Proud to be a Texan

If you are a Texan and haven't been in the past few years to our beautiful capitol building, you are missing out! It is so beautiful. They had a big renovation a few years ago and everything is so perfect. This picture was taken from right in front of the UT Tower. It is a gorgeous site to look right and see the majestic tower and then look down the way and see our breathtaking capitol in the distance. I felt very proud.I thought I'd better take a picture of this monument with the 10 Commandments on the north lawn of the capitol. I'm figuring someone will insist it removed at some point.Didn't you have your picture made on every canon you ever saw while on a vacation? I know I sure did. This was Blake's first canon. What a proud moment! I was trying to tell him what he was climbing on without having to really say "oh...it's an instrument of death". I think we just called it a canon and left it at that. He didn't really care!We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Austin and found out what a rockin' maniac our son was. He loved the loud music. Kelly and I definitely felt old....we actually complained about the loud music to each other! Good thing we've got Blake to try to keep us young!
This was another of Blake's dance moves. Let's hope he has more rhythm than the rest of the family!
So...make a plan to go see the capitol when you can. It is beautiful. The grounds are gorgeous...the prettiest "park" you'll ever see.

Oh...and by the way...Hook Em Horns!

Our Planets were Lined Up

Don't you just love those moments in life when it seems everything is perfect...a moment in time when everything is so perfect you just wish you could bottle that moment and enjoy it whenever you wanted to? Well, we had one of those moments last Friday night. We were on our Austin adventure and had gone to the Oasis for dinner. If you haven't ever been there - it is a fabulous place for dinner on the shores of Lake Travis.

Dinner on the patio.
Watching the sunset over the lake...beautiful sunset.
Good food. (Note food one each car on the train!)
Perfect weather. About 78ish with a light breeze.
My two best friends with me.
Great band playing some great tunes.























Ahhhhhhh...it was a great evening.

Thomas Made Our Day!

We had the greatest weekend last weekend. We went down to Austin to see "the REAL, LIVE Thomas the Train." Now I don't really expect those of you without young children or grandchildren to really understand this obsession with Thomas and all of his train friends, but for those of you that know about the Isle of Sodor (and its Roundhouse, Ashley), can tell the difference between Bertie and Bulgy, know which engines are typically mean and which ones are usually nice, then this blog's for you. For the rest of you, just go back to your own obsession of Bert/Ernie, GI Joe, Hot Wheels, the Mickey Mouse Club, Star Wars, Paper Dolls (thought I'd better throw something in there for M.C.!), or whatever you loved as a child and then you'll relate to our weekend.

Thomas was quite a site.

When I first saw him, I had this feeling kinda like the feeling I had the first time I took Blake to see Santa in the Mall. It was so exciting...I seriously got a lump in my throat just waiting for Blake to see him and realize that what we'd been telling him about was for real! It was all so REAL and one of the great parts of parenthood.

There were happy little kids all over the place.

It was a great place to be!


We took a ride on Thomas - Blake will tell you, to be more specific, that the ride was on Thomas' coaches.

















































We had so much fun. Austin is a fabulous place. More pics to come of our wonderful weekend!

We are FINALLY home!

New Dad's in the front, driving.

New Mom's in the back by little precious.

Gran is on the other side of the Prince.

My mom insists that I poked and pestered Blake all the way home to Fort Worth. He actually slept almost the entire way...but it is a short 2 hour drive anyhow, so that's not that much of a miracle. I just couldn't keep my hands off of him. It was the most amazing day ever in my life. Every time he moved, I'd report to Dad what had happened. Kelly's folks drove behind us as did Patty and her gang. Patty, Brenda, and M.C. wrote a song for Blake on their way back. It was performed beautifully when we got settled back at home.

We came home to a very decorated house and even food waiting for us on the front porch. We had a banner and two sets of balloons. It was very perfect!!!!

We had a steady flow of family and friends coming over that evening and all day the next day. That was also very perfect!

Here's my mom holding Blake. This picture was taken in Abilene. I'm surprised you can't see all the tears running down my mom's face!

The Glass girls celebrated with us!

(Not sure what Brileigh thinks about all of this!)











