The Never Ending Blog!!

Holy smokes. Will this blog ever end?? Lots has happened since last March. Here's the short of it. I sold all of my Carter's baby items except his crib and rocking horse. It was painful but it had to be done. I needed to heal and ridding my basement of all the baby stuff did help me. Then, I started to run. Thanks to my marathon running friend Jesi. I used running to set accomplishable goals for myself. I wanted to run my first 5K before my 10th wedding anniversary (Aug. 23rd). I ended up running two 5K's before I turned 32 (July 28th). Ran a third in Nov.! It helped me tremendously. It felt good wanting to do something and succeeding at it with hard work!
We lost our Saint Bernard in in Nov. 2013. It was really, really difficult putting her down. She lost all function in her legs. It was one of the worst moments in my life that I will never, ever forget. Some time passed and Scott tells me he is ready to start process of adoption (Gracie's passing had a lot to do with his readiness to adopt). We explore 3 agencies and choose NOAS- Northeast Ohio Adoption Service. We choose to adopt older child because
A. Adopting an infant from private agency is expensive. REALLY EXPENSIVE! and
B. If I wanted an infant (which I kept saying I didn't) I would just go back to RE and that was something I was not willing to do- financially or emotionally. 
Scott and I spent pretty much all weekends in March 2014 taking 36 hours of pre-placement adoption classes. Here they prepare you for parenting an adopted child and explain what kind of situations/circumstances these kids come from and how they might act out because of these situations. It wasn't fun. Not fun at all. After classes were over we set up our first home study visit. Our appointed social worker came one morning in May. We talked, she handed us a mountain of paperwork, she toured the house, etc. and we rescheduled our 2nd visit for a few weeks later. After she left I had a epic melt down. I thought to myself. I'm not cut out for this! I feel like I'm crazy for doing this! What if I'm making a huge mistake? What if I'm going to ruin my marriage? What if I'm going to expose Carter to dangerous, explicit behaviors?
I thought of all these questions before this home visit and they never stopped me from moving forward with the adoption but now they were.
I also felt like going back to the RE and putting my feet in stirrups would be less invasive than the process of conducting a family assessment/home study. Something just didn't feel right. So I called our worker and was honest. She was really sweet and appreciative of my honesty with her. I told her we contemplating going back to RE. She understood, didn't make me feel guilty/bad, wished us luck and said she will be there if and when we ready.
Through all this- Scott and I are on same page. This is why he is my best friend. We come to conclusion that we are never going to be 100% ready to adopt until we do IVF. I am almost 33. We don't have tons of time. There are risks with both Adoption and IVF. At this point in our lives we would rather take the IVF risk. We both yearn to see another creation of our love for one another.
OK. Now what? Rob a bank? How the heck are we coming up with the money for IVF???? I know! I know! Remember this commercial a long time ago?"...up to my eyeballs". This is how we feel about trying to grow our family.
Bottom line is here: NO amount of money is worth our happiness or piece of mind. I would of paid 4x's the amount I spent to get Carter here.
$15,000 is my lifetime (I WILL live to 100) is just a "dent", a "bump", a "hiccup". But right now on June 12, 2014- it feels like Mount Everest! And I'm really nervous to climb!