Encouragement...

Check out my photography blog. I spent last night photographing an adoption finalization party for a sibling group of 3 children. It was truly encouraging for me to see them all there with all their friends and family. It gave me a boost. :)

No one really reads this anyway...right?

Ok so I posted a blog the other day about our adoption and took it down because I felt it was too personal. But then just now I was thinking...."no one really reads this stuff anyway"....so I might as well vent out my excitement and frustration.

We are still waiting, waiting, waiting, to finish our classes with the state. I had thought we would finish this coming February 2009 but it is kind of like those moments when you are young and you think "I'll do this when I am 25". Twenty five seems an eternity away but then you turn around and you are 31! Yikes! So even though I complain about waiting and time being very slow it is actually very fast! February seems so soon!! I am already booking weddings for March and April of 2009 so it seems as if it is around the corner. I am terrified of adding a new child....just the unknown....trying to balance it all. But I do find myself longing for her. I see other children, of all ages, and think "I could love her". I am not so much worried about the attachment to her, although others in my family circle somehow think that is the biggest issue, I am more worried about balancing time, activities, attention, ect....between the two of them. I think I have that Mom guilt where you love your child that you have now so much that you can't imagine loving anyone else that way or somehow sharing/dividing that love. I know it is common and I will get over it but it is a weird feeling.

In the meantime we have deceided to sponsor a child through AHOPE! AHOPE provides support, medicine, and education to children in Africa with HIV/AIDS. I am so excited about our photo and info on our sponsored child coming! I received an email today saying that everything should arrive within a week. I am one of those people that are adopting because I want to give a child a home, love, tradition and opportunities that might otherwise not have them. I feel that this is something I am meant to do...that it is part of my purpose here. I can't really explain it. Anyway, I feel that by becoming a sponsor the pain/anxiousness of my waiting may be eased. That my soul will be able to rest a little knowing that there is a child out there who's life I am contributing to in some small way. I plan to sponsor as long as possible!

Here is a link if anyone is interested in finding out more about AHOPE.

Random Update...

Here it is in a nutshell:

I just finished teaching another quarter of art history at the college. There are talks of a photo program beginning in the fall and I am a candidate for the job so keep your fingers crossed.

I have shot 5 weddings in the last 7 weeks and have 3 more in a row (every Saturday) to come. So needless to say much of my computer time is spent editing instead of posting blogs and surfing myspace :(

As for our adoption news. We are at a slight stand still. My husband is worried about the ecomony and supporting two children and I am worried about age differences. We are accepting 14months or younger but I have it in my head we will be presented with a 14 month old. I don't know why but that number is just stuck in my head. Owen is nearly 17 months old and I would like them to be about 2 years apart. So the question is....When do we finish our classes that are required by the state? After our classes are done we could wait a day or months, there is no real timeline. Our social worker wants us to go ahead and finish the classes ASAP. She says that we could reject the presented children until we were ready.....uhhhh...I don't know that I can do that. I can't imagine being presented a child that needs a home and saying "Umm I think we will pass and wait for the next one". So I kind of want to wait until we are absolutely ready and then finish our courses.

So that is where we are.....


Here is a photo from last weekend! Enjoy! This one is for you Julie!


Me, hard at work on June 7

A Burden On My Heart That I Just Couldn't Shake....

For a few months now I have had a heavy burden on my heart that I could not get rid of no matter what I did. I have felt this tugging on my soul to explore in detail the idea of adopting a child from the foster care system. I kept thinking about all the students that passed through my doors while I was a teacher that had been failed by society and how their lives could have been so very different if only for different circumstances. The main reason that Dustin and I want to adopt is not due to infertility issues, we simply want to give a loving, stable home to a child that needs one. A family is built through love and I do not feel that I need to give birth to a child to love them from the deepest parts of me. This is what lead us to adoption in the first place.

As most of you know we had been pursuing an Ethiopian adoption for an infant girl. Today however, we went to an Orientation meeting with our local county to learn more about adopting through foster care. All I can really say is that I felt as if a huge brick had been lifted from me. I began to cry talking with the social worker about our future daughter and the path to building our family. She was wonderful and understanding about my fears and hopes with following this particular path. After a lot of questions, discussion, and research me and Dustin feel this is the path we need to follow. I do feel a bit saddened about the little girl we would have had from Ethiopia but for our family this feels right.

We are still going to request a girl 0-14months. We are open to any race and most likely will receive a presentation for a child of African American decent, meaning AA or biracial. The reason for this is that the majority of children in foster care are of AA descent in our state, one website said 51%, and since we are open we will most likely be matched with a non Caucasian child (the Caucasian children are often adopted much faster and matched more easily with other families).

