We Know How to Do Crazy

2004: We buy a house and decide it would be fun to remodel it while planning for our wedding. We get married and subsequently enter into significant changes in our careers and schooling. I decide to chase a hurricane and make Joel pay for it. We decide we're not going get a dog for two years (y'know...cuz we wanted to be stable in our marriage and all). Two weeks later, we end up driving home from Michigan with a free dog we got at a garage sale.

2005: We have this crazy idea to go to Kenya to love on women and kids affected by HIV/AIDS. We decide to finish our basement...ourselves.

2006: We go to Kenya. It rocks us to the core. Joel gets deathly ill there. We return and say to ourselves "we're never going back." Naturally, we decide this while trying to complete our basement project, which by this time has taken about 10 years off of Joel's life.

2007: We return to Kenya.

2008: Hey! Wouldn't it be fun to write a Master's thesis and start a new job while co-founding a non-profit organization? And then backpack through Europe?! Yup! We return and Joel loses me to 75% work travel for the next year.

2009: I change roles at work and take on significantly more responsibility whilst we plan, educate, and eventually lead a team of 18 people to Kenya and back (and get them all good 'n' food poisoned just before we board a plane for home).

2010: We sell our first home (miraculously) and buy the one house that I kinda hated. We spend the entire summer gutting it and putting it back together again. We eat lots of Hubbard Ave. pies to console ourselves after months of sleeping in drywall dust. I threaten to leave Joel and take the dog with me until the house is finished.

2011: The house is still not finished (but I love it now!). We decide to return to Kenya on a whim. Just before we leave we deposit an application and a non-refundable check to an adoption agency. I go to the Philippines and Thailand with two weeks notice. We begin our adoption home study in September and are told we could have a baby by the end of the year. To which we laugh hysterically and reply "...like 2011?! Uhhhh, thanks, but no."

Today: A pregnant woman in Chicago is looking for a couple to adopt her baby. Her only stipulation is that the couple not currently have other children. Her social worker calls our social worker: "Know anybody that fits this birth mother's request?" He sees only one on his list...us. Despite our currently incomplete home study, we get the call. We laugh hysterically (again). We have a moment of calm and clarity and decide to go for it. Our portfolio photo-book (which serendipitously was delivered just yesterday) will be sent to Chicago tomorrow. The birth mother will have a few couples to choose from. If she chooses us, and if our meeting with her were to go well, we could be the proud parents of a little African-American girl. Oh yeah...she's due in 2-3 weeks.

"This is completely crazy...which makes it so perfect for us."
-Joel Hassenzahl, October 2nd, 2011