The New Bracken Family!!

So here is the scoop! Everyone knows we have been trying to adopt forever and in the last two months we have had two bad experiences and one amazing journey! It starts back in December when we almost adopted a beautiful little girl up until the day the mother changed her mind. The second experience happened through our private adoption agency when the mother who had chose us turned out to be a scammer. To say the least we were ready to give up on the whole adoption thing for ever. Until.....Saturday January 18, 2008. We were getting ready to go to St. George to meet up with my best friend from college Riss and her husband when the phone rang. It was Ken from LDS Social Services informing us that a beautiful little boy was going to be placed for adoption and we had been chosen. I have to admit I was very hestiant because of the last two experiences we had encountered but I did feel a tinge of excitement as well. We continued to talk to Ken finding out more info and decided to travel to Salt Lake to meet the family of this little boy.

Tuesday we drove to Salt Lake, after arranging Rand some time off at work and changing some things that I had to do (like a baby shower at my house on Thursday night)(I hear it turned out great by the way!) All the way up to Salt Lake I was crazy nervous wondering if this could really be the time that we would get our baby! We went to LDS Family Service in downtown Salt Lake and there we met some wonderful people (Braden's grandparents). After our nerves settled down we enjoyed a great visit and felt very comfortable with each other. Baby Braden was there and he loved Jakey! He grabbed his face and gave him kisses. We left that night wondering if this was going to be the baby we would have the privledge of raising. The next day we met with Braden's mom and felt very good about her as well. We were able to spend some time with his grandparents again and realized that this was probably going to be a wonderful situation. After me stressing out all day that this could work or maybe not it ended well. We now are the proud parents of two beautiful little boys and are excited about what the future holds for our little family of four!

Through this experience I have learned that patience is not my best attribute and I need to remember that everything does work out! I am so thankful for Braden's family and the trust they have placed in us. I am going to have to find out now how to deal with all the testosterone in a family of three boys!