Patton Lee Evans

Well, here's our little guy, Patton Lee Evans. He was born on February 11th, 2011, at 6:59PM. We found out last Wednesday that they were going to be inducing our birth mom on midnight on Feb 11th. We were so excited! The hospital ended up being too crowded at midnight, so they had her come in at around 3AM instead. All day long we received updates from our social worker, Sarah, letting us know the progress of our birth mom. That night, we received a call from our birth mom letting us know all about Patton. We were thrilled!

On Saturday, we went to the hospital to meet our little guy. Sam and I were both so nervous, but so excited! Meeting Patton was so different than what I thought it would be. I really thought that I would burst into tears and be all emotional, but everything was so calm, peaceful, and spiritual. It was amazing!

We visited our birth mom and Patton for about 2 hours on Saturday. We truly had the most amazing visit, and then we went home.


That afternoon, we downloaded all of our pictures from the hospital onto our computer. Then we stared at the pictures all night. We were so excited to bring him home!


Sam with Patton


Placement was set for Sunday night. Sam and I were so excited and nervous the whole day! I was so nervous on how the whole placement would work out. But once again, everything was so calm and peaceful. The placement itself was very emotional on all sides, but we all knew that it was the right thing for little Patton. By the time that we left the hospital and came home, it was after 11PM. We were all so exhausted, but so ready to become a family!

I find it interesting that this placement happened right around Valentine's Day, a time when we reflect upon love. Our agency, LDS Family Services' motto is "It's About Love", and I truly saw that this weekend. We truly felt the love of our birth mom and her family for Patton. We know that he is SUCH a loved little spirit! Sometimes it really just overpowers me with how loved he is!

As Sam has said with taking care of Patton, we have never worked so hard for something and we have never loved something so deeply. He truly is a lot of work, but he's worth all the nights of 3 hours of sleep (we've already had 2 of those this week. I know it'll get better!). We are so incredibly greatful for the most amazingly strong birth mom! Her love and sacifice has blessed us forever. We know that her decision was a difficult one, but we're so eternally grateful to her for allowing us to have a family. We pray that she will be blessed forever for her decision. We just can't say enough good things about her and her decision, and we truly love her!

He's here! :)

He's here!!! :). Our little guy arrived at 7PM last night, he was about 7 pounds, 1 oz, 20 inches (I think). We were able to visit him and our birth mom for about 2 hours today. It was an amazing visit. We just love our birth mom! Our little guy is just absolutely perfect! He has dark blonde hair (and lots of it!). Placement should be within the end of this weekend. I'll make sure to post some pics once he gets home. :)

Waiting. . .

This is seriously how we've felt this week. We're so excited to meet our new little guy, but he's decided that he's not quite ready to come yet. Wednesday was the due date. At that time our birth mom was dilated to a 2 and her doctor decided to induce her on Thursday night at midnight (we're thinking the doctor has a vacation next week because they were originally going to induce her next Tuesday). However, the hospital was too full last night, and so they didn't start inducing her until about 4am this morning. And now the waiting continues. . . we know we'll get to see him soon, but we're just so excited!! Hopefully he'll come today! :). I'll keep everyone posted!!

The Nursery

Well, we've been working on it endlessly, and now we're happy to say that our nursery is finally finished (for now)!! Here are some pics of it. Enjoy!

This is a painting of Hannah holding the prophet Samuel when he was a baby. The painting is titled "For This Child I Prayed". When I first saw it a year ago, I completely fell in love with it and so we bought it. We thought it looks perfect above his crib.

Here's his crib. You can kind of see the owl and porcupine on the bumper. You can also see part of his mobile.

The tree that Amanda and I made (it turned out SOO cute) and our way comfy glider. We know that'll come in handy!

His bookcase (notice all the books. . .I haven't even touched the books in my classroom, or the huge box in our shed. This boy will be well read to) and an extra bed for those sleepless nights.


Another view of the bookcase and bed

I know the lighting is terrible, but this is an old dresser that we sanded and repainted and made into his changing table. He already has some cute clothes on his changing pad that I need to put away.

Some pics of some of the accessories in his room.

So, I have his hospital bag packed and his car seat all ready. Now we'll just wait until he decides to come out! The due date is a month from today, but we'll see when he actually decides to come. :)

Things I loved about this Christmas. . .

Things that I loved about this Christmas. . .

Hanging out with my wonderful hubbie. Doesn't he just look so mysterious? He's really not. I'm sure he's figuring out how to turn my blogging into a profit. j/k.

Watching my nephews open their Christmas gifts. We got my nephew Logan a toy guitar. What 5 year old wouldn't want a toy guitar?! He went to town on it. He even was laying on his backing wiggling his legs in the air as he was rocking it. It was awesome. Unfortunately his daddy didn't think it was so cool. He mentioned something about payback with annoying toys. We shall see!

Hanging out with my family &
enjoying my new camera (It has a panorama function. How awesome is that?!)

Baking lots and eating my wonderful chocolate trifle dessert (nobody gets in the way of my desserts! haha)

Observing the odd ways that our cat Franklin sleeps (how is that even comfortable for a cat?)


