Krazy

We have what many would consider a unique story. We are a military family with two biological children and seven months post adopting from the U.S. foster care system. This also puts us seven months into our lifelong journey of being identified as a transracial family, which honestly, still seems weird to say.

I am really not sure where our story begins. Many people in the adoptive community can eloquently recite how they were led to adoption. I am not one of those people. Looking back, we are certain we were led by God and that He definitely guided us, but at the time it felt like we were often, at best, just treading water.

Jason and I have been married 13 years. Jason is an Army officer, and we have two biological children: a daughter, Aidan, age 10, and a son, Cole Patrick, age 8. Like many people, we always viewed adoption as something we'd like to do. But the journey between saying "We' think we'd like to adopt" and ACTUALLY adopting is long, and well,...unexpected.

We took our first step while stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, in early 2009. We started looking at an international adoption from Korea. After going to our first meeting and reviewing all the paperwork, we decided it wasn't the right time. Jason was preparing for a year-long deployment to Iraq, and quite frankly, the cost overwhelmed us. Discouraged, we placed it on the back burner. While Jason was in Iraq, a friend casually said to me, "Have you ever considered adopting from foster care?" Well, no, not at all...in fact, I don't know why, but the thought had never occured to either of us.

At that time, we knew once Jason returned, we would next be assigned to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. I also knew that Jason would be home for a while--long enough to adopt--we had a window. So, I did my research on adopting from foster care in Florida.

By the time we reached Florida in the summer of 2010, we were ready to go! We signed up for the first information session available in September 2010, and shortly thereafter began the classes necessary to become certified to adopt from foster care in Florida. The ten-weeks of classes were definitely aimed at weeding out the people who weren't serious, ready or otherwise not likely to succeed at adoption. I can't honestly say that the classes prepared us to adopt, but I don't know that anything can prepare you for adoption. Every story is individual and unique, and ours is not any different.

Nearly nine months after our home study was completed, we were losing hope that adoption was in His plan for us. In fact, just as we started to accept this, we received a call from our Family Adoption Specialist. A two-year-old boy was available and ready to go to match, were we interested? Within ten days, we were matched, had gone to disclosure and met our new son. Our heads were spinning!

Seven months later, the spinning is just starting to slow down...or I am just becoming accustomed to it! Recently, I felt bold enough to say, "Hey, I think others might benefit from our story." There are lots of adoption stories blogged, and they are all unique--when I have searched to find someone else with a similar journey, I have come up empty-handed. It is my hope that through this blog we can reach the one other family like us...! ;-)

A friend suggested the name, "Down Wright Crazy." I loved the play on words of our last name and decided not to wonder if she really thinks we are crazy...?! As we start to lay out and design the blog site, we were discussing the look, and Aidan piped in with the streaming enthusiam that only a 10-year-old girl can truly give justice, "Are you spelling "crazy" with a "K"? You should spell "crazy" with a "K" because any time I am trying to emphasis "crazy", I spell it with a "K" because that is just crazy...!" Or, rather, krazy. With this conversation (which I probably should be ashamed to admit, did go on for some time), I realized, "Yep, we're crazy"...or krazy...