A Visit from Nana & Papa

Tim's mom and dad (Nana & Papa) came down this past week to meet their new grandson as well as hang out with Hannah and us. It was so great to have them here and we packed their visit with tons of fun stuff both big and small. Here is a quick look at our fun-filled time together.

I took advantage of having Delaine here to help me decorate Cameron's room. I always love how she puts things together!

While we were working on the room, Ken & Tim were hard at work outside on Hannah's new swing set! We decided since we'll have a newborn at home this summer, our trips out and about may not happen as much and we thought this would be a great way for Hannah to still play. It was finished just as she got up from nap and she couldn't wait to get out to play. She has been out every day since then. She loves it! Starting in the winter, Hannah was able to go to Awana on Wednesday nights in the 2 year old program, Puggles. I didn't know that she was going to be a part of the closing ceremonies, but we were very excited to find out she was! The whole fam, including my mom and dad, headed up to church to watch Hannah and it was so much fun! She did a great job on stage singing her song. Such a great opportunity for her to learn about Jesus as well as play with her church friends. We were so proud of her! While Ken & Delaine were here, the weather finally broke and we took total advantage of it! On Friday, we took a trip to Grant's Farm. Hannah loved it once again and Cameron did a great job of hanging out. Our highlights were feeding the goats, riding on the carousel, watching the animal shows and seeing the "BIG" horses (clysdales). It was a really great day!

Hannah sat long enough for Nana to double french braid her hair before going to Grant's Farm.
A family shot on the tram at Grant's Farm.

On Saturday, we all loaded up and headed to STL for a Cardinals v. Brewer's game. Even though Papa wore his Brewer's shirt, and the Brewer's beat our Cardinals, it was a great day at the ballpark. The weather was beautiful and both kids did a fantastic job! We can't wait to go back and celebrate a Cardinal victory later this year!We capped off our time together with a fabulous Mother's Day lunch at our house. My mom and dad joined us and it was a great time to celebrate all the mom's in our lives. Here is our little family on Mother's Day.

Cameron's First Month

Cameron turned one month old today! It's hard to give a lot of details in this update because he wasn't with us full time for a lot of the month. He is changing every day though -- I forgot how fast that goes! We did visit the doctor and we definitely have a growing boy on our hands! He weighed in at 10 lbs. (that's over a 3 lb. gain!) and is 21 3/4" long (up an inch and 3/4). Both of these fall around the 50th percentile so we have a very healthy little guy! This seems really big to us because Hannah was so tiny for her age and still is only around the 40th percentile. He seems to be adjusting to our routine of eat/wake/sleep cycles. His evenings can be a little rough at times -- he has developed a little bit of a "witching hour" sometimes. However, once he gets a bottle between 10:00 and 10:30, he sleeps until 3:30 or 4:00. Then up at 7 for the start of the day. Not too bad! We are so in love with our little guy! Here is Cameron around 1 month old with his own bear for pictures.

Entrustment Ceremony

We had another special part of our adoption today, the placement ceremony. Since Tim's parents were here to meet Cameron, we thought it was the perfect time to celebrate our adoption. Our social work arrived bright and early as well as my mom and dad for all of us to be together for this celebration. The ceremony was a time to honor the adoption triad of birthmom, adoptive family and baby. With each part of the triad, our social worker talked a little about the importance of the people involved as well as read scripture and poetry. At the end, we prayed for Cameron, his birthmom and our family as we go forward with this adoption. Afterward, we celebrated with cinnamin rolls for breakfast. It was a great morning to spend as a family. We are beyond blessed to have gone through this process and to see how God has shaped and formed our family.

Here we are with our social worker, Rachel, celebrating Cam's adoption into our family.

Sibling Love

We have had this "big sister" shirt for quite some time and were very excited for Hannah to finally debut it! Here is the first of many sibling photo shoots we will have!

A Very Happy Easter!

It was a non-traditional kind of Easter this year, but we loved every minute of it! Our Easter started on Saturday night when we went to our church's Easter service. It was the first time they did one on Saturday night and it was really nice. It really set the tone for how we were going to spend the rest of weekend.