I hope that as we follow this path that we retain the friendships we have acquired through our Ethiopian support group. I hope that all our children will become friends, although our daughter may not come from a foreign country she will still be in a multi racial family and experience many of the same situations as our Ethiopian counterparts.



Thank you to all of you that have and are supporting our family through this journey.

Please continue to use One Cause! It not only helps with our adoption it helps others through the National Adopt Foundation complete their own families!

Home Cookin' via Africa!

Last night was my first attempt at cooking an African Meal! I want to start incorporating these meals into our lives so that they will just become apart of us. So once our daughter is home this will be our normalcy. Just another meal. I want to blend our cultures so that our family will have it's own culture and traditions.
I was a little concerned about how it would turn out. I used lots of different spices that are not a typical blend for the foods we are used to here in the US. It was a lot more complicated and time consuming than my usual Rachel Ray recipes but, to our surprise it was really good! My husband had two huge plates! I will most definitely make it again and am looking forward to more experiments in the kitchen!


Chunky Mashed Veggies
Sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, green beans and a lot of spices including berbere!


Bobotie
As I was making this I thought it would end up to be something like a meat loaf but turned out to be something different completely. I am not sure how to describe the taste but trust me you should try it!


The finished result. I did serve it with soft bread too just in case it was a little too much spice for my guests!


It was a little too spicy for baby Owen but he was happy just the same!

Freaking Out About Finances!

Ok so here it goes, We have nothing really standing in our way of adopting except money. It is expensive! I want to raise $10,000 and think we can swing the rest on our own but that amount seems monstrous to me right now! I have ONECAUSE (SEE TOP RIGHT OF BLOG) and we are planning a big yard sale in the spring, more on that later, and now my newest scheme.......recycling!!!

Yep you heard it right, recycling. I know this is something I should do anyway but this adoption has pushed me over the edge into a huge pit of aluminum. I am collecting cans and going to turn them in for cash. I guess it helps me and the environment at the same time but I must be honest. As I was crushing cans in the cold on the back patio this morning I just felt overwhelmed about all that we will have to pay......HELP!

So if any of my friends want to collect cans at their home I will pick them up, crush them and put the money towards our goal!!!!

A Litte Pick Me Up!

We are at the very beginning stages of adopting. I am reading a ton of literature about trans racial adoption and planning how to deal with the paperwork and finances. In the meantime I often have dreams about us seeing our little girl in person for the first time. I am excited. I think about Owen and his sister playing, us at the park, the zoo, or dancing to the XM Ethel channel in the living room.

Needless to say I have told many about our decision to adopt. I guess I expected people to react in a joyous manner but that is not often the case. People generally respond "oh, yeah I heard about that", "you can't have anymore kids?", "isn't that expensive?" and one actually asked what children from Ethiopia looked liked and once I told her they are African, her response...(long pause)"oh".

But today I went to my old job to drop off a wedding album for a client (she works where I used to teach) and saw many old friends and coworkers. As is often once you start having children the question on everyones mind..."you gonna have any more???" Once I told them about the adoption many of the above responses followed.

However, two of my coworkers were particularly excited for us. They asked about the process, about the children of Ethiopia and talked about Owen becoming a big brother. I told them of some of the other responses I had received and one of these women told me that we were going to bring a little girl into our home and love her. She will be loved and that is what matters and will make us a bigger and more complete family. She said she knows our little girl will be beautiful, just beautiful.

These women I respect and spent a great deal of time with while I was employed there. Their words meant a lot to me.

If they read this I want to say Thank You. It gave me a boost to stay excited and motivated through the very long process that awaits.

I would like to say thank you to Heather and Laura too for all the encouragement.
Your excitement for me from the both of you means a lot.

Now lets start buying cute sun dresses and overalls so that at least my kids will look cute when I am at Walmart in my sweatpants!!! haha

Big Decisions!

We have been debating for a very long time the option of adoption. I believe we have reached a decision to do it! We received our adoption packet last week and are reading tons of literature on the subject. We are still reading and talking about the different programs available to assist us in this venture. I am excited about the possibilities.

We are hoping to adopt a little girl and begin our paperwork next year. We want Owen, our son, to be near the age of 3years old when she will come home to us.

Names have become a big topic in the house as well: Zoe, Rory, and Dustin's favorite Meg...I am not sold on this yet.

We have also registered with OneCause which is a fund raiser to help us pay the enormous expenses that will rack up with the whole adoption process. We would love for any of you to register with OneCause on our behalf. It is a way for you to shop and also help us with our adoption while also donating a portion of your purchase to the National Adoption Foundation. You must register our email in order to aid in our fund raiser: catherineritchie@bellsouth.net

We are excited about our growing family!