An addition to our animal family.

                                      Meet Copper! 

                                                    A.K.A Thunderbolt. We had to change the name. 

I've been wanting a Beagle since we moved and while we did a little online searching we weren't searching too incredibly hard. See I don't do puppies, have no patience for that! I love animals but I have a love hate relationship with them. To me they are an animal, yes they are apart of my family but the very small part of our family, a disposable part. Sorry to you dog rights

lovers type! Anyways Friday night while checking out the Elk County Online Garage sale site I came across this picture (above). What a cutie!!! He's a year old Basset hound/Beagle mix. The family who had him just had no time for him and with a 2 year old, a baby on the way, and working full time he was crated most of the time. Price wise he was right in our budget...FREE!!! Couldn't resist!!! He does need a bit of training, the normal stuff like sit, stay, lay down, off...really just simple dog manners. But he's potty trained, crate trained and is use to a shock collar. Added benefit he plays!!! Trent needed a buddy and Harley at 6 does nothing but lay around so he loves his new buddy!! 

Our Journey to becoming the Rice family of 3 and counting.

Continued.....

So the process for the adoption started. Background checks, child clearances, finger printing, physicals, home study, being matched up with a family who we approved of and they approved of us, finding a fertility doctor to do the implant and scrambling to make money appear each time it was needed. And each time that money was needed it appeared and what a miracle that was. Ya know?! God is WAY to good to me. I fail in every possible way from day to day and even hour to hour in letting him guild my life and trying to do the things I am commanded to do and yet he still blesses me when I cry out. I don't get it but I'm so thankful for it. This adoption process went pretty quick and to some people I really know nothing about something I probably should have researched a bit more. To me though, all I wanted was a baby and I just wanted it to happen and nothing else mattered, I didn't need to know all the extra info or all the hows this work stuff. Maybe that's ridiculous and looking back I kind of wish I researched things a bit more cause we constantly get SO many questions and I just don't have the answers....hey isn't that what Googles for?! And to me that was ALL the easy stuff and hard part was yet to come....

The shots, the dreaded shots. The first set of shots lasts about 2 weeks and those shots are with a little needed in the thigh. A pretty easy shot once a day. I used an ice cube at first but then after getting use to it just did the shot no biggy! Along with the shot you also take oral meds some twice a day some once. The first set of shots sends you into menopause. A way for them to sorta restart your cycle or something. Fun stuff those hot flashes! Then comes shot number two which is twice a day. Its a HUGE needle and I do not exaggerate there. This needle is an 18 gage needle no joke! About 2 inches long as well. Progesterone with oil...OIL! It hurts! Added benefit it goes in your tush! So I would pack on the ice and walk around for about 5 minutes till I was good and numb and then stab myself...felt wonderful =) And that's not even the hard part, the hard part was trying to control the hormones. Feeling like you wanna cry any minute or flip out the next. Sometimes I just completely felt like I was going crazy. Laughing cause I was crying and crying cause I was mad at nothing and never knowing how I was to be feeling and just wanting it to just all stop!!! Then there's the weight gain but I had no control over it it was coming whether I worked out to stop it or not. 

So then the time comes for the implant. What a glorious day that is. When we adopted we received 6 embryos, so they thought, here we had 7...a free bee!!!! The day of the implant the doctor thawed 2 embryos, one however did not survive the thawing process and we were left with one. 

  
Side note. I love PennState Hershey Medical!!! What a great place! Filled with incredibly smart people who are constantly trying to figure out new ways to help people. God has blessed some people with such intelligence and its just amazing to watch those people work!! What a blessing to have had the chance to have meet up with some of those people. 

Another fun part to this process is on the day of the implant you need a full bladder...FULL! So you go in feeling like you need to pee and for me they say drink more!!! AWESOME!!!! Then when you already feel like your going to pee on someone they put you in a freezing cold room and they proceed to push on your bladder to make sure its full enough! Once again though ALL worth it!!! Then the doctor comes in and everyone is in full gear...including Steve! 

And then your implanted....and you sit there thinking maybe just like in Will & Grace (tv show) you should get up and stand upside down for a period of time till everything settles. Instead I sat cross legged holding things in and waited.........

Our Journey to become the Rice Family of 3 and counting.

7 1\2 Years. That's how long it took before God blessed us with our precious little miracle. Words cannot even express how my heart feels every single time I think about the miracle of  Trents birth. I'm tearing up just thinking about him. I love him more then anything and I can't imagine life without him. I am SO truly blessed to have him in my life and I just can't believe God entrusted him to me. 