The Gambills came over for the party too!

(Emma's got about the same opinion about this baby as Brileigh does...though she worked up a smile for this picture!)

Andrew holds Blake Andrew.

Well, of course, you know I have about 400 pictures from that first week, but I guess I'll stop there.

Thanks for hanging in with my story. God blessed us beyond belief. During the horrible roller coaster that infertility treatments take you on, we felt very neglected by God. Little did we realize until later what His perfect plan for a baby was for us. We are so thankful that we never got pregnant, because then we wouldn't have our sweet little Blake. Life has so many strange twists and turns in it. There are so many times that you feel so beaten down that you feel like God has turned his back on you. Thankfully, He never does that and is always ready to take you back with open arms. It is so difficult to wait on His plan at times, and we did not wait very patiently OR faithfully, but He blessed us anyway. Oh how our Father loves us. I still cannot fathom that God loves us more than I love my child. What an incredibly wonderful thing to ponder. Life is good. God is good.

Get the BABY Already!

It is TIME to meet that baby boy!

Kelly and I headed down the hall and before we knew it, we were in a small reception room with a baby...OUR baby! I remember seeing him through the doorway before we entered the room. My brain thought "there's a baby" but my brain had not yet caught up with it all yet and I hadn't really thought "that's our baby."

Baby Blake was in this room with his foster mom, Danna - "Nanna" to Blake. His foster dad was unable to get away from work.

OK....so the last picture I saw of this little baby was probably taken when he was about 2 days old.

As you can see by this picture - he is all scrunched up, red, puffy - very fresh looking. I knew he wouldn't look like this when I saw him, but I had not imagined how beautiful he would be. I had not seriously thought through what he would look like and how much he would have changed. Boy was I surprised!

My first thought about my son...he is so beautiful. I knew he was the same baby as we had seen in the picture - I guess you could say I recognized him, but just imagine how much prettier a 5 week old baby is compared to a 2 day old baby. I just stood there half laughing and half crying (OK, make that 10% laughing and 90% bawling my head off!) looking at him in amazement. I just couldn't not believe that HE WAS OURS! Danna finally had to sort of hand him to me and say "do you want to hold him?" I couldn't believe that I hadn't just ripped him out of her hands to start with! I think I was in shock.

I think Kelly and I spent about 5-10 minutes in that small room before we went to introduce him to the world. Danna gave us a bunch of stuff for Blake - papers and goodies from the hospital. Danna had made a scrapbook for us from the time she got him through this day. She had tons of pictures of him - many times laying on the scale she had. She had many notes about things he liked and disliked and how his health had been for the first 5 1/2 weeks. It was so awesome to have this record of events. It made taking care of him easier and it also made such a precious gift to let us know how Blake had spent his first few days. After reading Blake's story over several times, it finally sunk in on me how much work Ken and Danna had done for us. They had gone through all the tough times of figuring out his schedule, finding the best formula for his tummy, all the tough stuff. They say that babies don't come with instructions - but ours sort of did! (I wish I had a set of instructions for the toddler years!) Our case manager gave us a few more instructions and told us how the next part of the day would go. Several other staff members wandered in and out of the room with congratulations and well wishes. It was an amazing moment.

I held Blake first, then Kelly, then Kelly let me carry him into the big room where everyone was waiting to see him.


Here is the picture of when we walked into the conference room. The door we came through is back in the corner of the room blocked by Kelly in this picture. One of the funniest things I remember is hearing a "whoop" of some sort when we were first spotted through that doorway before we ever came into the room. I think it might have come from Mary Chris, but I'm not sure. Following the "whoop" came lots of happy sounds and many sniffles. I introduced our son "I'd like you to meet our son, Blake Andrew Morrison...(sniff sniff giggle giggle)....and he's just perfect!" Danna had him dressed in a precious little outfit that was white trimmed in blue. It said "Angel Baby" on it and had a pair of wings sewn into the back. Blake having been her 53rd foster baby - she knew what an angel a baby is to an adoptive family, so it was a perfect outfit.

