Finally

A Papa and his girls

When you're trying to build a family, the year carries with it lots of painful reminders of what you don't have.

Don't get me wrong, every day is generally marked with some twinge when you're trying - either through infertility treatments or through adoption. But certain days, certain holidays and certain seasons, for me, for us, were particularly tough.

Take fall. I adore fall. ADORE it. I love the changing dapple of sunlight, the trees, the crisp morning air that warms up during the day and then cools off again at night, the pumpkins and the apples. October is my all-time favorite month.

So each year Brian and I would make the trip to gather our pumpkins and gourds. While we always knew we were so, so, so lucky to be together, to have found each other, we couldn't help but be sad. These kinds of days, the extra-special ones, the pumpkin-patch days or the Christmas days or the Mother's and Father's Day, when you're struggling to build a family, are particularly painful and made me particularly melancholy.

But today? Today my love and I tramped through a pumpkin field with a little blonde girl wearing a shiny pumpkin on her shirt and a curly haired one determined to help Papa with the wheelbarrow. This time, this day, when I cried it was because of what we HAD, not what was missing.

Finally.

Hello, chickens

"Milking" a "cow" (i.e. water and wood)

On the tractor to the pumpkin field



Picking the right one...wheelbarrow, that is

A good place to put back on a shoe

I can do it. Wait. Mama!