Our Decision to Adopt

As many of you may now know, we are adopting from Ethiopia. As long as I can remember we have always wanted to either adopt or we were actually considering becoming foster parents for a while. After our daughter was born we both knew we were done having biological children and knew that if the time ever came to want more children we would then adopt. After many years of tossing the idea back and forth we finally decided to step forward and take the plunge of adopting. Often times I would ask Matt if he wanted to adopt and he would reply that he wasn't ready and there were times that he would ask me and I would say I wasn't ready yet. After J's accident this past summer and spending days in the hospital and weeks of recovering we both decided that life is way too precious to not do the things you have dreamed about doing. We both love children and knew that it was now time to live our dreams and not just dream them. After much research and praying we decided that Ethiopia was the country for us. The need is so great there and every time I would look at the paper work for the Ethiopian adoption my heart would literally sink. To later find out that Matt was having the same feelings as well. Telling our children was so fun. We picked them up from a friends Birthday party and had some baby booties wrapped up for them to open. When they opened the gifts their jaws dropped and eyes got huge. A (our daughter) had said " excuse me for a minute please" and went into the other room and screamed at the top of her lungs. Then she came back into the room and said, "okay, now I feel much better". She then continued to say that she had always wanted us to adopt and the she could not believe it. J was just in shock and said that he was so happy he didn't know what to say. After explaining that we were adopting from Ethiopia they were both even more excited. Telling the rest of our family was fun and they all took the news as we had expected.