{"id":7275,"date":"2014-09-09T10:43:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T14:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catchingfireflies.com\/blog\/?p=7275"},"modified":"2015-08-24T10:55:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T14:55:56","slug":"our-latest-firefly-family-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.catchingfirefliesgifts.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/our-latest-firefly-family-member\/","title":{"rendered":"our latest firefly family member"},"content":{"rendered":"

With much anticipation and excitement we are happy to introduce you to our adorable addition, Miss Marlo. \u00a0This small bundle of love arrived in our lives this spring and stole our hearts.<\/p>\n

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After 15 years of marriage our parents were beginning to wonder if fireflies and four-legged furry friends were going to be their only grandchildren from us. We surprised them with the news of our adoption plans last Thanksgiving and six short months later this lovely lady arrived!<\/p>\n

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Every adoption story is special including ours and that’s why I want to share it with you. \u00a0Steve & I love our life and we were both fully aware that adding a baby to the mix was going to completely change it (just ask any parent… they tell this to all couples without kids repeatedly<\/em>) \u00a0So we really were fine with it being just the two of us.<\/p>\n

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In the meantime to mix things up we took a small jump of faith and started hosting high school exchange students<\/a>. We ended up really enjoying mentoring and helping these girls navigate through their year in the US. \u00a0Believe it or not, choosing to open our homes to TEENS<\/em> grew our hearts and planted the seed for something more permanent. \u00a0Just a bit of proof that God does<\/em> work in mysterious ways.<\/p>\n

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Neither of us wanted to entertain going down the road that science has paved knowing we could be the yes to someone saying no to abortion. However, the decision to adopt was a journey for us as we heard many wonderful, scary, amazing, hard, beautiful and heartbreaking stories from families who have gone down that road.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I feel we got used to taking small, more calculated\u00a0jumps but this was a whole new game of hopscotch we were being invited to. \u00a0Ultimately we both knew we were ready for the next adventure so we just had to close our eyes and take that far larger leap into the pool of faith.<\/p>\n

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We chose an open domestic adoption plan which means Lolo will see her birth mom a few times year and we also share photos and updates via text and phone. \u00a0Choosing adoption is one of the hardest choices a birth mother has to make and selecting us to raise her child is a privilege that cannot be measured. \u00a0Inviting her into our extended family only makes sense, plus it also allows even more people to love Lolo and the last time I checked… that is a good thing.<\/p>\n

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We are only at the very beginning of this new chapter and we know it’s going to be a beautiful, messy, wild and unforgettable story… but aren’t those the best kind? \u00a0So far the swimming has been fine. \u00a0It’s the learning to float on God’s faithfulness in times of uncertainty that continues to fine tune how we handle what life presents us.<\/p>\n

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I’m sharing our story because I believe in small steps. \u00a0It’s how we grew our business and now our family too. \u00a0Looking back at the last half of our lives ~ it’s all the little intentional risks we took that have painted the pretty picture of our current whimsical world. \u00a0While we’re humbled by our success and are proud of that story, the colors of this next layer are already jumping off the page. \u00a0We are looking forward to living out (and blogging about) the many striking and subtle strokes in the years to come.<\/p>\n