Really and truly bringing Ivey home

To say the last 11 days have been a whirlwind is an understatement. Last Tuesday (after feeling like maybe our agency knew our birth mom and Ivey might be coming later this year) my mom and I went to buy buy baby to buy some Ivey essentials. We had a beautiful day - one I will never forget. My mom and I both said we felt like for the first time Ivey really was coming home soon. I had been texting with Susan at the agency all day and she kept wanting to know if i got home safely. When I let her know I had arrived home - we got the call. Susan asked if Corey was home and asked to be put on speaker phone. This was it. The call. Susan started reading a text from iveys birth mom that said she could come get Ivey "honey bee" (nicknamed by Susan after watching the secret life of bees in the hospital room). Susan then said the words we would never forget "I am holding your daughter, you can come get her" I thought i was going to pass out. Susan said we might want to get a good nights rest and head to Birmingham in the morning. We asked for photos and this was our first view of our 5 day old daughter.

Meet Ivey Mariposa Weldon

Ivey - named after her great, great grandmother

Mariposa - meaning butterfly in Spanish - named after our beautiful friend Laura who we lost unexpectedly almost 3 years ago. Laura left quite an impression on our life - and even gave me my 2 godchildren. We all see butterflies since she passed and we wanted our daughter to always know about her. 

Born 6/6/13 In the beautiful city of Birmingham, Alabama 

7 lbs 6.7 oz

20 and 3/4 inches long

After shuffling around the house trying to do some quick cleaning and oh yeah get some sleep we left Wednesday morning. Arriving in Birmingham with schnauzers in tow we are first greeting by our awesome friend Amanda (who found me on Instagram and told us about family adoption services- more on this special soul later) she filmed us walking in and meeting our daughter for the first time. We will have video and photos to share later. 

Laying eyes on Ivey for the first time erased the last 9 years. All of this wait was for her. She is the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. 

Here she is with her aunt Amanda 

Our amazing friend and half of the Rick and Susan team from family adoption services. Susan and Rick kept our beautiful girl in their home until she was ready for us. Susan even got to see Ivey born. I will write way more about these two soon!!

We just sat in amazement and watched our daughter who had been surrounded by love from the moment she was born. It all felt surreal.....

But she is ours. 

Will come back soon for the rest of the story. Feeling very blessed. Corey and I are so lucky. 

We love each of you. 

And many more photos to come. You might stop following me on Instagram and Facebook lol 

14 months

Today marks 14 months since we started this latest journey to Ivey. I want to say every month gets easier and easier but honesty it only gets tougher. We appreciate the constant love and prayers. 

13 months

 

Hard to believe we are on month 13 on our most recent wait to Bring Ivey Home. What's harder to believe is that it would be 16+ months if we are supposed to stay with Ethiopia. We are hoping and praying our domestic route will bring our girl home. Our new motto in life is "let's climb the mountains together" we have gotten through this with each other and all of you. Thank you for your continued support. 

April 18th, 1998

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April 18, 1998

15 years ago today my life changed. 15 years ago I made a promise, a promise to live.

For those of you who don’t know – I was in a house fire on UTC Campus at the Sigma Chi Fraternity House in Chattanooga, TN. I escaped the fire by jumping out of the top floor only to land on a sidewalk. I broke my back, both feet and burnt over half my body 3^rd degree. They said I would never walk again; I had 4 surgeries the first few days – skin graphs that now cover both of my arms and my entire back. Rods were put in my back that later would be covered in staff infection and be removed. Left foot – clean ankle break, right foot crushed and basically wired back together on the inside. I don’t sweat, I can’t cool myself off, I can’t be in the sun, I can’t push myself physically, my foot sometimes just likes to “go out” on me, I wake up with an aching back everyday, I have gained a lot of weight due to not being as active, I have lost a lot of my self esteem, I look in the mirror and see scars from head to toe, and I always wondered why it happened to me?

But you know…I am ALIVE to write this today. I lived, I fought, I stayed strong and pulled through. I walked again. . I kept my good attitude “most” of the 3 months I lived in the hospital with my mom. I left the hospital in crutches even though they told me I would be in a walker. I was and am completely supported by the BEST friends and family a girl could ask for. The most genuine man I know loves me unconditionally and I am fortunate to have been married to him 12 years this July. I have four fur children that bring smiles to my face on a daily basis. We are on an incredible journey to bring our daughter home. I have a business that continues to make my heart happy. I live in a beautiful city surrounded by friends and family.