Here's a bit of our journey in become the Rice Family of 3 and counting

Steve and dated 3 years before getting married and while going through our premarital counseling I was asked if I new about Steve's medical issues and that there's a possibility that he can't have children and how I felt about that. At the time I was just SO in love that all I cared about was getting married and that no one had 100% told him that he was sterile, so hey we still had a chance! Anyways a year or 2 or maybe even 3 into our marriage we found out that yes Steve was sterile and that he was 99% incapable of helping in the baby making process, so to speak. Yes, there was procedures that could be done to see if there was a blockage and from there we could take eggs from me and sorta make a baby and then implant me. BUT holy $$$. I'm not rich and to think about saving money up forever to try that way and the pain that both of us physically would have to endure did not sound fun. Plus the percentage of it even working was ridiculously low! No thanks! So we started checking out our other options. Sperm donors...sorta weird. After looking into it quite a bit we were just to weirded out about me having a baby with another guy...yep that's how we viewed it and that's just weird! 

I sit here and while writing this it sorta make me upset to think about how many people have no clue what its like to struggle to get pregnant or to just have a family. Adopt, foster. When I was in high school half my friends were pregnant our senior year or right after graduation. It's like for some unknown reason some woman have the gift of just "popping" them out and others just don't and its heart breaking. Whats really heart breaking is that some woman just have no clue and they never will. I look around and I see tons of families just totally disregarding there family, their children, and here I sit and I would just love to love on a child. But God put this on me, he knew I could handle this and he knew I was strong enough for this. And while I question it at times I'm thankful that he chose me as someone he saw fit to endure this to be blessed in a different way. 

And our journey continued. Seems so long ago and the information has sorta slipped my mind but we heard of NightLight Christian Adoption from Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family, we had written him a letter just seeking advice and he lead us to them. 

Wow! This is getting way longer then I had planned. Gonna have to pull a to be continued.....sorry! 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! Feeling completely out of my element. I can't BeLiEvE I started a blog!!!! Hope everyone...haha assuming someone reads it, thoroughly enjoys it! 

Elk County meet the Rices

fHello Elk County!!! It's been 3 months and I can finally say that while it's constantly come and go we are settled in. I like it here, I actually do! And I truly believe that we are where God wants us and that is why every door opened just when needed when considering this move. 

Steve started working for John Lucks Logging Inc. in January, driving back and forth every weekend to be with us. He finally officially got hired around March and we started house hunting! Financially for us things were tight and it was hard knowing what to do because it's scary just putting yourself out there and taking that leap into insecure pastures so to speak. So we prayed. Asked God to open doors wide or close them so hard that we would have any doubts in either direction. And doors opened. I must say God is good and he opened doors and gave a way to make this move happen and for that I am truly thankful!!So Steve is now a skidder operator and he loves it, not sure its a life time career choice but for now he loves it and enjoys being out in the woods and having set hours to come and go daily.   

As for Trent and I, well I was very concerned for us at first. What would we do in such a small town?! Leaving my parents, Grammy and PopPop, leaving my friends, starting fresh. It was going to be hard. But it wasn't and it hasn't been. Yes I miss my parents and my friends but what a busy summer its been. Starting with finding a new church which we really like. WAY different from our huge 1600 seating LCBC church but to be honest we never really called that home anyways. Bible school which Trent loved. Camping, canoeing, vacationing in the Poconos, Preschool, traveling back and forth to Lancaster County to work and visit. This summer has been busy and so fun!! 

Everything hasn't been easy though. Since we've moved here we've had some family issues with Steve family here and some relationships have been put on hold. Its truly sad and heart breaking and I truly struggle with the loss of their relationship. I quickly learned that I can't fix everything no matter how hard I try and for me, the control freak and the fixer....that's SO hard! I've learned that apologies stink but that sometimes while we don't try it we offend people so we just need to apologize and hope they can find it in themselves to move forward but it doesn't mean that they will. I struggle with this daily with them and I constantly wonder when they will choose to mend our relationship and get back to the norm and be close again. I hate not being able to fix this and I need to just let that go and pray for God to heal this relationship because I can't. 

I guess like they say when one thing ends something else starts and while one relationship has temporarily come to an end our relationship with Steve's cousin, his wife and son has grown. We do everything together and we have such a great time. Tommy's son Jeremiah has put such an impression on Trent and it just makes me smile. They have made this move here so much easier. We do everything together and sometimes that means nothing at all and for some reason that's even fun. 

Oh and I must also mention our neighbors. WOW! I've lived in town before and I never wanted to be back in town every again! BUT we are and so far I love it! Our neighbors are so nice!!! I'm not the most trusting person, I keep my guard up. And I usually am not the person out chatting it up with random people, people like to talk and talk about everyone and everything and for me I'm better off just not knowing things. Anyways with that said they are neighbors from heaven...so far! Our one neighbor offers her pool, hot tub, blueberry\blackberry bushes to us and even offers to watch Trent. Our other one neighbor brings us tomatoes and Popsicles for Trent and even candy some days. Just genuinely nice people and I hope that never changes. 

So, so far life here in Elk County has been very good to us Rice's. No plans on moving any time soon.