Guest: Alaska Adoption Family

Mach Family Adopts from Ethiopia!! Geez, where to even start, you know? I’m sure you do! I’m sure your readers do too … becoming “paper pregnant” and choosing adoption is much like have biological kids, I think … people say “well how did you know?” “what told you, you were ready?” “what made you think, now” … I don’t know that any of us can answer that, no matter how our children come to us, but we do know one thing: we have another baby that is out there, waiting to join our family.

Adoption has always been on our minds … and our hearts even more so. It’s been years in the making, slowing growing our family and then, this past winter (Dec ’09) it was a full-blown moment of looking at each other with a nod and at first, a silent agreement … you know the look. When you know what the other person is thinking; what they are feeling. We rang in the New Year knowing we were ready to add to our family and without hesitation, began our journey toward adoption.

We’ve “officially” been in paper-chase mode since February of 2010 and as of September 2010 went on the wait list with our agency. Yes, we’ve hit the three month mark and feel ever-so eager & excited to bring our little one home.

We feel so blessed & amazed by the love & support we’ve received in our community, in our circle of family & friends, and from those across the country (and even in other countries worldwide). Since November 12th, we’ve been running an online auction that pretty much allows anyone, anywhere to join in! Between a summer garage sale, flat donations to build our puzzle and the auction donations & fundraising, we are slowly but surely chipping away at travel expenses (all the way from Alaska! yes, part of the huge reason we are fundraising – we have a looooong journey ahead of us!). It’s open season on the items that are left – just in time to put a few more gifts under the Christmas tree for anyone who still has some shopping to do!

We also have a teacher-friend who has opened up her ENTIRE Discovery Toys store to us! You can browse & buy directly from this link here: http://www.discoverytoyslink.com/esuite/home/Linda
Or go to our blog (http://ethiopianalaskanfamily.blogspot.com/2010/12/discovery-toys.html) to read a little more … it even caught the attention of the Discovery Toys Twitter team – how fun is that!

Sometimes I often wish that I could ‘quickly sum up’ our adoption journey … but the truth is, many, many great things can’t be ‘summed up’ in just a few simple words. They are guided by the people we’ve ‘met along the way’, that we didn’t even know were a part of our journey (i.e., like an old neighbor’s son, who was adopted from, you guessed it Ethiopia and shares my birth-date) but looking back now, clearly are. It’s life’s simple reminder: that we are all a part of this together … our lives are all inter-woven, weaving webs & stories that connect us, sometimes in ways that we’ll never know.

We are excited to weave the next chapter in our story … and watch it unfold, even better than we could have imagined.

Here’s our blog: http://ethiopianalaskanfamily.blogspot.com/

{Our home away from home on the web}