We walked to the grandparents and let them get their first hugs and kisses then Blake was passed around to our friends. After the first wave of all that settled down, we sat down with Blake and had a ceremony of sorts. Both of our case managers talked to us and shared thought and blessings with us. Several other staff members spoke and then everyone there (I guess there were about 30 or so of us there) gathered around our famiy of 3 and prayed for us. It was a very special moment. I'm thankful that Wade was there to video tape it because I know that I zoned out a few times! What a day!

Our fellowship time continued while Kelly and I did our last bit of paperwork. When we returned, I gave Blake his first bottle...or should I say OUR first bottle. Thankfully, Danna had made up a few bottles for us for our trip, so I didn't have to mess with too much on that. But talk about an audience! My word! I had the world critiquing my every move! You've never heard so many people tell you how and when to burp a baby. It was hilarious. How many other moms are on such display for their firsts with their new baby? Before we left, Trey wandered in (since he was in school out there) and Chet and Anne Bogle also were there as they were in Abilene doing family stuff. That was just that much nicer having more friends from home there with us.

It was time to head home, so the entourage followed me to where I changed Blake's diaper before leaving. OK...so..this is the first time that I will have been able to actually do my own confirmation that this is a boy baby. I wanted to take longer than 2 seconds to confirm my siting, but the "oh watch out he's gonna spray you" jokes began and so I really didn't get to look at Blake's boy stuff very long - other than to just see that it was there! I know that may sound odd, but it's a critical thing to check out! Again...the "helpful" hints continued as I changed his diaper. Off we were to Fort Worth.

More later.

(Earlier tonight, I had typed up this entire post, with many pictures inserted, and finished the story, only to mess it up and lose it all. I hate being dumb! I was so upset that I couldn't recover my work, that I'm not going to finish tonight. Sorry to draw this out another day.)

Part IV - Drive to Abilene for the big meeting

OK - I've gotta get this story finished!

So it's October 3, 2003 - Friday morning. Much to do. Plan to leave Fort Worth at 11:30 a.m. to pick up bambino at 2:00 in Abilene.

Here's who is going:
Car One - Kelly, Joanie, Joanie's Mom
Car Two - Kelly's Dad, Kelly's Mom
Car Three - Wade, Patty, Mary Chris, Brenda

First things first. Get my nails done. (You can't become a mommy with ugly nails!) It was fun telling my nail folks that I was going to be a mommy in a few hours. They were amazed.

Go to Babies R Us and get a baby book. I wanted to have something for the attendees to sign. Incidentally, I parked in "Expecting Mothers" parking at BRU. If I didn't qualify for that, who does??!!!!!

I called Shei somewhere along the way to tell her I was going to use "Blake" as his name. She was cool with it. Not like I was going to change my mind or anything...but I wanted to tell her anyhow! She was nice to share the name with us!

Back home to get ready to go.

You should have seen how much stuff we packed to take to Abilene. Looking back on it - it cracks me up! We probably took 6 diapers with us! We WAY overdid on what we took. Inexperienced parents! Of course, we had to take every camera we owned. I'll bet we took about 3 blankets too!

So the troops gathered at our house. I remember that I was still ironing my clothes for the day when people began to arrive at our house. And...since we were in the middle of JBF Sale preparations, the ironing board was in the living room...so there I was ironing in the living room. Crazy! We were all so giddy!

Wade was there to do his video documentary for us. He filmed every step of the way - walking out to the car, getting in, driving off from our house...the whole nine yards. The Weaver-mobil had to go by Brenda's in Benbrook to pick her up, so they got separated from us.

Finally - off to Abilene!

"Andrew" for middle name? Yes...the decision was made.

I called my aunt in Houston whose last name is Andrew. She liked our choice.

So we are rolling along nicely to Abilene. Kelly's folks are right behind us. Patty and gang are further back - we don't know how far. We probably didn't get off right at 11:30, so we are probably scheduled to arrive at Christian Homes at about 1:45 - which is actually the perfect time. At about 12:30 (we are only 45 minutes into our 2 hour drive), Christian Homes calls us and says "Is there anyway you can be here at 1:00 p.m.? We've got a bunch of our board members here who want to be a part of this but some of them cannot stay until 2:00." YIKES!

