An update...Finally

Yes, we are still alive. Life has just gotten very hectic the past couple of weeks, and as a result, the poor blog has been a bit neglected.

So, what’s going on with the adoption? Well, the big news is that we’ve almost completed our training requirements. We finished up the online training last week (yay!!) and then attended Lifelink’s in-person training this past Saturday.

The training was 10am-3pm, with an hour break for lunch. A child psychologist spoke for two hours in the morning, and while we probably don’t see eye-to-eye with him on everything, overall we enjoyed his talk. It was insightful and gave us new ways of thinking about some things, as well as some tips we can hopefully use with our kids down the road. After lunch, we discussed the importance of keeping your child’s birth culture as part of his/her life and some practical ways to do that. Then, there were two adoptive families that talked about their adoption experience and answered questions. Both families have completed adoptions in the past few months – one from Korea and one from the Philippines. It was interesting to hear their stories and see their pictures – and their cute little boys!

There were probably about 50 people at the training, and we had a chance to meet and talk with some of them. Most - probably around 75% - are adopting from Korea. There were also families adopting from China, Bulgaria, Russia, Jamaica, and the United States. I do wish the training schedule had given us more opportunity to get to know the other families, but overall it was a good day.

In our “regular” (non-adoption) lives, we’re getting ready for the holidays. We’re hoping to wrap up Christmas shopping this week (and we’re horribly far behind this year – it’s usually done by now) and then we’re putting up the Christmas tree and other decorations this weekend. Next week we’re looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with my sister and brother-in-law (yay!!)

On that note, I think I’m going to start using this blog to share the day-to-day goings on in our lives (in addition to adoption news). Part of my reason for blogging is to have a record of our lives during the adoption process, and our lives, believe it or not (and it’s hard for us to remember sometimes), are not only about this adoption. So, for those of you getting our blog posts via email or RSS feed, if you’re thinking you signed up to get adoption updates, not to see pictures of our Christmas tree (and yes, those pictures will be coming soon), feel free to use the little unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email – no hard feelings :)

Why Wouldn't I?

One thing we've noticed since announcing our adoption plans is that everyone now shares their adoption stories with us -- stories about their own adoption as a child, about adopting their children, about how they've considered adoption for their family, or about a friend or family member who has adopted. We never tire of these stories and love to hear the many paths that lead families to adopt and especially how adoption has blessed these families!

An adoption/blog friend posted this video a few days ago, and I absolutely love it. Peter Eide does a great job of describing his family's desire to adopt and what a blessing it's been to all of them. I love the title of his new song -- Why Wouldn't I? Instead of wondering if we should adopt or why we should adopt, maybe we should be asking the question why shouldn't we?



For those of you getting our blog posts via email, you won't get the video, so you can click HERE to see it.