I wake up thankful everyday that I was given another chance to live. God saved me that day for a reason and I plan to spend my entire LONG life discovering why.

To all the people in my life that day and the 15 years to follow – thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you. All of you are part of my journey. I love each of you and thank God for the difference you have made in my life.

I leave you with this….remember to tell the people you love you LOVE them! We are reminded EVERY DAY that this could be our last day on earth. Thank God you woke up today. Thank God you were given another day to live. Enjoy it. Make the best of it. Don’t dwell on the bad stuff – there is ALWAYS good! Thank God for your blessings every night. Make a promise to live. I have kept my promise and will keep living my life one day at a time!

With my love and appreciation,

Tobi

1 year

 Well I would say time flies, but honestly it feel like forever. This is 1 year this go around. 8 years before this time. I can't believe it has been a year since we were officially approved for Ethiopia. Since then the wait has gone up 20+ months which lead us to add in domestic. This was a hard decision to make since we have had 4 domestic adoptions fall through. We were scared but have been blessed with an AMAZING domestic adoption agency. We feel very hopeful with Family Adoption Services - with this agency we are truly a part of a family.

We have more decisions to make - it is almost time to do a homestudy update and new fingerprints for international adoption and what is scary is we probably will have to do it again before we get a referral. This is a huge decision to make. Do we stay in line for Ethiopia also and hope for both? Or do we back out of Ethiopia and stay with just domestic. Definitely decisions we never thought we would be faced with.

Everyone says it - it will all be worth it. And we know in our hearts it will be. Ivey is already the most loved little girl in the world. She will be surrounded by friends, family, prayers, love and support. She will have the MOST amazing story to share. We will be the lucky ones - we can't wait for our family to grow.

I have said it over and over and over - but thank you. To each of you for all the love and support you give us. We have grown so much over this journey and are humbled by all the blessings we have been given. We love each of you and thank you for being a part of Ivey's story.

11 months

This is absolutely perfect for our wait. We know that all of this is happening for a reason - we may have days we don't believe....but we always come around to knowing that our story will include Ivey and she will come when it is time. Until then we pray, wait and hope - thanks for being with us on the journey.

10 months Waiting

10 Months - this is a hard one because when we started this Ethiopian journey we were told our wait would be 8-10 months. So we thought by this time we would have a referral. We thought we would have seen our daughters face. We thought we would have held her. That is just hard to think about...the what ifs, the would haves.....

Looking back, our first email to an adoption lawyer was in 2004. 9 years ago. 9 years of growth, heartache, love, support, money lost, money raised, moves, new jobs, 5 adoptions failed, new friends, new babies in the family, godchildren, death, new fur babies, new jobs, a college degree, new business ventures and more and more and more. We are blessed, we know that but sometimes it is just hard. Sometimes I just want to scream or cry and sometimes honestly I do. Corey is lucky (lol) that he has school to keep him busy. I just stitch and stitch and stitch. I told Corey tonight if I didn't have my work I think I would go crazy. I have pity parties - and for that friends I thank you for listening to me! 

This past weekend I was blessed to go to Created For Care (I will write more about that soon) in Atlanta and met some amazing new adoption friends and came away feeling very positive, blessed and reminded again that we are exactly where we need to be. This may be a horribly long journey but we know we are suppose to adopt and WE KNOW our daughter is out there. Ivey is already so loved and has SO many people waiting for her to come home. Isn't that amazing? This girl who may or may not even exist yet has a fan club? She is going to be showered with love, prayers, hugs and kisses and We can't WAIT to introduce her to each of you.

So until she is home we will wait and pray and hope. We need our friends and family. We couldn't do this without you guys. Every day we are reminded how blessed we are to be surround by friends and family on this journey. Corey and I have grown so much throughout this journey and through it all we have just gotten stronger. Every time we have had a heartache Corey reminds me that through it all he and I, and our relationship is the basis of this whole adventure. None of this would be possible without us. We are blessed. God is SO good to us. 

Even with the hard stuff.....we know God has a plan. 

So thank you to each of you for all you do for us. 

with love and thanks,

Tobi & Corey