A day we will never forget...

3 years ago TODAY was one of the most memorable days of our lives...that is up until 3 years ago tomorrow! 3 years ago today, we found out we had a son!

Here's a recap of the story...

I was planning on going to a local place called What's for Dinner where you prepare several meals for the month to freeze and our friends The Knutsons were coming down so that Sara and I could go together and the guys could hang out with their kids. I will never forget, we had our appointment at What's For Dinner at 5pm and at 4 pm, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. I immediately thought, "what if it's Bethany Christian Services!" This time, it was. The director was on the other end and said, "Hi Jennie, are you busy?" I of course said, "No, why?" She proceeded to tell me that they had a situation where a baby had been born the day before and the birth parents had selected us, but the birth father wanted to meet us first before they made a final decision and asked if we could be in Cedar Rapids by 7pm. She said that we would need to have our carseat in the car and a diaper bag. I couldn't even think. I was a mess! I told her that I wasn't sure we could be there that early, but I asked if 8 pm would be okay. I asked her if it is a boy or a girl and she responded with, "oh my goodness...I will have to call the social worker and ask, I am unsure." Honestly though, I didn't care. She gave me a quick overview of the birth mother and father and their story. I was overwhelmed to say the least. Sean was at work. As soon as I got off of the phone, I called him and said, "I think we have a baby! I don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, but you need to come home right now...we have to be in Cedar Rapids by 8 pm to meet the birth father!" He was very calm, but overwhelmed as well. He came right home and did all of the thinking for me as far as what we needed to bring because I couldn't even breathe, let alone think!

We drove to Cedar Rapids and talked about what we thought it would be like to meet the birth father, what we will ask, what we thought he would ask. We were so nervous! I could go on forever about the very special first meeting we had with Brandon, but it was a moment created by God, it was the right place we were supposed to be, I felt a calm and a comfort, we just knew that God was with us and felt Him with every moment we spent with Brandon. At the end of our meeting, Brandon let us know that he and Maggie wanted us to be their son's Mommy and Daddy. They had named him Hunter Kenneth, but Brandon so graciously said, "he is your son, you can name him whatever you would like." We wanted to discuss this with him though, so we all agreed on Tate for his first name and Sean and I wanted to keep Kenneth for his middle name as it was the part of the name that Maggie had chosen and we wanted to honor her by keeping that name.

We left our meeting with a sense of peace and felt as though this would all go through. The social workers did indicate that we should 'guard our hearts' because there was still a chance they could change their minds. It felt a bit too late at this point to guard our hearts. We stayed up all night praying. We were going to get to meet our son the next day!!!

Read my post I wrote from 3 years ago today HERE.