We ARE a family.

People will sometimes ask a couple without children, "When are you planning to start your family?"  Not only is it probably not a good idea to ask someone that, but you don't have to have children to have a family!  We ARE a family.  We hadn't had professional photos taken of us since we were married and I didn't want to forget this time when it was just the two of us.  Without children.  But, still a family.  

So, for our 5th anniversary we asked my sweet friend, talented photographer, and founder of PPP, Jill Witt, if she would take some pictures of us while she was visiting for our race!  Thank goodness she has such an enormous heart because I'll cherish these pictures forever.

I often tell Matt, "Even if we never have children, I'll still be the luckiest person on earth because I have you."  And, while we can't wait to start the next phase of our lives, we definitely haven't sat around waiting for it.  We've been living and loving our lives--just us.  I love this guy.

Many, Many Miracles

Want to hear a cool story?  One day (almost two years ago) Matt and I had the LDS missionaries over for dinner and they challenged us to create a Mormon.org profile.  I had the distinct impression that I should mention our struggle with infertility in my profile (even though we weren't SUPER open about it yet).  Little did I know, it would help me probably more than it ever helped anyone else.  See, this amazing lady is the graphic designer for Pound the Pavement for Parenthood (PPP) and she found my profile...then my blog where she made a sweet comment on my blog and I emailed her in response.  She told me about PPP and said that we should apply to be sponsored!

 We were in the roughest part of our infertility journey.  We knew IVF or adoption were our only options, but we knew it would be at least three years before we could afford them.  It was so heartbreaking to feel stuck in this rut and know that the only thing standing between us and our dream was finances.  I may or may not have started counting down the 36 months until we could get pregnant.  ;)

I didn't really know very much about PPP, but I felt inspired to apply and was more than a little shocked when they selected us!  I never anticipated that it would be such a huge answer to my prayers.  It was so humbling to learn how to ask for help with such an intimate part of our lives and watch people so generously donate, or register to help us become parents.  I cried every. single. time.

After many, many months of planning and preparation...this happened on April 27, 2013.

All of these people we love running for us and our baby--it made me cry.

Jill Witt--the founder of PPP and one of my biggest heros.

Me running Matt off the road. ;)

I thought it was so cool that so many of Matt's law school class mates came.  We love these people.

 Ashley, Kristian, Aaron, Matt, Me, Andy, and Ryne

Us with Jill

I wish we had a picture like this with everyone who came--these are our friend's the Gardners. :)

The race raffle!

Jill making us cry--in a good way. ;)

ALL of these people came for baby Purcell--we feel so blessed and so, so loved.  The other amazing thing is that we didn't know most of, or really any of these people before we moved to South Bend less than two years ago.  We know so many amazing people.

Race times!   I'm not telling you which numbers we are--let's just say we were glad we didn't finish last.  ;)

A gift from PPP--a great symbol of the even greater gift they have given us--hope.

The other amazing thing was to see all the people who love us who ran/walked to show their support even though they couldn't be at our race.

Annie and Curtis Wiederhold in California

 Kandace and Chad Hyland in Minnesota

Jared Bolduc in Utah

Katie George in California

Lana Bown in Utah

Marc and Angela Harrison in Ohio

Mindy Leavitt in Utah

Stephanie Purcell in Utah

A bunch of good friends running with my parents in Utah! :)

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!  Thanks to you, we were able to raise nearly $9,600!!  We appreciate all of your love and support and hope we have some INCREDIBLE news to share with you in the near future. :)