Our Story

     We (Justin and Karen) got married November 30, 2006. Within the next month we decided we wanted to start a family. We were so excited as we anticipated a little one joining us. However, things don’t always go according to plan. The month turned into years and we still had not had the joy of our family expanding. We talked about doing fertility treatments, but it didn’t feel right at the time. We decided to be foster parents. We went through the extremely personal exposure of a homestudy, but loved the progress we were making to be able to have a family.

     We couldn’t believe it when shortly after our home study was approved we were called and asked if we wanted 2 kids. There was a boy who was 10 and a girl who was 7. We said yes, we were so excited. They came to our home the first week of September 2009. Three days later we got another call asking if we could also take their 5-year-old brother. Yes!! We could never turn down a child, and we weren’t disappointed. We got him the Friday before school started. That weekend was a blur getting them settled and getting the ready for school. While the three of them were with us I had the opportunity to supervise visits between “our kids”, their siblings, and their parents. I grew to love all the members of the family and became good friends with their mom. In May of 2010 the kids went back home. That was hard but we were so glad that we were blessed to have them in our lives, and that we were able to see the growth in their parents and know that they were going back to a good home.

     May 12, 2010, which is Karen’s 25th birthday, we got another call. They had three more kids for us to watch over. These children were 5, 3 and 21 months. It was such a different experience than the first three, but we loved them as well. They were only with us for a week until they went back to be with their mom. We were blessed to have one more child come into our home for a weekend. We love all the children that came into our home, and they will always have a special place in our hearts, but we got to a point where it was hard to have the children come and then leave. We were ready to have a permanent family.

     We decided we wanted to try adopting through the State of Oregon. We went through the fun homestudy again. We were approved and dived right in looking through the children that needed homes. We inquired about many of them, and finally received a call that the caseworker for 2 brother thought we would be a good match. However, it was not ment to be. Justin’s mom had moved in with us so we only had one bedroom. That would have been ok for the two of them, but their sister became available as well. We would have LOVED to have her join our family as well, but we just didn’t have room. The loss of that possible family was really hard on us. We put our adoption on hold.

     After months of work and healing we decided we would try fertility treatments. We went through 5 rounds of Clomid, surgeries, 5 rounds of Femara with IUI, an ectopic pregnancy, and one draining round of injectable medications with IUI in almost two years.

     We now feel we have put enough time, money, energy, and emotions into trying to have a biological child. What we really want is a family. We are so excited to now move onto our journey with adoption. We believe God has a plan for us, there are children out there that are ours and we are theirs. We can’t wait to meet them and start our lives as a family. We know this will be a long hard road, but we know we can do it and it will all be worth it when we see our child(ren) for the first time.