Her washcloth

One of Rachel's favorite things to play with is her wash cloth after getting her face washed from dinner. She will carry it around all night until it's time to get ready for bed. We will see how long it takes for her to decide other toys are funner. For now the simple things make her so happy.

Rachel's Favorite Saying

This is just to funny. Hopefully I can get a better video of her saying Ready Set Go. It's so cute and I love how she says "Ready". I just get a big smile on my face every time she says it. She has also started crinkling her nose and that's showed here in the video. We've decided it was because Scott did that a couple times the first time we meet her and so know she has picked it up.

Rachel

In her coat










Wearing my hat backwards.








I think she likes the hat. She looks pretty cute in it! :-)









She is actually dancing but it's hard to tell in a picture.






Playing the floor as drums with a wooden spoon and a plastic spatula. It kept her entertained for awhile.







Looking at the camera to show her blue eyes.

It FINALLY happened!!!!

(Our Precious Angel - Rachel)
So I'm sure most of you are wondering how this came about so here's the story in a nutshell. On November 10th we got the call we have been waiting for, for 19 months in our quest to adopt. We get to be parents for a 21 month old little girl named Rachel. We are so very excited about it. It all started out on November 1st when her caseworker Katie called and asked if we could send her our home study. My friend Kristin had been in a meeting at Infant Toddler and Rachel had showed up on the case load again after having been adopted a few months ago. Kristin was so mad about it that she went off in her meeting about the fact they wouldn't look at us for this little girl. So after the meeting her supervisor got our name and gave it to Katie. Katie called and we got her our homes tudy. Come to find out we had some preferences that were incorrect so we changed them so they would consider us for Rachel. On Monday November 1st we went in and had an interview with Katie and Sheri Borquist(Adoption Specialist). I was just excited that we had gotten an interview which was the furthest we had gotten so far in H&W. They asked us to call the Foster Mom and Service Coordinator and to make a scrapbook by the time the permanency committee meet. We said we would do it. They told us that by Friday November 6th they would call to tell us when the permanency committee would meet. So on Friday Katie called and said they would meet on the 24th of November but the earliest would be the 17th. I was like okay. About four hours later Katie called back and said they moved it to the 10th. Scott and I had four days to get a scrapbook ready for the committee and we were leaving town for the weekend to go to Kylee's baptism and Aubree's Baby Blessing. So while we were in Rigby we ended up going through Scott's sister Amber's scrapbook room and found things for our scrapbook. On Sunday when we got back Kammi had gone to her friends house to work on the scrapbook. Come to find out her friend Cory's mom called and she had sat on those permanency committees for 20 years. She told Kammi what we needed to do and we changed it from a scrapebook to just a photo album with some scrapbooked pages in it. So on Monday I spent several hours at Kammi's house and we put together this picture book. It actually turned out really good. So on Tuesday we got it to H&W. Katie said they would be meeting at 9:30 to discuss everything. Katie had said they would call us between 10 and 10:30 on Wednesday the 10th. So after talking with my boss Cathy she told me that I should stay home and get the phone call together with Scott. So I did. We tried to sleep in so that we would not have to wait to long for the call. We were eating breakfast and finally at 10:30 we got a phone call. Katie said they picked us to be the parents. We were so excited. We hung up from Katie and started to call everyone. I put it on Facebook and was amazed with how many responses we got from it. Katie talked to us about going to one of Rachel's speech therapy session to meet her but the foster mom was like I think they should come over before that. So on Saturday the 13th we went to the foster mom's house and meet our daughter for the first time. These are the pictures we got of her on our first visit.
She was actually really friendly with us as we sat on the floor and played with her for about 3 hours. Scott and I had a really hard time leaving her the first time. So we worked it out with the foster mom to come over whenever we could work it around our work schedule. I spent every night after work with her until November 22nd when I took two full weeks off of work to transition her to our house. We got to take her out of the Foster Home for the first time on November 23rd. We ended up going to ISU to show her off to everyone. She was so cute walking the halls like she owned the place. We then went to the chiropractor and ate at Arby's. She ended up eating french fries and a shake but wouldn't touch her sandwich. After that we went to Wal-Mart shopping and she was so friendly to everyone. She was saying "Hi" to everyone as we went down the isles. It was so funny. After that we took her back home. She never cried once while we had her. It was so great. We have just been having a great time with her when we have her. It's amazing how much a child totally changes your life. We are so extremely happy with her. We are excited to have her around. We are greatful for everyone's prayers on our behalf also. As we have gotten the stories from several different people we know that Rachel was the child who was supposed to be in our home and that Heavenly Father has been guiding this child to our home. I know now for sure that this adoption has been lead by our Heavenly Father. This has definitely been a testimony builder for me.


These pictures are professional pictures that Health & Welfare had taken of her for her adoption.