One of the reasons we attended our church's Saturday night service was so we could spend the morning and early afternoon as a family of four with Cameron. When we got up Sunday morning, we had a not-so-good-feeling little girl. Hannah was running a little fever and was coughing like crazy, but we thought we would still give our day a try. We got to the interim house around 8:30 before the foster family went to their church. My mom came with us to celebrate the day. We were able to do Easter baskets with both kids before we left. We didn't get an egg hunt in this year because of the crazy rain we've been having, but I know the kids (Hannah especially) enjoyed opening their Easter baskets.

All the Easter goodies!
We had a few hours to kill before we could meet my dad for lunch, so we took off for the zoo. It was a lot of fun watching Hannah "watch" all the animals. She kept saying "Mommy...zoo!" over and over while we were there. We dodged yet another bout of rain and made it about three hours at the zoo. It was nice to spend the morning together, even if it was damp and a little cool.After the zoo, we met my dad downtown at one of our favorite resteraunts, Calico's. It is a great Italian place that we go to quite a bit. It wasn't ham and all the fixings, but it was really, really good! Hannah was about to her max so we took Cam back to his interim house and headed home. I'm really glad we were able to spend the day with Cameron! We finished our Easter evening by going to my dad's church. The choir was doing a special cantata and we went to celebrate with him.

Overall, our non-traditonal Easter was perfect for us. One thing that stayed the same was how incredibly in awe we are with what Jesus did for us. He paid the ultimate price for our sins allowing us to live forever. On this day, it doesn't go un-noticed. We are so blessed with our family and thank God daily for giving us Hannah and now Cameron. Thank you, Jesus, for what you did for each of us!

The First Few Weeks

Once Cameron was here, we had some legal "red-tape" to get through before we could go to court to make him ours officially. Here is how the days and weeks went after Cameron was born.
April 5, 2011 - We spent most of the day at the hospital visiting Cameron and his birthmom. We were also able to have Hannah come up and meet Cam and his birthmom. It was a great time to bond with him as well as open up the possibility to have communication with his birthmom in the future. One of the most special parts of the day was when we were able to get some pictures of Cameron with his birthmom and with us. These are pictures that we will always cherish. Here is our first shot as a family of four!

April 6, 2011 - Cameron was discharged from the hospital and we were able to see him at the Bethany offices for a short time before he headed off to interim care. In this particular case, Cameron will be in interim care for about two weeks. At the office, we met his interim mom and she is really great. She has five kids -- three biological and two adopted. We set up a visitation schedule for the next couple of weeks. It worked out that we could go every other day or so.
He is so long and skinny!!!
April 8, 2011 - We headed over to the interim home that Cameron is staying at to spend the morning as a family of four. It was a beautiful morning so we started off at the park. We had so much fun! Big sis Hannah had tons of fun exploring a new park and Cam slept in my new sling from my fabulous college girlfriends. We ate lunch and did a little shopping before we dropped him off and headed back home. It gets harder to leave everytime but we know this is only temporary.

Daddy and Cam at the park -- this is the same day as this post. April 12 & 14 - I took a 1/2 day leave both of these days so Tim and I could head over to spend a couple hours with Cameron. Each day we hung at the interim home for some cuddle time as well as did a little window shopping and out to eat. I love taking Cam with us as we run errands. We get lots of compliments on how cute he is. We think so too...but we may be a little biased!

