Creating Our Family

I began this blog two and a half years ago and never made it past the first entry, but I am very happy to say that its virtually non-existent life is being resurrected for a new and wonderful purpose. And if you are reading this, you are most likely doing so for precisely that reason.

Welcome!

If you do not know us personally, I'll share our little story with you. My name is Kate and my husband's name is Christian. Though we would have been happy expanding our family the way most people do, adoption has been our our minds and in our conversation for at least as long as we have been married. In fact it is something we have always thought we'd like to do. Early on we did not realize that it would be the first (and quite possibly the only) way we would create- or expand- our family. I hesitate to use the word create because really we have been a family for ten years- a small one, just a family of two (plus some wonderful pets!), and we'd simply like to expand it. I like the word create, however, because it implies not only action but imagination. Like a work of art, this will take time and hard work and talent (not just ours, thanks to family and friends, old and new!) but we believe it will be beautiful and colorful- a masterpiece we could not imagine on our own.

We live in southwestern Wisconsin where Christian is a minister, currently splitting his time between two small parishes, and life guarding and coaching soccer on the side. Until this summer when it closed, I (Kate) managed a lovely little toy shop. Now I have returned to one of my favorite jobs ever, as the nutrition educator for our local Farm to School program. I get to teach elementary students about eating healthily and about where their food comes from, dig in the gardens with them and give them tasty, healthy food. So much fun!

Why, you might ask, has it taken us ten years to get to this place? Though we have talked about moving forward with adoption many times, we never really felt peace that it was the right time. Many people have told us over the years that "you never truly feel ready, and if you wait until you do, it will never happen." In that sense, perhaps we still do not feel "ready". However we do feel God leading us and we do believe that it is the right time to move forward. We are still making our final decisions about which route to take (and some of these decisions are not ours to make- I'll share more about that another time). Nevertheless we are READY to move forward in this great adventure. And I am confident that a great adventure it will be!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. This is going to start out slow, but I hope it will grow. I live in the driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin, a beautiful area through which flow the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. I love nature and I enjoy knitting, sewing and pretending to be crafty when I can find the time. I strive for simplicity. I look back fondly on the days when everything I owned fit in my car. I dream of living off the grid in a tiny house. In the meantime I live day to day, trying to simplify, trying to convince my husband that it would be lovely to live without so much "stuff". I do not think I am doing a very good job of it but we learn and grow day to day.