Tiny Shining Light

The end of the school year was so busy, that I didn't even have time for myself, let alone time to write on this blog. The month of June has been busy too, but busy in a much different way.

At the beginning of the month, my husband and I took a much needed vacation to the northwest US to visit his aunt in Vancouver, Washington. While we were there, we did so many fun things and saw so many great places. We visited Seattle, Portland, and the Oregon coast. It was a week full of early morning car rides and late evenings arriving back home, but well worth it. I got to cross a few things off of my bucket list like, visiting Oregon and Washington (two of the four states I have not visited & now I just have Alaska and Hawaii left), getting my husband to attend musical theatre (we saw Putnam County Spelling Bee & it was hilarious), and watching Cirque Du Soleil (we attended Kooza...SO AWESOME). It was sometime during our trip that I realized that we have a pretty awesome life together. Even though the past few years have been full of heartache and frustration, we are very lucky to have each other and are fortunate to be able to do such fun things together. I realized that not everyone gets to marry and spend their life with their best friend and that is not something that I should take for granted. My husband and I experienced so many new things together on our vacation, that it will be a hard trip to top in the future.

Soon after arriving home from our trip, I met my friend for lunch and shopping at the local outlet mall. It was so good to catch up with her and have a little girl time together. Of course the conversation turned to her son, which she lost last winter. I suddenly found myself giving her advice about dealing with loss based on what my family went through when my mom passed away. That was very odd for me, but it made me realize that it's okay to talk about my mom and it made me feel good to actually speak her name. Why in the world have I not done that before with my closet and dearest friends? Weird I know, but hopefully I will continue to do it in the future and soon maybe talking about my mom will get a little easier.

This month we also finally began to do some decorating around our house. My husband finally got to hang all of his Iowa wrestling stuff in our garage since we finally got around to painting the inside of it. He told me once it was all done that it was just like he wanted it and he had always dreamed of having a garage just like ours. Who knew that a garage would make him so happy! We also recently painted our livingroom/kitchen. I got the chance to decorate it just like I had always wanted and for days now, my husband has been complimenting it and telling me how nice it looks. Again, having our house turn into a real home makes me realize how lucky we are to even have our house. We have a wonderful home that we get to share together and hopefully fill with children someday.

Speaking of children, this month we also moved forward with the adoption process. We passed the informal stage with flying colors and moved on to the formal application stage. It took a few weeks to gather all of the information needed for our application, but we again passed it with flying colors. Now we are awaiting paperwork to begin our home study. So far it's been a smooth process and one that we are ready to take on full force. We are still on a waiting list at UIHC for embryo donation and recently we were told that we are now the 3rd name on list one. That is good news and it gives us hope that someday we WILL have a child of our very own.

The whole month of June has been a huge eye opener for me. This summer has been so much fun and VERY different then last summer, which was filled with horrible news and just plain sucked for us. This summer I have been keeping a positive attitude about whatever comes my way and it seems to be helping. I have been exercising 3 times a week and that has been helping too. I have been focusing on the more important things in life and that has REALLY been helping a lot! I can see a tiny little light at the end of the tunnel and I know for sure now that good things are definitely in store for us in the future.