April 16 - We went to visit Cam today as a family. Unfortunatly the weather wasn't quite as nice as last week so we decided to go to one of the area malls instead. We walked around and ate lunch and enjoyed spending some time together. Hannah is getting more and more excited about her baby brother. She wanted to help a lot today with anything and everything. She even let Cam have her "puppy" when he was crying. For those of you that know her, you know this is her favorite thing so we thought it was really sweet that she was sharing it. She is going to be a GREAT big sister! April 20 - Today was my last day of school for the year! Spring break starts tomorrow and we will be going to court next week so it was a great time to end my school year. My students were so sweet and even through me a surprise baby shower today. It was a really nice last day. After school, we headed over to see Cameron and got to bring a special person with us. Aunt Nee-Nee (Tim's sister Nikki) i is visiting for a few days of her spring break so she was able to meet Cam today. We picked him up and went to dinner and did a little shopping. I'm glad she was here and able to snuggle with him some! April 21 - Today is my first offical day of spring break so what better way to spend it than with Cameron. And to make the day even better, Nikki and my mom went over with me! My mom got to see Cam in the hospital, but this was the first time she got to hold him. She was very excited! We picked Cam up and headed to Target for some last minute Easter goodies and some baby goodies as well. After lunch, it was time for Nikki to head back to Wisconsin. We are so thankful she was able to come down for a few days! My mom and I took Cameron back to his interim home and headed back to Illinois. We are getting very close to our court date and can't wait to have him home for good!

The Road to Cameron

So, the Casey family has expanded! There have been lots of exciting parts of this journey that I wanted to wait and blog all together due to the nature of the situation. So, let me start from the beginning of this wonderful and amazing journey.

November 8, 2010 - After working very hard on all of our paperwork throughout the summer and fall, we recieved our official "welcome" from Bethany today as all of our paperwork was signed and sealed! Let the wait begin.

February 14, 2011 - We got "the call" today! A week or so ago we said yes to a birthmom situation for a mom due at the end of March. I knew we should be hearing something soon and today is the day. After school, I was with my mom getting ready for dinner when the phone rang. It was a little after 5 so I figured it was Tim letting me know he was on his way home. Instead, I looked down and it was our social worker! I knew they usually called with good news so immediately my stomach started fluttering. She said the words we had been dreaming of -- we were chosen by a birthmom! It was music to our ears! She said we would set up an appointment to meet soon and go from there. It will be a day neither of us will ever forget!

February 23, 2011 - Right after school, Tim and I headed over to the Bethany office to have our match meeting with our birthmom. We were super nervous but also really excited to be meeting our soon-to-be son or daughter's birthmom (she hadn't gotten an ultrasound yet). The birthmom is living with a relative that was also going to join us for the meeting. We were super nervous and wanted to make a good impression. The meeting went wonderfully! The birthmom is only 15 and she was really quiet and shy at the meeting. We both got a really good feeling from both the birthmom and her auntie. We knew that she was due sometime around the middle to end of March so now it was time to wait for baby to arrive!

February 27, 2011 - We got another exciting call from our social worker today! The birthmom did go to an ultrasound and found it that she is having a baby BOY!!! Oh my - what exciting news! We also found out that the baby is measuring closer to March 30. As of this point, we don't have a name for him but we are super excited to be welcoming at son into our family within the next month!

March 2011 - We did a lot of waiting this month. At each appointment, the birthmom wasn't making much progress. We hit the 30th with still no progress. We did find out they would not let her go more than 2 weeks past her due date so at least we will have an end soon. We are patiently waiting for God's perfect timing for this baby to join our family!

April 4, 2011 - Today our son was born! After a brief update last night saying that the birthmom had been to the hospital and was starting to dialate, but was sent home because she wasn't in active labor. Then we got a call at 8:00 this morning saying that he had arrived! Cameron Blake Casey was born this morning at 4:44 am and weighed in at 6 lb. 9 oz and was 20" long! Tim and I were able to head over to the hospital this afternoon around 2:30 and spent a few hours with him. We also spent a little time with the birthmom and Cameron. It was a very special time and we are so thankful that this little man will be joining our family!

April 25, 2011 - So today marks a very special day in our family. We went to court around 9 am this morning to make Cameron official. When we arrived at court, we overheard that the judge that squeezed us into her docket was out of town. We weren't sure what that meant, but once our lawyer arrived we found out that it was all still going to take place, we just didn't know when. The other judge was able to fit us in around 10 o'clock and everything went very smoothly! We went to the Bethany office and the interim mom brought Cam to us! It was a great morning! We now have to stay in Missouri until we are clearned to bring Cameron to Illinois which should all take place by the end of the week hopefully. Here is Cam hanging out on the bed at the hotel.