same city and three months later, we were engaged! Planning our wedding took 8 months and we said "I do" in a classic and elegant wedding in the city where it all began: historic Charleston, SC. Knowing it could be a lengthy process, we didnt waste any time! The funds saved up from the beginning were quickly depleted as we began our journey to a family, documenting all of it on our former blog, Our Pea, Her Pod. Back before blogging was cool, we wanted to include our family and friends in a simple way to communicate about our current process. We chose to go the surrogacy route first, simply because once we adopted and had more mouths to feed, we knew affording surrogacy would be that much harder. We fundraised, prayed, did fertility treatment, took medication to prevent over-stimulating (carrying is our issue, fertility isn't technically our problem. At all. Michelle Duggar egg quality 'round these parts), performed an egg retrieval surgery in which doctors retrieved 46 eggs, and obtained 5 beautiful, grade-A quality embryos! They were frozen as 5-day blastocysts, and were the cutest, fluffiest balls of cells we'd ever seen! We'd made BABIES! And 5 of them! A wonderful woman was reading our journey and stepped up to offer her uterus to us! She became our surrogate and within two months, we were doing our very first frozen embryo transfer. We transferred two embryos during our first attempt, in order to give us odds most in our favor, and she unfortunately lost both of them. A set of fraternal twins, in the books. Two months later, we tried again, only putting just one egg in this time, since we felt like we were quickly depleting our embryo bank. That one egg split into identical twins, and we suffered from another miscarriage. While these attempts scarred us immensely, we knew that they were dancing at the feet of Jesus- and if I got the opportunity for my children to see my human, imperfect self when their eyes opened for the first time, or the face of Jesus, I'd pick Him every time. It was one of those "either it makes you or it breaks you" kind of experiences in our marriage, and thankfully we, together, clung to the cross. Hand in hand, we were determined to hold onto each other during these difficult days and continue to hope for the future. We decided to wait to forego any further surrogacy attempts, simply because we felt God moving us towards adoption. We still have two embryos chilling (literally, frozen) in our fertility clinic's embryo lab, and hope to find another surrogate one day! We'd love to try and give them life! We received a phone call the following January from a mama in a hard situation. She felt unable to care for the child she was carrying, and wanted to make an adoption plan for him. Weeks went by, attorneys were lined up, and family was on standby. Her c-section date was scheduled for late February, and we weren't going to miss it. Our flights were all delayed due to inclement weather, so we decided to rent a 15-passenger, total church camp van, and loaded everyone up. Driving through the night, we finally made it from Atlanta to Dallas, TX and met mama at the hospital for our tour. We spent time with her and her family, going to lunch, and then back to our host family's house where we were staying to take a nap. We hadn't laid down five minutes before our phone rang. It was the attorney on the other line, and the adoption wasn't going to happen. The birth father wanted to assume parentage, and we were not bringing home our baby. We remained there a few more days as we tied up a few legal loose ends before returning home, empty handed, broken hearted, and with a baby-less carseat. Wounded. Defeated. Confused. In dark thought. We were clinging to each other for dear life, yet again. Six months of healing and staring at a closed nursery door. Time went by and the wave of emotions and grieving shook us to our spiritual core. It was here that we finally began seeing God open doors for us. In late July, I'd typed up a long blog post on our former blog explaining what happened in Dallas. It took me DAYS to push publish, because it offered a few fundraising opportunities for us to move on in our journey. I didn't want to publish it because I was embarrassed and wondering who in the world would continue throwing money to these people who keep coming up short? Six months, it took me, to process my thoughts and emotions in order to put pen to paper and write out the details. Yet, we felt God's presence in a mighty tangible way. I sat on that unpublished blog entry for days before I finally clicked "post." I kid you not, God was waiting on me to take a step of faith. He was waiting on me to put my right foot in front of the other and move. Within thirty minutes of having posted the blog post, the phone rang. It was a family friend who knew about a mama unable to raise her baby. "It's a boy and he's due in a few weeks." We got the chance to take this all in before speaking with this expectant woman and had no clue where to go from here. We hired our attorney and began the same daunting process we'd just completed six months prior. Having negative flashbacks and fears of the unknown, we decided to follow where the Lord was leading, even if we came up short, yet again. Our son, James David "Jude" Gilmer, Jr. was born three weeks to the day after our first initial