Practicing our "Pa and Ma" skills...

This summer we had the wonderful opportunity of serving as a "Pa and Ma" on a youth Pioneer trek!  We were so excited to go, as neither of us had the chance to go on Trek as a youth.  We were prepared with a list of supplies we needed to bring, an idea of about how many miles we would trek, and the idea that this would be an unforgettable 4 days!  We found out the day we left that we would have 4 girls and 3 boys in our "Trek Family."  So how they organize it, is we are the Pa and Ma and we are responsible for our "kids" the whole weekend.  We got a handcart to pull, and each kid and adult had a bucket full of supplies that we carried around with us as we were trekking.  We did not have to do our own cooking which was great!  We camped in tents every night and wore Pioneer clothing.  The kids in our family were aged 15-17 and most of them did not know their "siblings" very well, or at all.  We had one girl with us that we knew, but otherwise they were all new faces!  It was an amazing feeling to walk where the Pioneers walked and get a glimpse of how they may have felt on their trek west.  All the people we had talked to that had attended Trek before had told us how amazing it was, and that we were so lucky to be able to go.  We knew that our testimonies of the Pioneers would increase, but never expected to love our "kids" so much and really bond with them in the little time we had.  It was amazing to us that the night after we came home, we really  were missing those dusty pioneer teens! We loved having the chance to get a small taste of what being a parent is all about.  Those few days helped us to realize that we are so ready to have a chance to add to our family!  We've known that for awhile, but it was so nice to reaffirm and realize that we are hopefully headed in a direction where we can find a way to make that dream into a reality!  We haven't gotten all of our pictures back, but we did get this one as a thank you gift.

We are officially approved!

 We recently got back from a cruise to Alaska!  We knew that while we were gone we would be presented to the committee for our adoption approval, and were hoping to find out the results as soon as we could!  Friday we were out zip-lining in the rain forest when we got the approval email. Unfortunately our service was not so hot in Ketchikan, so we had to wait to find out.

Early Saturday morning (like 5:30AM early!) Lauren woke up and had to check to see if our profile was up yet.   It was!  Justin got an early morning wake up call and even Lauren's breakfast that morning was happy for us!
We are so excited to start the journey of growing our eternal family!