How did you come to adoption?

This was the question that was first asked of us in our first home study. How did you come to adopt? We sat there and thought of our previous year...

We had started to think about how we could have a family. For those of you who don't know, we aren't able to conceive a biological child through traditional methods...in other words, our pathway to making a family does not cross with pregnancy. Our two options were to use in-vitro fertilization (IVF) with a surrogate mother or adoption. When weighing both options, ultimately we knew that adoption was for us. With so many newborns and children needing loving and nurturing homes, it is only fitting that we could provide this.

Was it an easy decision? Definitely not. For anyone who has the desire to start a family, you go into it with many hopes and dreams. What would the baby look like? Would the baby have my hair or his smile? IVF and Surrogacy could have possibly provided this for us. But at what cost? Hormone injections, medications for weeks only to have a next to no chance of success. It's truly disheartening to discover how difficult it is to start a family for those who have difficulties conceiving. It can also be very hard to let go of previous plans and visions of how your family would be. However, in retrospect, adoption seems like the only answer.

Thus, after asked the question in our first home study, Bryan and I were able to reassure each other and our story of how we came to choose adoption. We are very excited, though apprehensive, to take the not so traveled road to becoming parents.

One persons junk is another persons....

..ADOPTION GARAGE SALE!!!

Yeah, kind of cheesy I suppose, but we have been reading up on this fun stuff for quite some time. Raising money for adoption is, or seems to be, fundamental because, well, it is REALLY costly, but completely worth it. So...

Sarah and I had an idea to invite friends and family of ours (probably most of our readership - yeah YOU) to get rid of their household stuff by doing a combined multi-family sale. We thought it would be a good way to get people together and also get rid of stuff they have been meaning to - while also making some money. We also thought to include some fun games and prizes along with a lemonade stand and bake sale. Needless to say it went over really, really well and we have to thank everyone involved for their tremendous support and care. When we presented the total at the end of the day it was hard not to get choked up, but I managed pretty well. In total we raised just under 1500 dollars and well on our way to making our first payment.

We are planning some more interesting fund raisers, so stay close. See more pictures of the event below. Sorry if the pictures are small..