conversation with his first mama, and we were elated. He was finally here- our little boy. As was the realization why 'boy' rhymes with 'joy.' Due to being born a few weeks premature, we stayed bedside our newborn son for 14 days before discharged from the NICU. He was finally ours. We went home. Watching him grow. Feeding him in the middle of the night. Changing blowouts up his back. Bathing him. Rocking him and singing him to sleep. Taking his picture constantly. He grew into a spitfire, stubborn as a mule, strong as an ox, but with such a gentle spirit. One day, he woke up from his nap, and I brought him into mommy and daddy's bed where we too had been napping. Trying to wake up, we all snuggled until Jude sat up and uttered something inaudible (with his adorable lisp) except for one word that stuck out, as clear as day. "Austenanja SISSY!" David piped up a little thrown off, and said, "Um, you dont have a sissy!" It was a special date in April where his sister officially chosen for life. He had claimed her as ours before we ever knew she existed. In August, my parents were getting ready to finally list their house for sale after talking about it for nine whole years. Waiting for the market to turn around in their favor, they'd just not gotten the chance to place it with a realtor. After finding out that the listing was going live first thing Monday morning, my mom took to the neighborhood social media site to see if anyone knew of someone looking to buy in the neighborhood. If so, she was offering for them to come take a look at it before it was officially listed- early bird gets the worm kind of deal. A woman popped up on the post interested in coming to see it in honor of her parents who'd been looking in the area, and wanted to purchase in the same neighborhood. She walked into my parents house and saw a picture of myself and Jude from our Mother's Day photo shoot David gifted me with earlier that year. She said, "oh your daughter is beautiful, and your grandson must look like his daddy!" Much to her dismay did she realize she'd just opened up a can and was about to hear his entire birth and adoption story, beginning to end, not details left out. (I see where I get that from) She finally got done talking, and the lady looking at the house said, "this is so odd, but I have a sweet friend that I know who is having a baby she doesn't feel equipped to raise. Would your daughter and son-in-law possibly be interested in speaking with her?" Mom said "absolutely" and informed me quickly that I was to expect a communication attempt from this sweet first mama. We met face-to-face and clicked- every detail working out flawlessly and is still to this day one of my most cherished relationships. We got to know each other for a few days and she asked us if we would be offended if she looked at a few other parents profile books. "Not at all would we be offended. This is your child and this is not an easy decision. You have to be completely at peace with this choice." She told us that the baby was a girl, and that she would let us know when she'd made her decision. Two weeks went by and I was busy preparing our home for a new baby, just in case. We were hoping for the best, all the while still expecting the worst. A social worker called us late on a Wednesday night. "Did you hear from her? She chose you guys! Oh, and she went to the doctor today and she's 90% effaced and a centimeter dilated." We got a call the following morning, 9 hours later, that she was here!! She was happy and healthy, and mama was doing great, as well! We tied up loose ends at the house as quickly as they could be, and got on the road. We met our baby girl later that evening and named her Keller Winn! We went home three days later after an emotional "see you soon," and remain in contact through the most purest form of love and admiration for her selfless decision! Now, we have two toddlers who make a game of fighting and quickly hugging it out, learning how to share toys, and teaching us all about the Father's grace everyday. 

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It feels like such a distant memory looking back on all of these details. The pain and the sorrow was all apart of His plan that led us directly where we were meant to be. Here. In this house. With these babies. With these toys scattered about. With these legos scattered around that if I step on ONE. MORE. TIME. With this list of weekly meals planned. This All-American life, centered around Jesus and giving Him all of the glory. We often venture back to Charleston, SC to visit family, and so they can see how big the babies have gotten. David and I find ourselves drift outside to the precious setting where it all began. The toddlers appear to sniff us out in the most impressive of ways and sneak up into our laps- but we dont hate it one bit. Now we rock our babies, our little family, on that porch swing and remember a simpler time, when it was just us two, dreaming about what we hold now. There's no one I'd rather grow with- and totally trust in God to have our best interest at heart for the future of our growth. For now, we will grow together instead of larger and soak up all of the toddler-sniffing moments. I'm sure the next one will be while one of us is trying to pee in peace. But hey.. we wished long and hard for this. Counting it all joy!