We told them we'd get there as early as possible. Oh my word! I wish they'd told us this sooner! So we have about 90-ish miles to go in 30-ish minutes. Uh...that's sort of difficult to do. All this time, Patty had been trying to catch up to us...now...needless to say...she would never be able to catch up with us!!!!!! We called Kelly's folks and told them we were about to start going even faster. Oh my....oh my. We didn't make it much earlier than we had planned - maybe only 10 minutes or so. It was a wild and crazy ride. Kelly was on his phone most of the time to someone - and I was on mine too. It was a fun trip. Half the time, we were just checking on where Patty was. She tells us later that she was going 100 mph to try to catch us. That makes me sick just to think about it.

We finally arrived at Christian Homes. (Here we are at the front door just as we arrived.)


We unloaded a ton of stuff (thankfully, not everything we had brought with us) and went inside. We were greeted in the lobby. Emily Tate blew in the door just about then. She'd been waiting for this day very eagerly with us. Apparently, she had told all of her professors that if this baby ended up coming during class one day, she'd just have to excuse herself! What a sweet girl to join us for our special day.

Our case manager Kenyan gave us the scoop on how things were going to work. I asked if the baby was already here and she said "yes". MY BABY * is already in the same building that I AM IN!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my! What an amazing feeling. We were going to wait for Patty and troops to show up, so Wade could continue filming everything, but Kenyan told us that she really wanted us to meet little Blake first, all by ourselves. That sounded like a good plan.

So while our family and friends were taken to the conference room to wait for us, off we were taken to a room to meet our son for the first time. (Here are some of our buds that came with us.)


They had the conference room decorated very cute. They had cookies and punch out, and had little alphabet blocks spelling out "Baby Morrison". They had these "throne chairs" set up for Kelly and me and then other chairs set up around for our family, friends, Christian Homes staff and board. This was much more than I expected!

I just cry all over again as I write this. I guess all moms feel this way when they see their child for the first time. It was so amazing.

More soon.

* Kelly's baby, too!!!!!

Part Three - The Longest Blog Story Ever!

...so where were we? (this feels so good to remember all of this stuff!)

So how do you tell your friends that in less than 24 hours, you are FINALLY going to be parents? People that have known how much we wanted a baby...people that have prayed for us so many times... It was so much fun. We had the picture of baby boy with us - the one that Abilene emailed us. One of our 1st stops was going by to see Patty up at church. She was in her office. She was, of course, surprised to see both of us during the day. (Now you'll have to remember that by this time, little Maisy was already about 2 1/2 weeks old.)

When Patty asked us what we were up to, we plopped the picture of the baby boy down in front of her and said "we wanted to show you a picture of Maisy's new boyfriend." She looked at the picture and gave a little "awwwwwwww" then she asked

"who is this a picture of?"

We said "this is our son that we are picking up in Abilene tomorrow!!!!!"

Patty had one of the funniest reactions. The first thing she said, as she covered her mouth with her hand was "I'm going to throw up!"

What a funny reaction! She called Wade up right away and we all celebrated.

We went over to Brenda's and sort of did the same thing with her - telling her we had to come over to show her this picture - of OUR BABY!!!!!

It was so much fun to surprise everyone and shock them!

We made several more stops and then went home to make a ton of phone calls to family and friends. The rest of that day was a blur for me. I was in the middle of preparing for my first Just Between Friends sale to begin in just a few days. (This was October 2nd, and our sale set-up began on October 8th.) This was a sale that Pam and I were throwing together very quickly, and we were actually going to have it at my house. Wow. I had furniture moved here and there, piles of sale materials all over the place. We had had such a great response to our first sale, that we knew we were having to move outside into the backyard and put up tents for our sale, so I had had the tree trimmer come over and trim a bunch on our backyard tree. All of that was piled all the way across the front of my house. We were in a house in transition, preparing for the sale, preparing to have strangers wandering in the front door, shopping in the house and then wandering out the back door to shop more outside. Now we needed to be a home ready to bring a baby home to the next day! To say the least, it was overwhelming!

