate this past year and felt like we had nothing left in the tank to completely start over with the process.  We wrestled with this over several months and ultimately decided to no longer pursue adoption.  While this was difficult, we also found much contentment in putting our energy and time into our existing family and moving forward together.  We hadn’t realized how much of a holding pattern we were in and it has since been refreshing and rewarding to focus on what is right in front of us.  Many of you had partnered with us in this adoption effort and we want to say thank you!  We were honored and humbled to be supported by so many of our friends and family.  We now look forward to what lies ahead for our family.

We hope you are all doing well and we wish you all the best in 2015.  We hope to hear from you all within the next year!

Brad, Katy, Stimson, Merritt