Once again I have been a terrible blogger. I am not liking the new format on blogger! It is definitely going to take getting used to. I hope everyone has been doing well. We have had so much going on and have almost completed our Horseshoe Lake fixer upper! It has been a fun weekend project and I love seeing all the hard work we put into this. It has been a great way for us to put our energy and time into something that isn't fertility related. Now we get to enjoy the house. we are spending our first night over there tomorrow! In my last post I had mentioned that we would hopefully have some exciting news, but unfortunately it did not work out quite the way we had hoped. Brian and I have been very open with everything along the way on this infertility journey, so I wanted to share.... After IVF 2 failed we decided that we were done with fertility treatments. I physically and mentally could not take any more. I checked out. After putting your heart, soul and everything into intense fertility treatments that keep failing you have to regroup. Of course I wanted time for our wounds to heal, but also didn't want to miss a beat. I have always been a person that is impatient when it comes to achieving goals in life, etc. We have waited so long for this and we are so ready for some good news. So we decided to start pursuing private adoption. We thought we would give this a shot before we decided to get on board with an expensive agency. we met with an attorney and talked to some amazing people who had wonderful stories of how they found birth mothers by just getting the word out to everyone they knew! We could do this...especially as open as we have been with this! Through this we had a friend who reached out to a friend of hers with a high school aged daughter to spread the word that if there are any pregnant teens at her school to please keep us in mind. Little did we know what was about to happen... Our friend who has the HS daughter has a best friend who heard our story and wanted to help us. She was willing to do whatever it took. We instantly bonded and I swear it felt like she was my long lost sister (along with Carrie D. who I know we were somehow separated at birth!) as we had so much in common around beliefs, life, family, etc. We went down to Mississippi and had dinner with her, her husband and their 2 precious children! We were feeling really good about this and were all coming together with a plan. It was amazing to have such compassion from people who we just met! We decided we wanted to have this wonderful girl carry our baby. We were all so thrilled and knew this was it and we were finally going to have a baby! We did the procedure and waited the 2 weeks. The waiting game felt like forever! Our surrogate is so precious and we were in touch non stop. She wanted this as bad as us! We just knew she was pregnant. test time came around and unfortunately this did not work. We were all so crushed. ANOTHER failed treatment. WHY? Enough is enough! We were all just broken hearted. Our surrogate is amazing. I love this girl so much because she has a heart of gold. She wants this to happen for us! She is completely invested and said she will do whatever it takes to get us our miracle baby. There is still a ray of hope. Please pray that we will have our prayers answered soon! We appreciate your love and support so incredibly much! Love, Lauren