A little about our family

 I thought I would go ahead and tell you a little bit about ourselves as maybe some of you aren't being directed from our other blog.  I am Tara, and I will be the primary blogger here.  Every now and then my hubby Jonathan might pop in to blog but it will be mostly me.  Jonathan and I met in late 2005 at the church we both attended.  We started out as friends for a few months and then during the holiday season (and all the romance it may bring), we saw that perhaps there was something more to our relationship than just a friendship.  I had decided that back when I first met Jonathan, but it took him a little longer to figure out. ;-)  We were head over heels in love, young, and a bit more spontaneous back then so we were engaged in 6 months, and married 6 months later.  We always say, "when you know, you KNOW!"-and we did..so we wasted no time.

For the next few years we enjoyed being "just the two of us" (we still do enjoy those times usually after 9 pm and on date nights.  But life will never be the same-and we are blessed because of that).  We travelled, ate out a lot, spent late nights out with friends (we still do on occasion), and pretty much lived the "dink" life (double income no kids).  But God started working in our lives and we realized that while it was awesome just being the two of us, God had something bigger and better for our lives.  

In 2009, we started the adoption of our little girl Masha, from Siberia, Russia.  I'll spare you the long and drawn out details of what led us to adopt but the short version is that right now, adoption is God's plan A for our life!  For over a year we worked on paperwork and waited for our referral (which we thought would be a blonde haired toddling little boy) and on March 21 we received this:

Amazing, right??  We fell in love and accepted her referral right away!  I still love looking at her referral pictures, even though she has so much more joy in her face these days.  We met her in May:

Had court in August:

And brought her home forever on August 31, 2011:

Life since bringing Masha home has been awesome.  We love having the joy and laughter that she brings to our lives and her presence continually reminds us of our own adoption through Jesus Christ.  We fall more and more in love with her every day and we couldn't be more grateful to God for blessing us with her.  

We knew we had room in our hearts for more children immediately after before returning from Russia.  Orphans are hard to forget, and after spending a month in Russia, visiting the orphanage every day, it just resonates with you.  We believe this is why Jesus tells us to "visit the orphans and widows", you simply cannot forget them after visiting.