I cannot remember what else we did besides pack for the new baby, go out and buy formula (Kelly did this very late at night - like all good dads do!), and work on a name for this precious baby boy. As I recall, the night flew by. We had much to do to - a lot of it had to do with getting our crazy mixed up house ready for guests. I had previously prepared a list of about 50 boys names that I liked. (This was one of those things I did to help pass the time when we were either trying to have a child or waiting to get word on a baby to adopt.) So the negotiating began. Kelly's rules were this:

1. Not a name that you cannot tell if it is a boy or a girl. (He had dealt with this enough in his own lifetime.)
2. Not a name that could be shortened.
3. A "strong" name.

We worked it down to about 5 names by about 10:00 p.m. or so. By midnight, I think we had finally decided on "Blake".

Middle name work began at midnight. UGH!

We were able to do that quicker - as it was easier to eliminate names that didn't work well with "Blake" or "Morrison". It was about 1:00 a.m. and we were exhausted, so we went to bed with about 3 possible middle names - but we were leaning towards "Andrew". We decided that we would make the final decision on the trip to Abilene! Nothing like waiting until the last minute!

We awoke to the most amazing day of our lives...and I'll have to post more on that later!

2 Years Ago (yesterday) - Another Retrospective - Part II

...as I was saying...

So Kelly and I are on the phone together and we decide this is the baby for us. We put together our plan. We needed to stay at work for a little while, as that is where the fax about the baby boy was coming to. We decided to call our respective parents and then call each other back and report on the reaction. End of call.

The next thing I did was open my office door and go running down the hall saying "It's a Boy! It's a Boy!" Although my office group only had about 4 employees in that building, there is another organization down the hall that had about 15 or so employees....so they got to hear me going crazy! Everyone was out in the hall by the time I was through with my Paul Revere-ish ride! It was so much fun!

Back to phone calls. Kelly was able to get ahold of his folks right away. I wish he were here right now to remind me what their reaction was. I, on the other hand, could NOT get ahold of my mom. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to talk to her. I left her a message - not wanting to let on to what was going on. It was a "hey mom, I've got something I want to talk to you about, give me a call as soon as you can". I waited and waited. At some point, Kelly called me back and reported on his parents' excitement. The fax from Abilene came and we reviewed it. It was basically everything that had been told to us on the conference call. We faxed it over to the pediatrician we had already chosen, for her review. All was good on that deal.

Called my mom. No answer.

Called her again. No answer.

(do you see a pattern developing?)

I didn't leave her a message every time I called her - didn't want her to be too suspicious!

In the meantime, Kelly and I both received the email of the baby's picture. We were on the phone and opening the email at the same time, so we could see his precious picture "together" at the same time. My co-workers were hanging all around me. One of them had a camera and kept taking pictures of me being a happy almost-mommy. We looked at the picture (this picture had been taken when the baby was just a few days old - so he was "pretty" - but you know what I mean when I say he had that very "new" look.) The first thing I thought when I looked at the picture of him is that he looked like my father-in-law! I mean that just jumped out at me! It was so funny.

I tried my mom one more time and FINALLY got her. I wanted to blurt it out...but paced myself. She had been outside trimming her hedges and was hot and tired. I listened to her hedge story for a few seconds and thought I was going to burst! She told me "I am through trimming for today, I'll just have to go back to it later." I told her "Well you can't work on it tomorrow." She asked why. I told her "because you have to go to Abilene with us tomorrow to pick up your grandson!" I have to tell you this - that was one of the greatest moments in my life - getting to tell that to my mom. This is where my mom begins to freak out. She said to me "Joanie! Joanie! Joanie! Joanie! Joanie!" I would say she said it about 8 times or so. Tears really picked up at this point - on both sides of the phone. I brought her up-to-date on what had happened and told her we had a few things to do before we could leave work and I would call her back before too long. She was in heaven! End of call. She tells me now that she was just walking around in circles - she couldn't calm down!

Called Kelly back to report on her reaction. We got together our last plans and then we were going to leave work and go home. End of call.

