Adoption Debt - PAID IN FULL!

When we first decided to adopt we thought we would end up spending around $20,000. We thought we could at least come up with most of that money. Then we decided to adopt 2 at a time and really didn't know how we'd pay all the costs. Now it's approximately 2 years since we initially started the adoption process and our expenses end up at about $80,000 (considerably over a year's income for us). And we just finished paying it all off! We pretty well paid-as-we-went until the last $11,000 which we had to borrow. We were given about 10-12% in gifts and Jason's Dad generously gave us an interest free loan for the last $11,000. The rest we paid out of our pockets. We drained all our savings accounts, cashed out Shannon's retirement, used about half of the equity from our home sell in Abilene, sold Jason's sports car, and put most of our extra money over the last 2 years into it. Needless to say we feel relieved and excited to have it all paid in full. :) A huge thank you goes out to all those who financially helped us bring Hannah Faith and Noah John into our family!

San Antonio Vacation Day 5

On the last day of our vacation we left our rental house and headed for Shannon's grandfather's house. It was "kind of" on our way home. We spent the afternoon with her Grandpa, Grandma, parents, aunt, and cousin. It was good to see everyone. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on our long ride home.

San Antonio Vacation Day 4

On day 4 of vacation we went back to Sea World. Shannon's parents met us there. We were intending to spend the day in the water park part of Sea World, but about 1/2 hour after we got into the water park it started to rain. We ended up going back to our rental house for the afternoon and it was a good thing we did. It rained for several hours. Late in the afternoon it started to clear up so we went back to Sea World to see the animals and shows.

Our short stay at the water park-

Hannah loved the water and was a little water bug:


Noah just sat on Shannon's lap:

And Joel took a little time to warm up and then was just starting to enjoy it:

Pop playing water tricks with the kids:

Later in the day when we went back to Sea World we tried to pet the dolphins (here is Pop holding Noah with Joel next to them):

Anna watching the dolphins:

We went to see the Shamu show again:

Shannon and her Dad also rode the big roller coasters that night (they are in the second row - you can barely see Shannon on the outside):