Adoption Update

Just wanted to let everyone who is following us in on what's going on with our adoption. Everything is going well as we continue to work on our home study. We have our last home visit this Thursday (1/20). The social worker has been very nice and easy to talk to so we're very thankful for that.

The adoption agency has told us that we could expect a referral anywhere from November to February and them to travel anywhere from January to July of 2012. Since our baby will be between 10-12 months old when we pick him/her up, it is possible that he/she could be born very soon, but certainly is being carried by his/her mother now.

Please pray for that young woman as she goes through her pregnancy and the difficult decision she has ahead of her. Please pray that she makes good decisions regarding the health of her/our child and that God gives her a peace about this process. Since we will probably never meet her, at least not for a very long time, I hope she knows how loved her baby will be in our family.

We continue to raise money for our adoption. We have been very blessed to have far more piggy bank orders than we ever could have imagined. We have some more enterprises underway and if you would like to see those please click on the link below to our adoption fund-raising site.

http://shiftadoption.blogspot.com/

As we know more and hit more milestones, we'll let you know. Until then, keep us and the future little Highsmith in your prayers.

~Andy & Kate

A New Journey

As many of you know, Kate and I have started the adoption process. We really feel like God has laid orphans on our hearts and this is what He wants us to do. As far as we know, we are able to have biological children, but we feel strongly led down this path. We know it will be a tough road, but we know our family and friends will be behind us all the way. I'll be updating as we get news and reach milestones so check in every now and then.

We have decided to adopt from Korea this time. There are a lot of requirements for different countries and long story short, Korea fit our particular situation.

We ran into our first roadblock as the agency we had chosen stopped accepting out of state applicants on the day we were to send in our application. So, we had to regroup and choose another agency, so we are now going with Carolina Adoption Services out of Greensboro. We're gathering our information to get the paperwork for our homestudy right now.

Keep us in yours prayers and hopefully around March 2012 we'll be bringing home our first child!

~Andy & Kate

I'm In Love With A Tart

There is a dessertery in downtown Concord that Kate and I absolutely love called The Chocolatier Barracund. The chef is from France and makes the best desserts we've ever had. We were in there with my sister Nicole last weekend and saw a new dessert that he was making that we thought we'd try. It was a coconut cream tart, and is is one of the best desserts I've ever had. We went back this weekend to have another. It is quite delicious and I recommend you stop in and try one if you get the chance.

Beach Trip 2010

Here are a few pics from our family beach trip to Holden Beach. Kate and her parents were there Sunday to Thursday on their own until Megan, Trey and I got down later in the week because we had to work. Kate and her folks did a lot of fishing and we all did a lot of eating!

Point Reyes Day 3

So we got up this morning (Tuesday July 20) at 5:30am and drove back into San Francisco to go whale watching. We got to the dock and didn't really see anybody. What we didn't know was that the company had cancelled the trip due to high winds without calling us. So, not only did we get up really early, we had to pay a $6 toll to go across the Golden Gate Bridge again and pay $10 for parking not to mention the money for gas. Needless to say, we were a little upset with them. We had planned on leaving tomorrow morning to come home, but now we are going to give whale watching one more try and alter our schedule a little bit. We'll still leave to come home tomorrow, but we're going to leave from the pier around 1:00pm when the boat gets back in.

We spent today doing a bunch of nothing. We went to the Point Reyes Visitor's Center to ask the ranger what we could see. We were interested in the tide pools and also an elk reserve that is close by. The elk there are in the rut, so we thought we may get to hear them bugle. The range said it has to be a negative low tide to see the pools, which means the water has to go out further than normal, which only happens twice a month. They don't really say much about this on the website, so we were a little disappointed there. The ranger also said the elk usually bugle at night, so we decided not to drive up there just to see elk, since we saw a lot of them last year.

We came back to camp and took long naps and ate some lunch and just hung out for a while with nothing to do. It was nice to be able to not feel like you had to go anywhere, but we also feel like we're wasting time just sitting here. After the nap we had a little ice cream then did some laundry. We're going to go out for dinner tonight and I'm going to have some fresh local oysters since this area is known for them.

At this point, Point Reyes has been a bust. We haven't really seen a whole lot that impressed us. The Pacific was cool the first day, but since then, it's been a bit disappointing. Let's hope for whales tomorrow.

Pray for our safe travels home as well and if all goes well, we'll see you Sunday morning!

Today we woke up at 5:00am after our coldest night yet. It’s so funny to us that the coldest nights we’ve spent have been at the beach. I can definitely say that this is the only time I remember wearing fleece all day in July at the beach.

It only takes about 45 mins to get into San Francisco, but we didn’t want to have to drive in Monday morning rush hour traffic, so we got up extra early. We drove across the Golden Gate bridge to get into the city and didn’t hit any traffic at all.

This is Alcatraz Island.

We had to be at the dock for our whale-watching trip by 7:30am and we got there around 6:30 so we had time to walk around Pier 39 for a while. We were the only people there besides the vendors so it was nice to walk around and see it without the crowds. We got to spend several minutes along with the famous San Francisco sea lions. They are funny to watch and pretty active early in the morning. All the really big ones are out in the seas mating, so we just saw the juveniles and some of the females. Someone told us that over 1,600 sea lions come there in Thanksgiving. It was still really cool to see and hear them.

