First-thank you for the outpouring of love and support for our baby on the way. I promise I have more posts to come about that little bundle of joy.

Right now is the time to celebrate our first baby.

Grace.

How have I been blogging for four years, and I have never written about Grace’s adoption? I wrote about Crosby’s adoption here.

Well FIVE years ago TODAY, we brought home this 10 month old little lady.Look how itty bitty she is!

We had just gotten married a few months before. We had no reason to be looking for dogs if I am going to be honest. Tom had just decided to enlist in the Army since the job market was poor, so we knew it was only a matter of time for things to change.

But we decided to look at shelter pages on a whim. We both had grown up with dogs, and we figured it wouldn’t hurt to just see what puppies were out there. (How we thought we wouldn’t actually end up with a dog still makes me laugh.)

We had decided since we had a one bedroom apartment while living on campus, that we would look at smaller dogs. We had settled on a Boston Terrier as our first choice.

These are highly popular dogs, so we knew it may take us awhile to find one. And we were dead set on getting one from a shelter. Rescuing is the only way we wanted to go. It was a couple weeks after we started looking-casually-that we found a shelter that had a Bostie, and it was about an hour away. We called that day to inquire about that dog. He was a two year old Boston Terrier who met our specifications of being potty trained. They warned us that there were others looking at him so we needed to come and fill out an application quickly.

That was a Friday afternoon.

We drove the hour to this shelter on Saturday morning ready to check out our potential puppy. However, they had already adopted out the Boston Terrier. Tom was so upset because we had talked to the shelter the night before and told them we would be there when they opened in the morning. They didn’t say anything confirming that someone was adopting him after they closed Friday. We were both a little devastated and frustrated we drove the hour.

Tom wanted to turn around and write this place off since we felt they weren’t honest with us. I persuaded him to at least take a look at the other dogs there since we had made the drive there.

And there she was.

We played with her for a little bit, and we just knew. She was ours.

Her previous owners surrendered her because she ran away all time. (She has never ran away from us… We believe that there may have been some abuse/abandonment as well with the anxiety we have had to work through with her.)

We put in an application before we left. It was heartbreaking to leave her in that drabby room.

We would have taken her home right then, but we had to get approval from my supervisors since we were living on campus. (Which we got almost immediately-Bless the ISU staff for supporting their hall directors pet endeavors.)

Tom called the shelter first thing Monday morning so we could secure driving up that day to get her. Then this shelter told Tom that someone else had put in the application for her before we did, but they were looking at other dogs so we would have to wait until they made a decision. Insert a man on a mission. Tom basically told them that we would come today and get her, and then the other family could adopt another dog. So either they could adopt out two dogs or just one, their choice.

We went up that afternoon and picked her up!

Her name was Izzy, but since she was only 10 months old, we changed it to Grace.

Grace has gotten us through a lot of things, and has pretty much been there for our whole marriage.

She has moved with us three times to three different states. She has endured basic training and a deployment. She has helped me train for half marathons. She has watched us get several jobs, and supported us unconditionally when we both hit rock bottom. She has gone from destroying cages with her anxiety to being able to be out roaming our basement freely while we are gone. She has been a trooper with adding to our family with Crosby and George.

She has been our Saving Grace in so many ways.

I cannot believe it has been five years since we got her. And I cannot imagine life without her.

We love you Gracie girl!