Our Journey towards Parenting!

First I just want to say a huge thank you to all our friends and family for being so supportive and understanding. I guess you tend to think the worst when you aren't sure what to expect but you all have been awesome. It's been really hard the last couple years, every time Christel thought she may be pregnant we'd get excited and hold our breath only to be disappointed. Whether we realized it or not at the time, it has been a test of our faith in God and our marriage, but if any thing it has made our marriage stronger and our faith in God has held firm as well. Still, I have spent a lot of time asking God, why? Not sure I can say I ever really got an awnser yet but He seems to have opened a door with adoption, especially since it's a Christian adoption agency that we will be working with. I'm super excited about adopting and scared at the same time. For a while part of me was afraid that maybe I would have trouble thinking of this baby as my own. Last night as I was

The main question people will want to know is how did you decide to adopt a child. Well, we've known we wanted children since the day we met. A year after we got married, we started to try for a baby. After many tears, frustration, and months of negative pregnancy tests, we mentioned adoption but never gave it much thought. Another 6 months or so went by and still no baby. Matt and I talked, and decided that if we can't have children ourselves, then why not give an unwanted baby a good loving home. We will not be going to the doctor to have tests. Its not worth getting poked, prodded, and invaded just to end up having our hearts broken. If you really think about it, people spend more money on fertility treatments than an adoption costs, and end up empty handed. We'd rather spend the money and end up with a baby, without going through test after test.

So, this blog is to keep everybody updated on our progress, thoughts, feelings, ups, downs, etc during this road called "Adopting." Most of everybody who reads this, already knows us or at least one of us. I (Christel) will probably be doing most of the updating! I am 24 and am currently an infant teacher at Bright Horizons. I was just moved to the infant room after being in the toddler suite for a year. It was a hard move, but I am loving the babies! Matt is 28(his birthday is on Wednesday, July 29th) and works for shopko Optical. He is currently waiting on a store to be a manager at. I'm sure he'll be a great one when the time comes! We met back when I was in junior highschool in a christian chat room. Over the years, that chat room died off and we still kept in contact via email and eventually through MSN Instant Messenger. In 2004, we started talking more online and started to have feelings for one another. On June 17th, 2004, Matt asked me to be his girlfriend a