Cookbook & Creole

There is only so much you can do during a wait like this to keep yourself sane.  I'm trying to channel it in productive ways the best I can!  I just bought a Haitian Cookbook and am excited to try a few things out of it! I also registered Mark and I for a Haitian Creole class to start this summer!!! I got the workbook/dictionary in the mail yesterday and am really excited to learn some basic Creole for when we go on our socialization visit to Haiti and meet our little girl.

Wishes and waiting

Today I took Max to the park. Just him and me. It was one of those days that I remembered what a short amount of time I have left with him at home before he'll be at school every day and I soaked it in. It was really nice, we played together at the park and laid on a blanket together and stared up at the branches of the tree above us. It really was a perfect Hallmark movie-esque diversion from the normally hectic schedule of life that we bounce between.

Finally we decided we were tired and walked home. He still lets me hold his hand and so we walked hand in hand home and periodically he'd break away to scramble to gather the best sunshine yellow dandelions to present to me...until he ran across whispy seeded dandelions. He picked one and blew it to make a wish. I asked Max what he wished for and without skipping a beat he said, "Two baby girls. I'm going to get two little sisters."

While that's not likely to happen, I just thought that it was the sweetest cap to our little outing.  For a four year old whose life revolves around whether our pantry does or does not have fruit snacks, when he can play with his friends, and if he can play a game on my phone...the fact that without hesitation he wished not only for his little sister, but to double the wish for emphasis was just so sweet that I had to share it here.

I also got to thinking and realized that when we began this adoption journey Max wasn't even quite 16 months old yet. We felt an urgency to start the process when we did and since we knew it would take years to complete we weren't shy about starting while Max was still very young. However, because we did and have been talking about "baby girl" for over 3 1/2 years now Max can't even remember a time when we didn't talk about her. While the process has felt long for us, I can't even imagine how long it must feel to Max.

Which reminds me of one more story like this that I have to share like this from yesterday!! I told Max that we needed to stay home from the gym yesterday because my tummy was hurting too much. Max got very excited and with a lot of expression perked up and asked, "Does that mean baby girl is coming today?!!!" I realized that he thought baby girl was coming from my tummy. I had to re-explain that she is growing in someone else's tummy, etc, etc. I guess it's been a while since we talked about that. It was just pretty cute/funny to see him jump so quickly to that.

I also wonder if all the intense amount of feelings/thoughts I've been having about our little girl are bleeding over somehow to Max. I don't talk about the things I'm thinking or feeling to people very often since everything is still so abstract and far away (and honestly after 3 1/2 years people must get tired of hearing about it), but there are weeks that I just feel it more than others. I've been feeling it lately and I wonder if Max has noticed that somehow, or if it's just coincidence that two days in a row he's brought her up all on his own...

You can't say the wait is all boring

So, there are often stretches of time during this waiting section of the adoption process where there isn't anything really new to share.  However, the unpredictability of the timeline, process, and climate of things in Haiti keeps a constant underlying level of tension that is always there. (For me anyway)

If I step back and look at the last 3 1/2 years it looks like a roller coaster though.  Sometimes that rollercoaster is exciting, sometimes terrifying.  Sometimes I wish it would go faster and sometimes I feel like it's so bumpy I might fall out.

We recently had some ups and downs that I didn't write about as they were happening, but I'd like to share about them now just to be thorough about documenting this process...

For about 2 months I worked very hard alongside some amazing women to pull of a fundraising gala for Haitian Roots.  It was way more time and work than I ever could have foreseen and was very all encompassing.  I was stretched way out of my comfort zone, and there is only one other time in my life that I've run on that little sleep for that many consecutive weeks.  Anyway! During this time I snuck away for a 2 night getaway with my friend Allison to see a band we love play and to try and re-set a bit.  I was feeling physically and emotionally drained and as we were road tripping I shared how things were going with the adoption.  At one point I got a phone call from Mark.  He told me that he'd gotten a call from our CPA regarding our taxes.  