Then I got to make a really REALLY fun call. I called our Board President who was my boss - and I quit! It was so much fun! She sort of went into a panic...and I told her we'd work out something for the transition - but I was basically quitting. I had to remind her that I had warned her it might happen this way. She was happy for me - but she was not really a happy person when I quit!

At some point, we called Abilene back and said "yes" and they told us to be out there at 2:00 p.m. the next day. WOW! By this time, that was less than 24 hours away!

Kelly and I headed home and began to formulate our plan for telling our friends our wonderful news.

Part III later.

Another Retrospective - 2 years ago today

It was a Thursday. My meeting ended around 11:30 a.m. or so. The meeting was across the hall in another office. I came back to my desk and since I'd been tucked away for about an hour and a half or so, I knew I needed to check my voice mail first thing.

One message.

"Joanie, this is Kenyan at Christian Homes. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience."

So here's the deal on that. Whenever you are waiting for a baby, and you get a call from Christian Homes, your heart rate automatically speeds up.

I called Kelly at work. No answer at his desk or on his cell phone. I knew he had some conference calls set up for that day, so I figured he was in the middle of one of those. I was just going to give him a head's up that I was going to return Kenyan's call - having no idea why she was calling me - but just wanted him to know something was up. Oh well....it's probably nothing critical with her, so I'll just try to track Kelly down later and let him know what had transpired.

Call to Abilene.

"Hi Kenyan, this is Joanie returning your call."

"Hi Joanie. I just wanted to check with you and see how you were coming on picking out those baby names. When I was in your home a couple of weeks ago, you hadn't made a ton or progress on that project."

(Suspiciously) "Well, we haven't done a whole lot on it.......(long pause)..........why do you ask?"

"Because we have a baby that we want to present to you."

At this point, I'm not really sure what I said to her. I don't know if I started crying immediately or not. I was in shock! After a certain amount of stuttering and "oh, wow's", I got it together enough to ask 2 questions. (I'm not sure why I didn't ask more.)

"Is the baby already here?" "yes"

"How old is the baby" "5 1/2 weeks"

FREAK OUT TIME!!!!!!!!!

Kenyan told me to get Kelly on the phone and we'd do a conference call with her and Bob (V.P. at Christian Homes) and talk about the situation. End of call.

Now to try to track down Kelly. I tried work number and cell number again and got nothing. I called his co-worker and told her "I have to talk to Kelly. Wherever he is, I need to talk to him , NOW!" I know I was crying at this point, because I remember thinking that she would think we'd had a death in our family. She calmly said "OK, let me find him." After what seemed like forever, Kelly gets on the phone and I tell him the WONDERFUL news. He sounded very calm. I told him we needed to conference call them back, and he said he could take care of that from his end, just to give him a second and he'd call me back. End of call.

I briefly run into the hallway and tell my co-workers - there were probably 2 of them there at the time - what was going on and I'd be on a very serious phone call for a while, and I would have my door closed.

Soon, the call came from Kelly and we conferenced Kenyan and Bob in and they spent the next 45 mintues telling us about this very beautiful 5 1/2 week old baby boy. They went over everything they could think of with us. So at the end of the call - it was kinda like - "uh...so...give yourself some time, think about it, and let us know if you want him!" I'm sure that isn't how they put it, but that's the basics of it. OH MY LORD!!!!!!!!!! (and I truly mean that in the best way possible.) Kenyan told us she would fax over health history, etc. to us ASAP for us to review. She also had a picture of this little baby boy that she could email to us. We asked her to email it to both of us, at our work email addresses. We asked them when he was available to be picked up, assuming he was our's, and they said "well, you can come get him tomorrow or you can wait until Monday if you want to." SHOCK!

Kelly and I let the Abilene part of the conference call drop off, and then there we were talking just to each other. I remember it was so odd - another kind of "uh....so....do we want this baby boy or what?!" I can't even remember saying "yes" to each other or anything - it was just pretty much a "I guess this is our baby!" Oh my...the tears of joy that I was shedding! I was in the middle of a whirlwind. Kelly and I were freaking out! This was really happening to us. We were about to be parents the next day!

Part II comes later. I'm getting too worked up just remembering all of this!!!!!