Monday, July 27, 2009

We are all children of God...

We had an adoption opportunity. It was not ideal. Let me explain. We got an email for an opportunity to adopt an African American baby girl. We jumped at the chance to learn more about her situation and how to proceed with the adoption. However upon learning more, the adoption would cost 3 times the cost of going through LDS Family Services, but this agency that emailed us bases their adoption fees on race. We are NOT okay with this, this is unacceptable. We are all children of God and are all worth the cost of adoption, not one more than the other. We passed the opportunity up. In the process of turning the caseworker down he sent a lengthy email justifying their reasons for lowering the cost of Bi-racial and African American babies.

"Our fees reflect the demographics of adoption. You will find we are certainly not alone in this struggle. We do not have a large number of African American families lined up to adopt. We do have a fairly large number of Bi-racial and African American placement opportunities If our fees were the same we would have many African American little angels pasted up as families wait for their Caucasian child. So we have lowered our fees to encourage families to consider them as part of their adoption plan. ( it just is a fact)"

We do not agree with this and will not adopt through an agency that thinks this way.

-
J&S

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A Quick little update...

* Thanks so much for the comments and well wishes I appreciate it so much, it's been tough, but it's nice to know how to get the help we need when we need it.

*Our cousin Luke is in the hospital, please send prayers his way too!

*Joe is doing much better, he is frustrated with his vision, it's better but not best... His turn around with the steroid treatment was pretty phenomenal to see. He is walking really well, and doing good all around with little to no side effects from the steroids, just sore from the infusions. He is on a wean down dose of steroids for the next 10 days. He has a follow up appointment with the eye doctor and we're still working on the Neurologist we want to see. I may just have to get really pushy!

*Suzy is gone. We traded her in while she was running and still worth something. We are now the proud owners of a 2005 Kia Rio his name is Julius. He is orange, a pretty red-orange.

*We both have talks on Sunday. No assigned topic, trying to think about what I need to speak on...but life is keeping me pretty darn busy.

*Thanks again for all the comments and visits to the blog, I will try to update more. :)

-S

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Is is possible to just take a break from life?

Nope, probably not. It would be an understatement to say our life is eventful.

*Suzy is running again, but we are looking to trade her in for a more economical vehicle (and saving ourselves some $). Poor Suzy had gas syphoned out, man we were ticked.... at least it was only about half a tank.. anyway now we have a locking gas cap.

* Joe, well he has had a little trouble with his eyes and balance lately so we had taken him in to have his eyes checked and found out he has optic neuritis in both eyes (or swollen optic nerves, a symptom of MS) so we had to look into Neurologists here, something we were already doing. Turns out there are lots of Neurologists here, not many that specialize in MS and not many with good reviews (Rate your MD online and other patient feedback) So we made an appointment with a family doctor (at an office my family has been going to for years). Before the appointment we knew the kind of treatment Joe was going to need, he needs steriods. Joseph had an appointment with a doctor that is new to the office, Dr. Burrup. I couldn't go to the appointment so I sent my mom armed with all the paperwork filled in and a list of Questions I wanted answers to. Turns out Dr Burrup is totally awesome, and LDS. He got us hooked up with a handicap placard, I worry about how far away we have had to park sometimes with the heat here. He couldn't prescribe the dosage he would need so we had to try to get him into a neurologist, but you can't just get appointments right when you want or need them. So to get things going (and since Joe isn't allowed to go to work for a couple days or until he could get treatment) and you know Joe, he does not sit still. So we went to the ER, they have on call neurologists and we wanted to get treatment started right away. Our plan worked and we spent 4 hours at the hospital yesterday . Joseph is on a three day steriod infusion treatment, he has an IV in his hand we will be going today and tomorrow. Then a follow up appointment with Dr. Burrup on Monday and more steriods but in pill form. Our doctor is trying to get us in sooner with a MS specializing neurologist in Spokane that we found, at an MS clinic. We want to look into LDN treatment, more info to come on that later. Joe says he is feeling better, and he looks pretty good, I think with his time off he may sun a little by the pool.

* After the hospital we got food, we were starving. We stuffed ourselves updated family and left to go babysit my cousins. You can tell Joe is a softy, he got his nails painted, many colors, many layers and some even with sparkles. Those 3 girls were giggling so much. It was pretty funny.

Well that's it for now. I hope to be better about updating, but we've been pretty busy.

-S