Kellen’s Story: Chosen

When we initially started emailing with Kellen’s birthmom, Serena, she told us that she was considering a few families and was still in the midst of the decision making process. So we were surprised and very excited when she told us after only a few emails that we were the family for her baby! I saw the email at night after Spencer had already gone to bed and I ran in and woke him out of a dead sleep to tell him the good news. 

We began making plans to travel to meet Serena. Our first visit went very smoothly. We were a little nervous on the drive over, but once we were chatting with Serena and her mom we felt comfortable in no time. Serena and her family are very warm people and they’ve always made us feel right at home.

Our favorite moment was when Mason reached out to Serena for her to pick him up. He put both of his hands on her tummy (totally unprompted, it was like he just knew) and just held them there and Serena said, “Look, it’s your sibling!” I think we both just fell that much more in love with Serena in that moment.

(Photos taken the first time we met Serena)

One thing that I have always loved about Serena is how sweet she is with Mason. Mason LOVES Serena, and I love that she loves him back. And I love that Natalie loves Kellen. It is so special to me that both our kiddos birthmomma’s love both of my kiddos. And I know the boys love each other’s birthmomma’s too. Mason will pray for “Natty” and “Rena” every single prayer he says. He knows who they are and he gets excited to see them. I have no doubt Kellen will be the same way. And I can’t wait for the day when we are able to get together with both Natalie and Serena at the same time! Open adoption is so cool that way. We adopted our boys, but also gained relationships with their birth families. And our boys birth families kind of adopted the four of us into their families too. It’s amazing to me the way the love of one child connects us all. It’s amazing, and beautiful, and humbling, and special, and kind of hard to put into words. It’s a miracle really, how one tiny person can bring so many others together in such a powerful way.   

During that first meeting we had asked Serena how she had decided on a family. She told us that one factor in her decision was location. She had looked at families only within a certain region. This was significant to us because around the time we were starting the approval process, we were trying to figure out if we should move. At that time, Spencer’s contract was up and we had anticipated that we would probably be moving up to a larger market. We went so far as to start applying for jobs, but we just didn’t feel good about leaving yet. We felt like we really wanted/needed to stay in Idaho. We ultimately decided that Spencer would re-sign a contract for another few years. In hindsight, we’re especially glad that we made the decision to stay because it helped Serena find us.

Serena also told us that one thing that had initially drawn her to our family was Mason. She liked the idea of her baby having a big brother to look out for him or her. I loved that. And like I’ve mentioned before, I was also so excited for Mason to have a baby brother or sister to look out for.

We came home and shortly thereafter began sharing the good news with family. These are the photos we sent to our family to announce our big news:

Gosh he looks so LITTLE to me now when I look at those photos.

We also were able to meet Kellen’s birthfather a few weeks after we met Serena. He is also a very kind person and we so enjoyed visiting with him and his family. Spencer and I were quite excited that he wanted to be involved in the process and were glad that Kellen would get to know his birthfather.

We slowly started getting ready for Baby…