2011 - A Year in Pictures

Happy New Year - The start to 2011!

January - 2nd round of IVF (cancelled cycle)

February - Celebrating my 28th birthday in the hill country

March - Celebrating my dad's 60th birthday in the hill country 

March - Kris' mom came for a visit!

March 17th - 3rd (and final) round of IVF - made it to egg retrieval this time!  The next day we found out we cannot have children. This marks the hardest time in my life to date. 

March - Kris surprised me with my camera to help take my mind off of our heartache. It helped for sure!

Easter 2011

Mother's Day 2011


 
June - We started the adoption process!!



June - Oskar turned 6!



July - Trip to the Dominican Republic to celebrate our decision to adopt.



July - Family pictures for our profile book



August - George turned 3 and we completed our home study for the adoption.



September - Kris and I became board members for the Houston Gladney Family Association



September - We celebrated our 3rd anniversary in NOLA




October 1, 2011 - We are finally approved to adopt and our profile book is complete!




October - We attended our very first air show as volunteers for the USO. In May we became volunteers for the United Services Organization.



October - We began working on the nursery



November - We hosted our very first Thanksgiving with friends



November - Kris turned 29!



December - I took a girl's trip to NYC during Christmas time



Christmas Eve 2011



A Christmas Day toast - Merry Christmas!

 
 Happy 2012!!

It would be easy to look back at 2011 and say it was the worst year of my life.  But the truth is; I refuse to look at it that way, so… it wasn't.  2011 will always hold a special place in my heart.  It was a year that began with harsh realities and tough decisions, but it ended with blessings in disguise, immense personal growth and marital strength and the motto 'hard work always pays off' has never rang more true (haven't been able to share this news with you yet, but hopefully soon!).  As I look back at these pictures, I can’t help but be grateful for all the blessings that came from such a dynamic year in my life.

I look forward to 2012, but I know the tough road is not behind us yet – it won’t be until our baby comes home.  I just know in my heart of hearts that this is the year we will become parents and for that – I can’t wait! 

Happy New Year!  May this year bring all the desires of your heart. 

Adoption Update

Truth is, there is no update per se...

Just an email from our caseworker explaining the process and the wait. 

Up until now, we didn’t understand the process and why the wait was 6-9 months before we should see any activity on our profile.  As I’ve mentioned before, this news was hard, but here we are nearly 3 months into our wait and it’s flown by.  I can’t tell you how thankful and relieved I am to see how Kris and I are handling the wait so far.  We are busy in our day-to-day life and relishing every second we have left just the two of us.  For the first time in over 2 years, we are worry-free and truly enjoying our life together.  We’ve done everything possible on our part to start a family and now we just simply have to have faith and wait.  Amazingly enough, it’s much easier than it sounds…

Most families do not see very much activity, if any, for the first 6-9 months and then it picks up the longer that you have waited.  Gladney tries to show the profiles of the longest waiting families first, if possible, to give them the first chance at being shown. 

Here is the short version of how adoptive parent profiles are shown to birth families:

A birth mother caseworker (BM caseworker) lets the adoptive parent caseworkers (AP caseworkers) know their birth mother is ready for profiles.  Birth mothers aren’t allowed to see profiles until they are in their 3^rd trimester.  The BM caseworker then gives the AP caseworker the birth mothers background information along with a list of things the birth mother is looking for in a family. 

From there, AP caseworkers look through every family that they have to see: 

·         Who is open to this birth mother’s background

·         Of these families that are open, who meets the birth mother’s requests

That will usually narrow it down to a group of 20 or so families.  Gladney will then take the 5-7 longest waiting families and show their profile first and then if the birth mother does not find a family out of that round, Gladney will continue showing profiles until she picks or Gladney does not have anyone else to show.

There are unique situations that can arise in which we will likely not wait 6-9 months before a birth family has an opportunity to see our profile.  For instance:

·         If a birth mother sees one of our online profiles and calls Gladney because she is interested in our family.  Gladney will then make sure our interests are aligned with what we are open to vs. what the birth mother is looking for in a family.

·         If a birth mother has very specific requests, we meet what she is looking for in a family and Gladney believes we would be a really great fit.  The example our caseworker provided was:  She is looking for a family younger than 35, open to yearly visits, with some Asian in their background, and have no children yet – that would be a match!

The point of all of this is; the wait is not guaranteed to be 6-9 months.  This is just an average wait that Gladney has seen among most families.  They want to keep our expectations realistic.  I get it.

'It's Christmas Time in the City'

This year I had the opportunity to visit New York City during the holiday season with my friend Laura.  I've been to NYC 3 previous times, but a girl's trip to New York during the holidays is a must - put it on your bucket list!  The city is magical and just beaming with Christmas lights and Christmas spirit.  We saw pretty much the entire city of Manhattan by foot and soaked up every last second of our 'Christmas time in the city'.  

We enjoyed roaming through the Christmas markets shopping and sipping apple cider.  We went to all three of them - Union Square, Central Park South and Bryant Park.  This was my personal favorite activity in NYC over the holidays.  The market was full of local talent of any kind - photographers, painters, bakeries, jewelry designers, etc...

