Stephen & Heather Kilbourn

Friends & Family,

We are SO excited to share with you that sweet Ezra West came home on July 21st. At SEVEN weeks old, he's already wearing 6-9 months clothing.

It was the biggest surprise to get a phone call from our social worker on the way home from my (Heather) weekly visit with him in NW Ft. Worth. I was about 20 minutes into my hour and fifteen minute drive back to Dallas to pickup Noah from a friend's house when I received the call from our social worker at Hope Cottage telling me to pull over because she has some news to share. It took 10 agonizing minutes to pull over because I was in the express lane on the highway. After I pulled over, she conferenced Stephen in and shared that the foster mom (who's house I just left) had a family emergency and needed to leave town unexpectedly to care for a family member. They had made the decision to place Ezra with us earlier than expected (as opposed to transferring him to a yet another foster home - YAY). To say we were shocked and overjoyed would be an understatement. We had been praying that he would be home before his 2 month birthday on August 1st.

The social worker told me (Heather) that in order to go back and pick him up, I would need to find a FedEx print center nearby and get some paperwork printed, signed and emailed to her before I could legally travel with him. While I raced to FedEx and then on to pickup Ezra, our social worker picked up Stephen at our house and Noah from the friend's house and met me at Hope Cottage for our big placement signing day (the paperwork seems endless in the adoption process).

It was an epic day for us. And we were NOT prepared for it. I left the house at 7:45am that morning to get Noah dropped off and head over to the foster home for my weekly 2 hour visit with Ezra at the foster home. On the drive, I remember feeling weary of this routine and sad that the distance between us (Ezra / our family) had drug on for so long that I no longer felt connected to Ezra like I did during the first month of his life. I was hoping for placement at the beginning of August in the very best case scenario based on the limited knowledge that I had about the process.

We got home around 5pm after having skipped lunch, and picked up pizza on the way home. Since there was so much uncertainty in the timing of Ezra being able to come home, I had kept tags on all the clothes I bought and had boxes of stuff piled in his crib for storage. I had already exchanged all the newborn AND 0-3 month clothing I bought for 6-9 month sizes since they were apparently feeding him growth hormones at the foster home, LOL. That night we scrambled to do laundry and get him set up in for the night before crashing in complete exhaustion and relief to finally have our boy home.

We are adjusting well in the chaos of being a new family of four + 2 crazy pups. Noah is already thriving in the big brother role and we are so happy to have our boys together at last. We thank God for sustaining us in the wait and for our community of family and friends who held us up in prayer, hugs, and encouragement. We love you all!

The wait continues, but HE IS HERE!! Ezra West was born on June 1st at 12:32pm. We were there for the birth and spent the first 6 days of his life snuggling him in the NICU. We will forever cherish those memories.

He was discharged in good health to a foster family on June 6th and will remain with them until the legal risk period is over (~32-35 days). We are thankful to have visits with him during this time period and are anxiously awaiting his arrival to our home in early July.

Noah got to meet Ezra in the NICU and he's already proving to be the best big brother and helper. We cannot wait to watch their relationship grow.

The wait is almost over!

We are excited to announce that we'll be welcoming another baby boy to our family VERY soon! He is due to be born sometime in mid-May.

Two days before Heather's recent foot surgery, we received the news from our adoption agency that an expectant mom had viewed our profile book and selected us. To say we were shocked would be an understatement. Covid-19 had slowed things down to a screeching halt in the adoption world and our agency hasn't had a placement since last September. We had grown weary of the wait and had set a deadline of June to re-evaluate whether to stay in the waiting process for another child or move on and accept having an only child. We have been in limbo trying to grow our family since 2016 and it had felt like many aspects of our life have been on hold since then.

As many of you know, we have been on this journey to start & grow our family for more than 7 years through foster care and adoption and we are over the moon excited for Noah to have a baby brother. Since we haven't had a tiny infant in our home in many years so it feels like we are starting from scratch. Heather has been working hard to make a cozy space in our home for a new little person and figure out what we need to survive life with a newborn + a toddler in our tiny home.

Thank you for joining with us in our joy and excitement as we welcome another child to our family.

PS: Heather's foot should be mostly healed up the week before baby boy is expected to come home. :)

January 2021 update: You may have heard…We are adopting another baby!

This is our fourth (and final?) time going through the licensing process to adopt a child. Here we are again after a crazy couple of years. As many of you know, we began pursuing private adoption in 2019 after fostering 5 babies and then Noah Wilder came into our lives by way of a friend who was fostering him at the time. We met him in February of 2020 and left private adoption to pursue his adoption through foster care right when the pandemic was ramping up. We forfeited quite a bit of money when we pulled out of private adoption to pursue Noah's adoption and have worked hard to save for adoption #2. I (Heather) always saw us with two children, but the cost and time factor felt overwhelming. God provided more than we could have imagined with Noah’s adoption and we are hopeful that He will do it again with this one. We are really excited about the possibility of giving Noah a sibling that can share the special bond of adoption. We are miraculously in the "home stretch" of making it happen.

So many of you have committed to be a part of our journey in one way or another and we are so grateful. We want to give those of you who wish to give financially to our adoption, an opportunity to do so. As a part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign so that your donation will be tax-deductible.

It may be shocking to hear that adoption related costs can easily total $40,000 or more. We have set a goal of $25,000 to help ease the financial burden. Many of you have expressed a desire to contribute and it is exciting and humbling for us to bring you along in this journey. We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around baby Kilbourn as he/she grows up.

**If you choose to donate through the Adopt Together link using a credit card, you will get a receipt immediately. If you donate $250 or more by check, you will receive a receipt at the end of the year or you may email adopt together and request a receipt.

**OUR STORY…in case you haven't heard**

Stephen was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia when he was 9 years old and endured 2.5 years of chemotherapy with a 50% chance of survival. Fast forward 25 years and 2 years into marriage. In January of 2015, we found out that we are not able to have biological children due to the long-term effects of the chemotherapy treatment he endured as a child.

In 2017, we started the 5 month long process to become licensed foster parents hoping to adopt a child in need of a forever home. In March 2018 we received our first placement. Three babies came and went over those next several months. We grew attached, re-oriented our worlds around baby routines, case worker visits, and doctor appointments and as soon as we felt like we were getting our feet under us with a new baby in tow, we found ourselves adjusting again to an empty home. It was discouraging and disorienting. Stephen was laid off right after baby #3 left and we took an extended break to re-evaluate. Once we were both gainfully employed again, we decided to give fostering one more shot and welcomed a sibling pair into our home. Once again, we dropped everything and focused all of our attention on healing trauma and advocating for these two beautiful babies. Early on, we were told that they would not be returning to mom and adoption was looking promising. Several months later, things shifted and we kept being told they were leaving. But they stayed. We lived in limbo for 9 months, trying to selflessly give ourselves to parenting these babies, loving them as our own flesh and blood, knowing that we could get the call any day that they were returning to their mom. It felt like waiting for a loved one with chronic illness to die so you can finally start grieving. In September 2018, the call finally came and we packed their things into the case worker's car and kissed them goodbye and sighed.

Relief. Healing can begin and are finally able to move on and figure out what next. Time did its thing and we both took advantage of counseling to help us process the loss and take steps forward. Then God through us a surprise when we weren't expecting it. Noah entered our lives in March of 2020.

We finalized our adoption of Noah at the end of 2020, and we returned to adoption agency at the beginning of 2021. We are now on the waiting list. We are looking forward to sharing a lifetime of adventures with our future baby Kilbourn #2.