Oh Yeah - I have a blog!

I've been totally MIA in the blogisphere for a while!  So here's a little picture catch up!

I know no one else cares about Chewy but I'm posting these anyway.  Nana was sitting reading the paper and the Demon-Dog came and about scared her half to death.  It was great.

 Scott and I took Lincoln and Lleyten to see the Muppet movie over Thanksgiving break.  They wanted pictures with Obi Wan so Scott lifted them up to get their little heads in the hole.  So cute.

 Elder Brian Carey came home from his mission right before Christmas.  So fun to have him home!  I still can't believe I have TWO return missionary nephews now.  I'm old.

 Scott tinkering with one of his train sets.  This is what he does on breaks from school.  I bought him the engineer hat for Christmas and he faithfully wears it whenever he gets his trains out.  I love that I'm married to an over sized kid. 

 Got us all jammie pants for Christmas (except Scott who refuses to wear them).  So we had to take pics - and darling little McCoy in his Darth Vader jammies!  Love that kid. 

And in other news....

The adoption process is just that: a process.  An emotional, annoying, maddening process.  I'm sure once we get placement we'll be able to add joyous and other good adjectives in there but right now it's just work. 
We took a small break from it in November/ December when the Lord decided to test our faith - with a really unexpected and positive result.  No - I'm not pregnant.  I'll just throw that out there right now so no one gets their hopes up ;) 
It all started one night in November when Scott and I were discussing what we needed to do the next day - one of which was pay the $1000 initial fee to LDS Family Services.  Suddenly I just kept having this feeling that we needed to wait.  I told Scott and he shrugged and said "okay".  The next day I was cleaning the house and thinking how weird it was that I had the impression to wait when I got a complete bombshell impression:  Try one more IUI.
No. 
No way.
I've closed that door.  We felt SO strongly about adoption.
No.
I had this nice internal argument on all the reasons why I refuse to do that.  But the impression kept coming and I couldn't deny it.  I called Scott and told him and got a "Where did THAT come from?"   I fought it and fought it and cried and cried.  That fertility door was closed for me and it's such an emotional and painful thing I just couldn't do it.  I just wanted to know WHY.  Why was I being asked to do something so painful again?  Get our hopes up again and heaven forbid lose another baby? 
After a couple of weeks of fighting  it, Scott brought up a good point; a statement that will define the rest of our lives:  Well, when we ignore promptings we end up in Texas.
After we got done laughing, I realized he was right.  So in December we started on the devil fertility meds; the specialist up in Sandy ordered a bunch more tests - some we'd already done but whatever- then we did the insemination. 
And then we started to get excited.
I mean, why would we be asked to do it if it wasn't going to work, right? 
And then came all the awesome side-effects of fertility meds.  My assistant manager at work even sent me home early because I was an absolute *$#2&.  And after snapping at Scott a few times and not letting him near me he said, "Oh yeah - this is why we don't do fertility anymore." 
Well, I was late and we started to get even more excited and then quickly found out it didn't take and we were devastated again.  Then we started discussing everything and praying and we realized: this was a confirmation to us that we were on the right path with adoption.  There was still that little hope in the very backs of our brains that we'd get pregnant while filling out paperwork.  But our hearts and our brains are now turned to adoption and we know that it's the right path and choice for us.  It's taken us a while - everyone has to go through the process in their own way and get their own answers.  We wanted to be sure and 100% on board before we moved ahead with it.  I've tried and prayed and tried some more to not be bitter.  I wanted to be able to hold my head up and be okay with things.  That doesn't mean that every now and then it doesn't hurt a little.  That doesn't mean that as I'm filling out the mammoth adoption questionnaire that I don't get annoyed at the complete social injustice of the thing.  But I can laugh when my Dr. says a 3% of conceiving on our own is being generous;  I'm genuinely happy when my friends tell me they're pregnant.  I had to get to a place that I was happy despite this infertility crap.  Scott and I figured out over a year ago that we were wasting our time together worrying and stressing about not being able to have babies.  It can take over your entire life and screw up a marriage if you let it! 
So here we are.  We're good :)  We're almost to the home study, we just have to get our background checks back and suffer through an hour long interview (independent of each other) with our case worker.   AND Scott is set to graduate in December!!!!  Hale-freakin-lujah.  We're excited by life; we're excited about our future as completely unknown as it is to us.  We've FINALLY figured out that Heavenly Father is in charge and we're good with that.