Recipe Submissions

Hello! First of all, I want to take the time to thank you for helping us on our journey to becoming parents. Each recipe submission and recipe book purchase helps put us one step closer to our goal.


After 4 years of infertility, we are no strangers to heartbreak. We have experienced 2 early miscarriages in 2008 and the loss of our precious daughter Bailey at 23 weeks on April 30, 2010. But, we have never given up hope. Our dream has not changed, but we have decided to take a different path and pursue adoption.

This recipe book will be created using recipes submitted by you. You can submit one or ten recipes if you want. You can tell me why you chose the recipe. Was it a comfort food? Did you crave it during your pregnancy? Is it just something you love? I ask that you give detailed instructions for each recipe you send. I will give each person credit for their recipe. I also plan on putting a page (or pages) dedicated in the memory of our babies, with their names listed. Throughout the book will be resources, facts, and ways to memorialize your baby’s name. If there is something you would like to see in this recipe book, please let me know your suggestion, and I will see if it is something I can make happen.

Please complete the template at the end of this letter and e-mail all recipes to danae.southerland@gmail.com by February 10, 2010.

Once this is completed, I will take orders for recipe books and will get them printed and shipped. I hope to keep costs low (it will not be fancy by any means) and sell the recipe books for $10-$15 (prices are NOT set…this is just an idea).

Thank you for your support and helping us get to our dream!

With Love,
Danae

Recipe Submission

Name:

Location (optional):

Baby’s Name and Birthdate:

Blog address (optional):

Fact regarding loss or infertility (optional):

Recipe Name:

Recipe Instructions (Be specific):

Recipe Book Fundraiser?

For those of you on Facebook, I've already bombarded you with a message for your opinion on me putting together a recipe book with recipes from those in "our" community.  I belong to a couple of communities, so my goal is for it to encompass both major communities to which I belong, the community of loss, and the community of infertility.

For those of you who aren't on Facebook (or at least not friends with me), please read on, and let me know your thoughts.

For a fundraiser to help us raise money for the adoption, my cousin recommended putting together a recipe book with recipes supplies by those of us who are in this exclusive club (that none of us want to belong to).  My goal is to put the recipes in there (giving each person credit for the recipe(s) they submit), facts and information about loss and infertility, resources, and information about how to memorialize your baby's name. I also thought about doing a page with a dedication to all baby's names and possibly blogs (if someone wants their blog mentioned in there).

Would this be something you would be interested in contributing to and/or purchasing?  Please let me know any thoughts or suggestions you might have! 
 
I appreciate everything you all have done for me as we travel on this journey!  I love you all!

Adoption Update

First off - I will post that I understand if you don't want to read about us going through the adoption process.  This blog was always intended to be our journey through parenthood, and when Bailey died, it more became her space.  So, question to my followers...should I leave this as Bailey's space, and start a new one for our future children?  Or continue with the original plan of it being for "Our Jouney to Bailey and Beyond"?

Adoption Update:

We are in "full-steam ahead" mode with the adoption process.  We have actually made another big decision.  We have decided we are going to pursue international adoption and adopt from Korea.  I am half-Korean, with my mom being full blood Korean.  We should get our referral quicker since I am of Korean heritage.  We receive the referral about 3-6 months after we complete our applications, and once we accept our referral, we have to wait on travel.  Travel wait time is estimated at 8-12 months.  We will travel to Seoul, South Korea for about a week and when we come home, our baby will be 14-18 months old.  I am excited about the travel, because I think my parents will go with us, which will be something special for my mom, because she was born in Seoul, and hasn't been back since she was adopted at 6 years old. 

One of Korea's stipulations with adopting is you cannot be more than 30% overweight.  For the first time in years, I qualify and meet this criteria.  Adam however does not...but not by much.  So, we are on Operation:  Lose the Weight!.  Adam has about 10 pounds he needs to lose before we can even apply with this organization.

The agency requires the following though (and I am not 100% sure if it's the agency or the Korea program):  We can't be pursuing infertility treatment and actually recommend preventing, because if I get pregnant our adoption will be put on hold.  The other is we can't be pursuing adoption through another agency.

We can do it though...after 4 years of infertility and 3 1/2 years of infertility treatments...maybe it's time for a small break and see where this road takes us?

A New Year

It's a new year...This time last year, I was so excited because we were expecting our little Bailey.  The weather was horrible and it was miserable...but I didn't care.  This morning, we woke up to finding out Adam's grandmother has had a stroke, and his uncle has been diagnosed with throat cancer.  I didn't sleep well last night, and today my emotions were all over the place.  I started of the morning just crying because I didn't know what else to do.  Why was I crying?  No clue.

This year, I am starting off the year by finding things that we don't need and we don't use, and I am listing it for sale.  Adam's car is close to paid off, and we are trying to figure out how we are going to fund the adoption without going so far in debt that we can't see straight.  But, we are willing to do that, if it's what it takes.

We are cleaning and cleaning, because we need to get everything ready for when we do our homestudy.  We want to make sure it's all just perfect.  I know they aren't coming in here to nit-pick our lives and our home, but something about this makes me want to make sure it's just right.

So, the decluttering begins...I feel like I did when we started packing our lives away in 2009 so we could sell our house.  We wanted to sell our house and buy a bigger house so we could have plenty of room for our family.  Now, I am wanting to sell our things so we can have plenty of room and a little less stress.

Kind of ironic, huh?

This is just a rambling post today...it fits my mood on the first day of 2011...a big jumbled mess.