a year ago: november 19, 2007

It started out as a fairly typical day. After sitting through a terribly long meeting at work, I returned to my desk to see that I had a voicemail on my cell phone. It was from our caseworker at LDS Family Services asking me to call her back. I called her back and she told me that Dan and I needed to come to the agency to fill out some paperwork for our online profile. She said she would wait for us until we got there, even if it was after 5 because it was important we take care of it that day. I told her we would come in after work. As I walked up to Dan's office to tell him, I was thinking this was all a little strange since we had just met with her a few weeks earlier and our online profile had been active for months. I started to wonder if something else was going on. I told Dan and he thought nothing of it. I told him that I wanted to leave work then and go because I thought this was it--we were going to find out we were getting a baby. As we drove to the agency, I was nervous and excited. Dan kept telling me not to get my hopes up because he didn't want me to be disappointed. As we got out of the car and headed into the building, my stomach was going crazy. Our caseworker came out to meet us and led us to an office. She showed us in and said, "There's something for you on the couch and I'm just going to leave you alone" and she closed the door and left. My heart jumped as I saw a small box tied with a purple ribbon sitting on the couch. We sat down and opened a card which said, "Congratulations Parents-to-Be, Daniel and Ashley. Due date: April 5, 2008." I think I wanted to scream so loud, but couldn't. Then we opened another letter from our birthmom telling us what she liked about us and that she believed Heavenly Father had led her to us to be the parents of her baby. I finished reading before Dan and just sat in unbelief. I don't think I even cried. I was too much in shock. I think this must be a similar feeling to peeing on a stick and seeing that it's positive. We opened the box and found a little pair of baby shoes. Our baby's shoes.

When we left the agency, I had a ton of emotions running through my body. The first thing I did when we got in the car was call my sister. We had just been talking the night before about how crazy it was that one day we would just get a phone call and we would have a baby on the way. I think she was in about as much shock as I was! We called a few more family members on the way home. Once we got home, I wanted to go visit all our family in town to share our news, but Dan wanted to just sit at home and unwind for a bit. We ended up only visiting my dad, but called everyone else. It happened to be my father-in-law's birthday so we called to tell him happy birtday. He was in the car with the whole family so Dan asked to be put on speaker phone so he could sing happy birthday. His rendition went something like this:
"Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
We're getting a baby
Happy Birthday to you!"
On the other end, we heard a pause, and then lots and lots of screaming!

It was quite the day. Sitting here writing this, I can feel some of those emotions again. It was such an overwhelming but fun day. I don't think I slept very well for the next couple of nights because I had so much going through my brain.

I can't believe it's been a year since then and we now have an adorable baby boy. I always had a teeny, tiny part of me that was trying to be prepared in case it didn't all work out, but I think I also always knew it would. And everyday when I see Lincoln's adorable face and hear his cute laugh, I am grateful.