The Tants Go Adopting

     Today was a really wonderful, fantastic, super fabulous, terrific, marvelous, glorious, awesome (and all the other good superlatives) day. 😁       It was on this day, October 7, 2019, that we finalized the adoption of our youngest daughter, Eliana AriaGrace Tant. This has been a day years in the making and it was such a beautiful, perfect day surrounded by our family and friends. We want to share not only our happy ending with everyone, but we also our daughter's story.       Our daughter was born on December 12, 2018 and she was 7 weeks premature. She spent a total of 100 days in the NICU and had two surgeries while there. Our daughter was born with Down syndrome, a stomach and intestines that were not connected, and two heart defects. It was evident early on that our baby girl was a fighter and a heart breaker. Every nurse, doctor, therapists etc we met during our hospital stays (and anyone who meets her in passing) can't help...

         I know I have said this a lot over the last two weeks, but I'm gonna say it again - it has been a crazy couple of weeks and God continues to show off in big ways.        Good news - today we signed our placement paperwork for Eliana!!! She is ours :). Once Eliana is discharged from the hospital she will be in our home for 90 days and that we will go to court to make her an official Tant!!! We can't wait to officially introduce you to our beautiful baby girl. We can't share a picture of Eliana yet, but look at that precious, perfect little fist         Eliana has had a big week. Last week they did surgery to repair a hole in her heart. Our sweet girl was so brave and strong and came through the surgery with flying colors. She is steadily improving, though a little slower than we had originally anticipated. We met with her doctors today and have a plan to move her towards discharge. I'm thinking she still ha...

Another day, another exciting and amazing update! We were approved today for a matching grant through Lifesong for Orphans. We will be able to accept donations through Lifesong and those donations will be tax deductible. 100% of the money that is raised through LifeSong will go directly to pay the program fee for Eliana's adoption. With this amazing blessing, we have re-evaluated our current fundraising model. The money that we have raised through GoFundMe cannot be applied to our matching grant, but that money will be used to cover the acceptance agreement fee and the inter-state compact fee as those are the fees that are the most pressing. We have changed our GoFundMe goal from the full amount needed for our adoption to the just the amount needed to cover the immediate fees. And now we are only $960 away from that first goal!! God is just so very good! If you would like to donate to help us reach our first goal, you can still donate at our GoFundMe pa...

    I am in complete awe of how God just keeps showing off in really big ways. I don't know that I have ever been a part of a God story like this one. I have heard about them, but I have never been smack dab in the middle of one. It has been a week since our world completely changed and I just wanted to share all the many ways God has shown off.     When we got the call last Saturday about a baby in the hospital who needed a forever family, we didn't even have an approved, finalized home study. We knew what we needed to get the completed home study, and we started praying that God would step in and make all the pieces fall into place. The main item needed to complete our home study was a recommendation letter from our family counselor. We were unsure if our counselor had time in her schedule at the beginning of the week to fit us in and we also weren't 100% sure she would be able to write the recommendation that quickly (we were like 99% sure, but hey anything could...

      What a difference 4 days makes! I am still in awe of how our story is playing out and I am amazed at the goodness of our God. It is still hard to believe that when we left our house on Saturday we were a family of 4 heading to the aquarium, and how one phone call changed all that. In our last update , we shared about how we had received a call about a baby with Down Syndrome who needs a forever family and we said yes. That yes started the whirlwind that has been the last few days.        We spent Monday and Tuesday of this week running around and finalizing our paperwork to get an approved home study. God has been orchestrating each moment of this story and it has been so evident as the pieces have fallen into place. One of my favorite moments happened yesterday. We had met with our counselor to get the recommendation letter for the adoption and decided to take the kids to the mall to grab some lunch after. I took the letter in with me so I coul...

      The last time I posted an update was in June of 2018 when we had to give the sad and upsetting update that we were not going to be able to adopt internationally and that we were going to take time to re-evaluate our adoption options. Last summer was a very difficult time and it took us a while to come to terms with the news we had been given and to make the decision on how we were going to move forward. After much prayer and consideration, Aaron and I made the decision that we would continue to pursue a domestic adoption.       The first step in pursuing a domestic adoption and finally getting an approved home study was to meet with a licensed counselor and have her write a letter recommending us as adoptive parents. We met with the counselor in late summer/early fall and have been meeting with her since. A few weeks ago the counselor told us that she was ready to write the letter for us and in fact, she and Aaron started the letter at their session ...

        It's been a hard few weeks and this is not easy to write. It was a Tuesday morning when the email came in. I was at work and as I read the words I had to fight back tears so as to not freak out my co-workers. We were told that due to something from two years ago we are not going to be able to adopt from Taiwan or from any other country.         In that moment I think I went through all the stages of grief. I was angry that a misunderstanding from two years ago is keeping us from our dream. I was in denial that this was really happening. It just didn't seem real that something that was proven to not have happened was going to stop us from adopting from the country we desired. I was mourning the loss of a child that I had already fallen in love with. I have heard some say that it is very similar to having a miscarriage, feeling the tremendous loss of someone you never even met.          The last few weeks have been...