Decorating the nursery! We're almost done with it. Observe the adorable chipmunk in the crib. I found him on Etsy and I could NOT resist him. So of course he found his way into the nursery!! I need to think of a cute name for him! I'll post more pics when we're actually done with the nursery.

Hanging out with some old friends in high school. I seriously can't believe it's been 10 1/2 years. Gosh I feel old. Everyone looked great though (minus the mini-vans that everyone was driving. Haha. I know my day will come too).

Sam and I going to the Redlands temple. This was the view from the temple to Big Bear. It was breath-taking and the session was pretty awesome too!

SNOW!! Now, I normally don't like snow. But when Sam's home, and I know that we don't have to work or go anywhere, I do enjoy it. We got 2-3 inches, but it melted the next day. It was good while it lasted! :). I snuggled up with a good book while it was snowing. It was awesome!

Alas, my Christmas break is almost over (I go back to work on Monday. *sigh*). But I'm excited for next Christmas! Only 12 more months to go!

A Bit of Randomness

Ok, so I'm a bit behind in updating our blog (what else is new?! :)). Aside from receiving the most AWESOME news ever (read the post below), we've had a really busy past couple of months. In October, Sam and I went to our social worker, Sarah's wedding reception. Everything was so beautiful and she looked gorgeous. Here Sam and I are having some awesome Italian sodas!! Sam's only smiling because he didn't have to pay for the sodas. Haha!

Our social worker Sarah and I (finally, a friend my size! Haha!)

We also had my sister Em, her hubbie Matt, and my adorable nephew Luke come and stay at our house. I CANNOT get over his beautiful blue eyes!

We also went to my niece, Remi's first birthday party. I can't believe she's already one!

For Halloween, the other 1st grade teachers and I all dressed up like Miss Viola Swamp (from the Miss Nelson is Missing book). We looked pretty freaky, but it was still awesome. I really love these gals! :). Most of my students dressed up and our school had a costume parade. It was so cute to see their costumes and their happy faces! :)

Sam and I did our annual Disneyland trip. We usually go the weekend after Halloween. The crowds are usually mild and the weather is great. We had fun!

I LOVE all the Halloween & Christmas decorations that are up that weekend! It gets me all excited for the holidays!

The week before Thanksgiving, my class learned all about the first Thanksgiving. To celebrate we had an "authentic" Thanksgiving meal. We had Costco rolls, fried chicken, pumpkin pie & apple pie. Ok, so it wasn't quite authentic. In fact, I don't think a single one of those items was even at the first Thanksgiving. But, it was the best we could do considering nothing could be made at home - everything had to be store bought due to our wonderful state health laws. However, one of my parents is a professional chef and he made this BEAUTIFUL turkey center piece all made from fruit (the turkey's body was a canteloupe covered in grapes). It was SOO pretty that I didn't want to eat it. My students sure didn't have a problem with it though! That fruit tray was gone in a flash!

Sam and I have also been busy getting the nursery ready. It feels so weird to finally be able to put a nursery together, but we're really enjoying it. We bought all the main furniture already and we decided to go with a forest theme (bears, turtles, porcupines, owls, etc). It looks super cute! I'll post some pics when we're all finished!

Lastly, I've been busy writing the Literature Review portion of my thesis. That part is due next week, so I've been busy trying to get it all written. 2 other teachers and I are currently writing a book on Project-Based learning, which will count as our thesis. We're just doing the research part now (we each have to do our own Lit Review) and it's taken me FOREVER. I'll be excited once it's finally all done!

I think that's it for us! Sorry this is so random . . . that's kinda how we've been lately! :). Hopefully my next post will be a little more coherent!

The most AMAZING birthday gift EVER!!!!! :)

I had the most AMAZING birthday yesterday (and Sam didn't even spend a penny!). WE WERE OFFICIALLY PICKED BY A BIRTH MOM! :)! We've known for a couple of months that she's been interested in us. But yesterday we got a call from our social worker, Sarah, telling us that she had something for us.

So, after work, I drove down to our agency and Sarah handed me this basket (filled with onsies, diapers, washclothes, etc) and the most amazing card from our birth mom, letting us know that we've been officially picked!!! The crazy thing is that our birth mom had no idea that it was even my birthday! She couldn't have timed that more perfectly!

Our birth mom has asked for a very closed adoption. She wants 100% privacy, and so there's very little that we can tell you about her. We do have one request from everyone. We know that our birth mom is on Facebook. She is obviously still very sensitive about this situation and we want to respect her privacy wishes. So, please be very sensitive about posting anything on Facebook. Thanks!

So, our little BOY is expected to arrive on February 9th, 2011 and we couldn't be happier!! We can hardly believe that we're going to be getting a little one in 12 weeks. We have so much to buy and do before then, but we're ecstatic! :)!!

Below are the pics that Sarah, our social worker, took of me opening the gift. We really want to thank everyone for your help throughout this experience. We've never felt such an outpouring of love and support from everyone. You have all helped us so much that we truly appreciate it! Thank you all so much! :)