Adoption update....

Ahhh… it’s been a while. The adoption journey has been bumpy. We are certainly on that roller coaster ride. We didn’t share our latest news with many until we knew more details but now that we are over that hill & moving on to the next we are ready to share!

July 14th I received an email from my friend Bentley & then a text message telling me to go read my email. Bentley is also in the process of adopting & actually had just returned the day before from meeting the birthmother that they are going to adopt a baby girl due in Sept!! (See adoption does work!)

The email was a forward from a “birthmother” who had contacted Bentley. He replied to her told her he had just recently been matched but asked if he could send her info to us.
She later responded & agreed. Bentley again texted messaged me & said it was a go & I could call her if I would like. My first thought was… oh great now what do I do. What do I ask, What do I say, I have never talked to a birth mom before….. I was sick I was so nervous. I waited until I got home to call. Once I got home I called. I spoke to Tiffany for about 20 minutes. In our first call she told me she was 16 weeks pregnant, she was married, she was a substitute teacher, she asked if she could come visit us here in KS, if we wanted her to deliver here or where she lived in Oh. WOW that’s a loaded question.. I still wanted to get to know her.
I asked her things like if the baby’s father knew she was considering adoption. She told me “well its not the typical pregnancy”. I said OK… not sure what was coming next.
Tiffany then told me that she was originally in a Surrogacy arrangement that went bad. She immediately said she had proof of custody of the babies that she had been to court & in the courts eyes the babies are hers & her husbands.
Did you notice that… I said BABIES… with an S… As Tiffany & I talked she mentioned she was having more than one baby… even more than two babies… yep she was having TRIPLETS…. WOWZA! I don’t remember much after this point. For a few minutes all I could think of was John freaking out when I tell him that there were 3, I had to think of a cleaver way to tell him it was going to be ok & that we would figure it out. But I had to convince myself first!
I continued to talk to Tiffany; she told me about her “big Greek family”, her husband Brian, more about the Surrogate story; we talked like we were old friends. It wasn’t awkward or anything like I was expecting.
She wanted to call me back later… I said that was fine… She called back & we talked later that evening for just a few minutes.
Between her calls I ran up stairs to tell John what was going on. The look on his face when I said triplets was awesome… why I didn’t bring the camera I will never know.
We spent the evening talking about finances, me staying home, triplets, praying, diapers, triplets, finances & triplets! Did I mention that we were both a bit nervous by the triplets thing? But we also booth agreed that if this was God’s plan for us then this is what we will do & we will figure the rest out later! We were doing fertility treatments there was a chance we could have had biological triplets!
The next day we emailed back & forth & with John through out the day about various things. Just getting to know each other, nothing really exciting. She mentioned her husband was getting ready to join the military, Marines to be exact.
July 16th I started to wonder how much of this was true, it was all sinking in & I was thinking clearer (the triplets thing was wearing off). The same time John spoke to our pastor & Ken said to pray for wisdom. We definitely got the wisdom we prayed for. I found many many many posts on various websites about TiffanyM & the email address she was using to contact us. My heart sank.
The more I Google searched her name & email address the more I found. I spent several hours looking online & found enough to convince me this wasn’t real & there were plenty of people online questioning her story. We had also contacted our attorney by this point who had given us some advice & agreed that some of the things we thought were a bit suspicious were indeed red flags & typical “scammer” signs… Yes we were in the process of being scammed. We asked Tiffany for the items our attorney asked for, then we suddenly stopped hearing from her… she removed me as a friend from her MySpace page, she wouldn’t reply to text messages, phone calls, she obviously figured out that we have figured her out, or at least that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with us.

I was angry. I was so angry for a few days, lucky my husband is a better person than I am & told me that being angry at her gets us nothing. I wasn’t emotionally attached to the idea of finally being a mom to these babies yet so I wasn’t heart broken like I thought I would be but I was angry bitterly angry.
She didn’t get money from us, she wasted some of our time but that is really all. So why am I so angry?… Adoption is complicated. It is an invasive stressful process involving lots of time, money, emotions, there are laws & policies that make it complicated. So for someone to make up a story like this makes me so angry. She is adding more complications to it than is needed. There are children waiting for loving families, there are families waiting for babies to start a family.

Then we had a sermon at church last Sunday about being angry vs being forgiving… once again I think God told Ken that I needed a talk! I so needed that sermon. I need to get over Tiffany & her fake triplet story & stop wasting my time & energy being so angry at her. I guess I am still angry about the fact that there are scammers that do this to people. But I am over our situation. I still pray for Tiffany. I have just changed my prayer for healthy pregnancy & healthy babies. Instead now I pray that she does something more productive with her life. I hope the next family is knows to research & dig as deep as they can.


