Adios 2010!

Ah, 2010.  I'm trying to remember if you were more pessimistically-optimistic or the other way around.  I do remember that you started off kind of painful.  The fertility treatments weren't working and Kristen and I were faced with moving on to IVF (painful) or looking into adopting (something that we hadn't thought through at that point).

January saw me flush my cell phone down the toilet at a lacrosse game (seriously, it happens people) and the introduction of the iPhone to Misty (best. gift. ever.).  Plus we had our First Annual Leavenworth trip!  February brought around the initial meeting at the adoption agency where we got a feeling of what was to come.

March brought about the decision to go with Open Adoption and Family Services as the agency of choice to use in our adoption process.  The Pre-Adoption meeting was fun and informative and that's where we met Warren and Chris.  April and May were filled with paperwork, paperwork, paperwork and home studies and June was filled with gathering pictures for our photo collage, wrapping up the paperwork for the background checks and finishing the final drafts of our autobiographies.  It was also the first time that I'd ever been fingerprinted before and I was nervous!  Now I'm never allowed to do anything bad again because I'm in AFUS and they'll bust me faster than a clock can coo-coo.

We entered the baby pool at the end of July!  The 27th to be exact and everyone knows how much that's my favorite number, so I felt pretty lucky.  We also started working on the baby's nursery:  painting the walls, fixing the trim and removing the ugly popcorn stuff from the ceiling.  August brought around our big trip to Boston and NY to see friends.  I hadn't been back to Boston since 2000 and neither one of us had been to NY so it was a great time!  Plus we got to go to the beach in New Hampshire and play in the Atlantic and that's not something that you get to say/do every day, ya know!

September, October, November were waiting months.  We've made a list of everyone in the pool and we're kind of monitoring the trends of who is adopting and who is still left in the pool.  September was also the start of the monthly adoption gatherings through the agency and we've met some pretty cool people through there.  It's nice to know that we're not going through this alone.

December has been another waiting month but has gone by so fast that it doesn't feel like we've been in the pool for 5 months already.  We also went back to Eastern Washington for Christmas for the first time since my parents divorced.  It was great to have everyone there.

2010 has also seen at least 6 our our friends have babies (that's just a quick count off the top of my head, sorry if I forgot anyone) and with that comes joy and pain for me (not speaking for Kristen here).  Maybe that's hard to explain.  I'm super excited for our friends and love that they have started or added to their little family units.  At the same time we've been trying this for so long that it's painful in a way that to watch other people just be able to move on.  Overall, though, I'm just happy that everyone that I love and care about it happy and safe.

So 2011, I have high hopes for you!  You start in about 13 hours and you have some big shoes to fill.  January will bring around our annual Leavenworth trip, April my birthday, July Kristen's birthday but other than that we don't have a lot planned for you right now.  I'm sure there will be game nights and summer BBQs.  Possibly a new roof for the house, maybe a new car for Kristen and some random remodeling projects.  Hopefully you will bring and end to Gretchen's cancer and you will bless another 6 of our friends with babies.

Oh yeah, and feel free to send a stork (or two, hey, I'm not being picky!) around our way too :)

Editor's Note (that's me):  September also saw my Seattle Storm win the WNBA Championship again!  Woot!