Laura and I walked through Central Park to the MET and then admired the never-ending various art forms until we just. couldn't. go. on.

Every morning and afternoon, we took a break and enjoyed a chai tea latte in the cafes we stumbled upon.  It was our time to relax, talk about our day, life or just whatever was on our minds. 

We visited Highline Park and enjoyed some great views of the city, then walked to Chelsea Market and ate a delicious farm-to-table lunch.  

Did some shopping and did some more shopping… We shopped Soho, NoLita, Union Square, 5^th Avenue, Columbus Circle, West Village and so on and so on…

Laura and I both shared a childhood dream of seeing the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and my knight in shining armor made our dream come true.  It was our last night in NYC and we couldn't have ended our Christmas trip any more perfectly.  

We did many, many other things, but these were the highlights.  Our schedule wasn't conducive to lugging around a huge camera, so here are some photos of our very last day in NYC - sadly, my only photos of the trip... 

 Highline Park

 Radio City Christmas Spectacular

Christmas Time in the City

Inside Chelsea Market

Thank you so much for inviting me, Laura.  I had such a good time touring the city by foot with you.  I look forward to many more girl's trips in our future! 

Our Very First Christmas Card

It only took three years of marriage, a photo session and a huge life changing event (our adoption) to convince us it's time, but...we did it!  

We sent out our very first ever Simpson Family Christmas card.

Merry Christmas! 

A not-so happy to HAPPY Birthday!

November 25^th 1982, was the day Kristopher Alan Simpson blessed his family with his arrival.  And 20 years later this man began to bless my life in more ways than I can count.  November 25^th has been a very special day in my life for 9 birthdays now.  And although Kris isn’t a huge fan of celebrating his birthday, I make him know how very special he is to me, Oskar and George and my family.  My hubby is truly one-of-a-kind and he should be celebrated.  

Kris as a newborn

And 21 years later, we celebrated his birthday for the first time together. 

With that being said, I think he and I both have a birthday curse.  Things never seem to go right on either of our birthdays and this year was no exception.  He will now tell you '29 sucks'.  It turns out, 29 doesn't suck, just his actual 29^th birthday.

Here are some 'before his birthday sucked' photos: 

I made him open his present first thing in the morning!

You see Oskar? He never misses opening presents...

 

He LOVES it! 

Happy 29th Birthday to the love of my life!

This year Kris’ birthday fell on Black Friday and we had no idea how this would limit our plans for the day.  We set out to play a round of golf (he plays and I’m his cute caddy), go to the shooting range so he could teach me how to defend myself (something he’s wanted to do for some time but I let my fears hold me back until now) and end the evening with a nice dinner.  We’ll those were great plans in theory until we drove to the golf course we intended to play only to find out they had no open tee times.  So we moved on to plan b, another golf course of our liking, only to hear the same story.  Finally at 2:30 p.m. we arrived at a municipal course desperate to play as planned.  Of course there were open tee times here because they don’t even schedule tee times!  Finally he was able to play some golf and all my poor birthday boy wanted was a couple of beers to celebrate the day.  Guess what – the café was closed and this course had no beer cart – that means no beer for anyone.  So we high-tailed it to the gas station, grabbed some beers and finally headed to the links.  He played 10 or 11 holes and we were having a good time, but it was getting late, so we decided to pack up and head home to get ready for dinner. 

Dinner… Really wish that wasn't another story to represent the birthday curse, but it is.  Kris decided he wanted to go to the mall after dinner to check out the Black Friday deals for me.  Yes, my sweet hubby always thinks of me before himself even on his own birthday.  In my defense, I didn't know he wanted to shop for me until we got to the mall and then I felt guilty shopping for myself on his birthday.  We ended up at what is supposed to be a nice Italian restaurant in the Woodlands (close to the mall) called Luca and Leonardo.  Don’t waste your time or your money – DO NOT GO THERE!  The meal started off nice with delicious bread and a tasty salad, but then our entrees arrived...  My pasta tasted like tomato paste and grilled chicken – there was no flavor and I certainly could have made something better at home and saved the $24 it cost.  On top of that, my poor birthday boy’s meal was the size of a kid’s meal for $28.  Let’s just say we ended up at Taco Bell that night for him after spending money on a ‘nice’ dinner. 

We were able to laugh off all of our bad luck throughout the day, but I just felt so guilty about the way the day turned out.  Our day was wonderful prior to leaving the house – maybe we should have just stayed home!  I told Kris the night of his birthday that I wanted to wake up the next morning and re-do his entire birthday.  He was reluctant, but agreed and I’m so glad he did.  The next day we spent the afternoon doing whatever he wanted to do and we ended the evening at one of his favorite restaurants, El Tiempo, followed by seeing our favorite country music star Cory Morrow at the Firehouse Saloon.  We had a blast and ended his birthday celebration with a bang!  

Cory Morrow came back from his encore to sing our wedding song - Always and Forever.  It was a huge surprise and such a treat. I think that was the perfect way to end Kris' birthday. Couldn't have planned it better myself!

Happy Birthday to my always loving, always thoughtful husband who I'm thankful for each and every day.  I love you 'always and forever'.