is this thing on?

It’s been a while! I have attempted to write on multiple occasions this year, but never really got anywhere coherent. 2020 has thrown us for a loop just like it has everyone else and I haven’t felt like I have anything truly note-worthy to share. We are simultaneously ready for the pandemic to stop ruling every aspect of our lives, while also feeling grateful for some of the things that have resulted (working from home/being with Adley) and the lessons of which it has reminded us (love your neighbor as you love yourself). I decided to write an update on our family now because we’re at a fork in the road and I’m humbly soliciting your prayers. After a lot of prayer and consideration, in October 2019 we submitted our application for a second adoption. We began working through the required paperwork, but that got significantly derailed with the pandemic and us trying to adjust to working from home with a toddler. We finally submitted our last required document exactly a year later, and we

I don’t really have my thoughts collected, but I’m a sucker for tradition and I can’t not  write something at the new year. My focus for 2019 was to be present with Adley and I think I did a pretty good job. I learned that being a full-time working mom is seriously no joke. It’s still way too depressing to think about how few hours I see her during the week, so I’ve made it a point to make those few hours count each day. One of the biggest things I did was have Brian flag me as a high-schooler on our modem and assign "homework hours", which means I am cut off from social media at 5pm every week night. That really helped reduce the amount of distractions and made it easier for me to be more present for those 2-3 hours before Adley went to bed each night. I also got increasingly agitated about chores. I did not want to spend my precious time off work doing chores when I could be spending time with Adley. Brian and I decided that as two gainfully-employed adults we could e