First Stop! Utah

Utah!

When I went through the adoption process I was living in Utah.  4 days after I had given birth, I moved back to Washington and in with my parents. (August 2007)  It took me almost two years to return to Utah for the first time and it scared me!  I didn't know what emotions would climb to the surface just from being in the area that I was during my pregnancy and everything I had gone through with Marsh (sperm donor).  I knew that I wasn't going to be able to avoid it forever because my sister and her family and my best friend still lived there.

So I put Utah at the beginning of my road trip.  I thought that like many things you're afraid of, that it would be scary in anticipation but the experience would be a lot better than you had thought.

I was wrong!

Although I enjoyed my time with my sister's family and my best friend, I found the emotions that came back were much much more painful than I had anticipated and I could not wait to get out of Utah and move on with my road trip!

Some of the things I did in Utah -

Just a few hours after I got into Orem, Utah I went to Friday Kid's Respite!  It's a program where parents of kids that their child needs a lot more attention than any regular kid, can drop their child off for a couple of hours to go and do whatever they want.  Volunteers like myself are paired off with a kid and we're in charge of entertaining them for a few hours.  It was a lot of fun and probably the best way to start off my road trip!

The next morning Ambria (my best friend) and I and a few of her friends ventured off to Salt Lake for a viewing of Star Trek!  On the Imax theater in Salt Lake we were able to view and enjoy the awesome movie a week earlier than it came out in theaters for the public!  LOVED IT!

The rest of my time in Utah was spent with my sister's family where we celebrated my birthday and I enjoyed her fun families energy!  I spent 6 days in Utah.  I arrived on May 1st, 2009 and left on May 7th!

To be continued!  - Next Stop The Grand Canyon

Travelin' Mann!

48 States in 90 Days!

Letter From A Reader

I received this letter late last night, I wanted to share it with all of you! Out of courtesy I will keep the writer anonymous.


"I wanted to thank you for what you did. I was adopted in 93 and i am SO BLESSED! i know that it was so hard to do, but thank you for doing that.Im not your daughter but i can relate to ur child."

Ahhh Mann!

December 26th, 2006

“I don’t want it.”

The stinging and ringing of those thoughtless/harsh words were still echoing in my head as my world turned upside down. I was shocked, yet not as surprised as I should have been when I delivered the news that I was pregnant to my boyfriend of  over two years.

Out of all of the things he could have said, those words weren’t the ones I needed or wanted. Knowing already that he wasn’t going to be excited or overjoyed, anyone in my situation only wants to know they won’t be abandoned; that it’ll all be okay and everything will work out just fine. I didn’t want a marriage proposal, I didn’t want to receive a solution, and I definitely didn’t want to be told what I should do, and what I am capable of in their opinion. All I wanted was to know that WE would work things out TOGETHER!

But! To add to everything else he never offered me, he decided to add “responsibility” to the top.

Typical?

Even though he wasn’t this cold and uncaring man when I fell in love with him, he turned into him.   I don’t know when he stopped caring about me, but it sure seemed to happen very quickly. I didn’t know at that moment, but it was the beginning of a means to an end. The child I was carrying inside me would save my life, grant me courage, and help put my life into focus.

Just Because

Because this is a new blog for me and I've already received over 100 hits, I'm going to add an additional post and will probably decide to post more if interest continues!

Frog Mann

My sister’s second youngest, Wabbai (two), has a great imagination! One of the weeks I was living with them, I had a nice cold and it made my voice all icky-scratchy. I told Wabbai that I had a frog in my throat. He thought that was so cool! Then he decided when my voice got better, that I had swallowed the frog and that was what was growing in my tummy. He also decided that he magically had a frog in his tummy too! That was how the nickname came about for the baby, Frog Mann. We also used the frog in Wabbai's stomach to our advantage, getting him to eat his breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that his frog wouldn’t get hungry. Just like Bekah Boo. Imagining that we could hear the frog ribbeting in his belly, saying, “Feed me, feed me, rrrribbet!” Wabbai was the comic relief of the family. Unfortunately, most of the time during my stay, he was coming up with things to blame on me; things I didn’t or wouldn’t do. It gave Chubs a little break. Before I moved in, it was his not-yet one-year-old sister who was blamed for knocking the blocks down, taking his toys away, telling him he couldn’t do something, or was just plain getting in the way!

My posts!

Every week I will update my blog with either an entry from my book or an entry from the journal I wrote in while going through the abusive relationship with Marsh, the adoption process, or the years where I struggled with grief after the adoption!