If you haven’t seen already but our little family was featured on CBC and CBC Parent. How did that happen? Well I am still kind of asking myself the same thing! It really is a whirlwind of events so I thought I would share them for those of you who care as well as I will link our little video so you can see it if you haven’t already! But let me say we have had an overwhelming response from so many even people we don’t know and it is super encouraging. Sharing your story and being open and vulnerable with the world is always a little nerve-racking but we just believe we were giving this opportunity for a reason and we just used it to hopefully share hope for mommy’s and daddy’s in waiting as well as bring awareness about fostering.
Back in January of 2017 a friend asked me if I had submitted our story to CBC for their upcoming campagain about “What makes your Canadian Family special?”. I said no since I knew nothing about it. Well that sweet friend emailed the company that was doing the interviews and shared a bit about our story and so we were contacted and asked to fill out a form and send it back that day since the deadline cut off had already happened and than we would be contacted if they wanted to interview us. So I filled out the form that evening sent it off and waited and we didn’t hear anything so I thought nothing really about it. I mean Canada isn’t tiny and I was sure there were lots of really cool entries. We had a vacation booked for early February for 2 weeks so off the kids and I went and Tom was going to join us a bit later. We had been away almost a week when I got a random email from the company asking if we could set up a Skype interview that CBC had really liked what they had heard about our story so far and they wanted to interview us to see how we would do on camera and to ask us some more questions. So we scheduled the interview to take place in a couple days once Tom joined me on vacation so with the 3 hour time change we made the Skype interview work and after that was finished we were told IF CBC choose us we would need to be in Toronto on Feb 20 for filming. No big deal right? Except we flew home from our vacation on Feb 19! So sure enough we found out on the 17th that we had been chosen to share our story and so we were to be in Toronto on Monday at lunchtime for filming and they asked if we could bring the kids. The kids? Yes the same kids that would be suffering from vacation jet leg and to be honest I had know idea how my 1, 3, 4 year old would handle all the lights and cameras but really they make us a family so it only made sense to have them be part of the filming. So I tried to outfit plan while being thousands of miles away from our closets back home and we arrived back into Ontario late Sunday night and crawled into bed for some sleep. I really had no idea what to expect when we arrived in Toronto on Monday but the team was so welcoming and warm and made the whole thing fun and super comfortable. After interviewing Tom and I for an hour or so we brought the kids in and they were so well behaved (and I didn’t even bribe them). They were really shy at first but than started to talk a bit. After we finished filming they had said they thought the release date would be some time late May or early June – so we waited with anticipation to see what they had captured. Well May, June, July came and went and nothing. I tried to find out where in production the video was but heard nothing back so we came to the conclusion that we must have no made the cut for some reason they had chose not to share our story which was a little disappointing cause we really wanted to see the video but thats life right and it was still a super cool experience to have been through and all the crazy timing of it all. Well fast forward to a few weeks ago when all of a sudden I started getting texts and messages and dm’s from family, friends and followers and saying they saw my family pop up on their feed. So sure enough our video had been released and our family video was on the front page. What a very crazy and surreal thing to see! I waited patiently (ok with butterflies and excitement) for Tom to get home from work so we could watch it together! Than once he got him with our kids squished on the couch with us we all watched it and of course I cried. Its just a short video (which is crazy that over 1.5 hrs of filming boiled down to a few minutes) but they did a great job of encompassing our hearts and our story! Our journey to parenthood was the hardest and most painful thing I have ever gone through but my 3 beautiful babies have been worth it all and I would do it again for them! My prayer has always been that sharing our story would give someone else out their suffering through infertility hope don’t give up hope even when some days thats all you can hold onto! And we want to be a voice for adoption and fostering and as always we are more than happy to share our experiences and stories with you so never be afraid to ask us anything!! If you missed the video I will link it here Our Story