Moving on to fun stuff in my life...
My friends are AWESOME! I had a fantastic weekend last week the girls & John planned a surprise birthday margarita party! They came over John made Margaritas we hung out & chit chated & had some good quality girl time. We missed a few of the Crazy 8 but we still had a good time!

John & I purchased my new photo website last night!!! I am so excited to see how it looks with my images on it I cant wait! the new website will be up as soon as we can get it together but the prices wont change until November 1st.
For my birthday John got my Tax id number for the business! Not very exciting bday present for most people but this is something I was so not wanting to sit down & do... I am so glad he did it. :)
August is booked solid friends! I have mulitple photo sessions, we go on vacation to Virginia (Wiliamsburg area) & with school starting again soon I will be back at church thursday nights with the Teen mops girls. Its been great having an extra night every week, but I miss the girls & the kids!

Bigest looser is going ok... not as well as I hoped but its going. Today I got up early so that I could make sure I had time to walk sometime today. I did 25 minutes on 5.5 I was pushing for 30 minutes but I was so hot I couldnt stand my self for 5 more minutes!
I am determined to get into a new wardrobe by Sept 1 so I am really working on this now! I have a box of super cute clothes sitting in my closet that are all soclose to fitting. I want to be in them by Sept 1 Darn it!

Ok... I have done enough venting for one night... John has already given me a warning yawn.... meaning he is going to leave me in this freezing cold basement & go to bed with out me if I dont hurry it up! So good night friends!

7.21.75

33 yrs ago I entered the world... :) Yep its my birthday & I am 33...& I am ok with being 33.
Ask me in 2 years how I feel about being 35 & we will see how that goes!
It was a great birthday weekend, a great birthday. My girlfriends came over we hung out & had a few margaritas & great snacks & just some good quality girl time! Every birthday should be spent like this!

John & I were going to go out to dinner tonight however I had a big lunch at work... my co-worker & I share the same birthday so we had lunch at Mi Ranchito (the best mexican food in Johnson county!) It was so good I couldnt eat dinner.... so we stayed home. However I found room for ice cream cake John got me!! I love him & I love Ice Cream Cake!! :)

Then I found time for the tred mill... all this celebrating this weekend wasnt good to me! The scale was up 1 pound this week... totally the wrong way!
I need to fit into a new wardrobe(that I already have!) by Sept so my birthday is done, no more excuses time to be serious for the rest of biggest looser Puhak edition round 2. Its only for another month. Think I can bust my behind enough to loose the 15 pounds I want to loose by August 24th? Then keep it off while on vacation the end of August? Not to mention I lost the last round & I am sick of putting $5 a week in the jar darn it!

The wardrobe I have is from when I worked at Bank One in Az, our dress code was much tighter than where I work now & I have a full box full of dressy work clothes alot that I never wore! I have black suit that I cant wait to wear! There were slacks that had tags on them! I have so many cute things in there! (things are changing at work but I cant disclose anything yet!)

When my mom passed I delt with it by shopping...I was a basket case. Didnt matter what I shopped for as long as I could go shopping I was happy. I had a serious shopping addiction, but the good thing is I am motivated to get back into these clothes some of them get into for the first time. I was also in denial that I had gained more weight when my mom passed. Obviously I have figured that one out also & working on it!

My friend Lindsay was over this weekend & pointed out that I have MAGIC shoes!! :) Atleast that is what I called them... Nike+, its something that links my sneakers to my ipod nano to my computer! John checked it out, understands it( thank goodness someone in this house is technical!) & I think that is what I am buying with my birthday money! Hopefully it keeps me moving on the tredmill!

Still taking the month off for pictures, for the rare exception of a newborn shoot(they are only newborn once!) & Savannah, Nancy, Jeanne & Sheri were here(along with Jennifer, Savannah's mom) & we did 3 or 4 session in one weekend! I am not sure who had more fun being silly me or Savannah! It was great to see them again, its been way to long!! Next time bring Josh so John isnt so out numbered!

Well as my dad would say thats all the news that is fit to print!

July 9 2008

The latest news at the puhak house!

We are starting round 2 of Biggest Looser Puhak edition(John won round 1)
No news yet on the adoption front, however I have heard that our profile has been shown to a few birth parents! So that is a start!!

Photoggraphy is keeping us/me busy! That leads me to the reason for my post!
I am "published" kinda?? I have an image on a billboard off I35 southbound at mile mark 234.

Thanks to our friends the Heard family & their work with March of Dimes, they are on a billboard! They used a family picture I took of them last fall. Exciting! Thanks L & M!!