They have the biggest piece of macaroni I’ve ever seen!

We met our captain and boarded the Kitty Kat, our boat and set off through the San Francisco Bay. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and past Alcatraz on our way out to sea. I had gotten seasick on my last excursion out to sea so I took two Dramamine to fight off the sickness. I made sure to stare at the horizon constantly. I never got sick, but I felt nauseous a lot of the time. We were in some pretty rough seas. It was very windy and the waves were pretty big. Frankly I’m surprised we went out, but maybe it’s like that all the time. Some of the passengers stayed in the cabin but they started getting sick one by one and puking over the side. The key is to stay outside, no matter how cold and how wet you get so you don’t get sick. We had to put on the yellow rain slickers that you always see on TV in order to stay relatively warm and dry. It was a pretty uncomfortable 5 hours to be honest. Kate did better than I did.

Here’s the bad part…we didn’t see any whales! They said that’s the first time they hadn’t seen a whale since November. I could have dealt with feeling bad if I had at least seen some whales. Their policy is that if you don’t see a whale, you get to go on another trip for free. That works pretty well for them since most people are tourists and can’t go two days in a row. We, however, are not your typical tourists and we told them Kate would be back tomorrow (Tuesday). I decided to sit the next trip out. All I could focus on for the whole trip was not getting sick. My eyes were tired from focusing on the horizon the while time. As much as I like being on a boat in the lake, it looks like I’m a landlubber when it comes to the ocean.

We got back into port and had some chowder and shrimp at one of the Pier 39 restaurants. I was 51% hungry and 49% nauseous, so the hungry won out, but it was a close race.

We decided to go check out a local beach called Stinson Beach and drive up the coast a bit to check out some tide pools that you are supposed to be able to see starfish and other cool stuff.

Kate had to drive because the Dramamine was making me so sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open. We got to Stinson Beach and got a quick dessert. It was a brownie with chocolate and vanilla ice-cream, whip cream, strawberries and bananas. It was very tasty and didn’t last long. We walked on the beach for a while until we decided it was too cold. We probably were still chilled a bit from the boat, but we both had fleece on and were still cold. There were people laying out like it was 90 degrees outside, and I can’t figure out how they weren’t cold.

We headed up the coast to the area where the tide pools are supposed to be, but the tide was up so we waited for while to see if it would go down. I fell asleep in the car while Kate read. The tide was coming in so we didn’t get to see anything. We headed back to camp and I went to sleep for a few hours to try to shake off the Dramamine. I will not be taking that again if I can help it. We had some sandwiches for supper then climbed into bed. It was the coldest night we’ve had yet and had to really bundle up. We were prepared from last year’s experience so we never got cold during the night.

We’re getting up early again tomorrow to take Kate back for more whale hunting, so keep your fingers crossed!

Point Reyes National Seashore Day 1

We got up and left Yosemite this morning around 8:00am. We’ve got packing down to a science now. We set out for Point Reyes National Seashore, which is about an hour north of San Francisco. We had to travel through Oakland, CA to get to our destination. If you ever think you want to take a trip to Oakland, don’t. Driving there was a nightmare. Every exit we needed to take was blocked by the police or under road construction. I don’t like driving in cities anyway, but Oakland was about as stressful as it gets.

We got through Oakland and made it to Olema RV Resort and Campground. The road to the town of Olema was very curvy and very bumpy. Kate and I both are about tired of curvy, bumpy roads at this point. The straightness of the interstate is going to be a welcome site on the way home. I don’t get carsick very often, but I started to get sick around here. We set up camp and the first thing we did was laundry. We were both on our last pair of clean underwear, so it was necessary.

After laundry, we went down to the seashore. It’s cool to see the Pacific Ocean and how it’s different from what we're used to in NC. The surf is a lot heavier, and it’s cold out here. The water is freezing and the air isn’t that much warmer. It’s constantly windy. In some points the ocean comes right up against the rocks. We went to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, which is one of the oldest lighthouses on the west coast. They close the lighthouse when wind conditions are over 40mph, which is quite often apparently. The sign there said it might be the windiest place on the west coast. It was definitely colder and windier than the beaches we have back home. It’s funny that this is the coldest place we’ve been to yet and we’ve been in the mountains for the past week. We took a stroll on the beach and then headed back to camp for supper.

After supper, we took a much needed shower. I’m embarrassed to say that it’s been about 6 days since our last shower. I know. We think it’s pretty bad, too. They say if you can smell yourself then other people have been smelling you for 3 days. We passed that mark a while ago. We were glad to take a little time to clean up this evening in a shower that we didn’t have to put quarters into. The showers here at the campsite are the kind you have to keep pushing a button to get water to come out of. Once you push the button, you get 9 seconds of water so you really have to be diligent or you’ll get cold. While I was in the shower, I heard two people in the toilet area slamming stuff around and giggling. I knew something was going on that shouldn’t have been and my guess was that it was teenage boys running amok. I was going to try to stop them from doing whatever it was they were doing, but I was completely naked and covered in soap so that would have hindered my abilities, but the site of me naked and covered in soap should have been enough to scare away the toughest of customers. It turns out that they cut the water lines in all the toilets so that was a bit of a headache.

After our shower, we crawled into bed and got ready for an early morning. Whale watching tomorrow! Up at 5:00am. Yuck!