Now let me give a bit of background...we drained our savings and supplemented with a loan to invest in starting a physician owned surgery center.  So, Mark receives founder share payouts each month and taxes aren't taken out. We had to estimate how much to set aside from each payout every month hoping it would cover the amount we would owe in taxes at the end of the tax year. So! Mark got that phone call and we found out how much we would be owing in taxes. With some deductions that we qualified for this year we not only had enough in our tax savings account to cover our taxes, but that the amount left remaining in that savings account was exactly the remaining amount we needed to have set aside to complete paying for our pending adoption.  I was over the moon! It felt so good to have that milestone met, to have that money ready for whenever we get the good news of our referral. I was crying happy tears and it felt so good to get any good news associated with our adoption!

Now fast forward to less than 48 hours later (on March 14th).  An email popped up on my phone from our adoption worker and I could tell that it wasn't good news.  The subject line read 'Alert: Update on Haitian Inter-country adoption procedures and important cautionary notes. PLEASE READ.' Phrases like "approvals are now on hold" or "this is an urgent situation" popped out at me. My heart sank. All I could think was, "Not again!" and I proceeded to read the email.  I will try to summarize what happened.  In recent years Haiti not only overhauled all of its own adoption laws, but also joined the Hague convention (a neutral entity that regulated the ethics of inter country adoptions for participating countries). The specific guidelines and laws pertaining to Hague convention were to go into affect 2 weeks later on April 1. One thing that is understandably enforced by the Hague is that children adopted from Hague countries can't be selected prior to their referral. More specifically adoptive parents can't have any contact with the orphanage director, birth parent, or care taker of the child prior to receiving an official match. This is important in order to prevent unethical behavior to develop in the adoption process leading to child trafficking. Now to how this became a problem...

The U.S. government began to interpret some of the Haitian laws and look at the process of adoptions and felt that there were things being done in violation of Hague process. They were saying that agencies can't have affiliations with specific orphanages or creches.  And that orphanages/creches can't suggest referrals to IBESR. However, this is precisely how the referral process is set up in Haiti. They were saying that had to cease, and there is not only not a way for referrals to generate in Haiti but not a way for agencies to arrange travel for their adoptive families when meeting their child without having contacts through the orphanage. In affect, adoptions would either have to go on hold until a new system could be developed that was completely centralized, or adoptions would have to cease.

Chareyl, along with 2 other ASP (adoption service provider) heads hired an attorney in D.C. to help research the law and represent them to the U.S. government. We didn't know how this would shake out and I was really overwhelmed and upset.  I was hopeful things would work out, but realistic in knowing that sometimes that could take a VERY long time, and that sometimes it just doesn't.  I didn't even tell Mark about the email when I got home late that night.  I discussed it with him the next day.

On Wednesday there was a conference call for all adoptive parents with the US department of state and US immigration.  We were on a muted conference call where they went through all the intricacies of the situation and at the end parents were allowed to cue in and ask questions.  I was very impressed with the thoroughness of things and came away with things thinking that it sounded hopeful.  I was able to confirm my deductions the next day with Chareyl and felt so much relief.  Here's what it boils down to...

The US department of state is now saying that they will allow agencies to continue to pass on adoptive parents' paperwork to orphanages, but the orphanages can't communicate information back about specific children. Those orphanages can still recommend specific families to a specific child in their care to IBESR for referral, but IBESR retains the right to follow or reject the recommendation. This I can live with. This sounds reasonable to me, and this allows adoptions to continue happening and for agencies to continue fulfilling what they legally agreed to with the Haitian government in arranging travel for their adoptive parents during their socialization visit and picking up their child. I'm so grateful for this!

Families that already had a referral would be approved on a case by case basis (reviewing the application of their case with the Hague) and families with an I600a application had until the end of the month to get a referral and they could still process as an I600 case (pre-Hague).  Families who were being processed as I800a families (that's us) who have had no prior knowledge of a child or contact with their prospective referred child's orphanage will be able to accept referrals and proceed without issue.  Us not having ever traveled to Haiti or had contact with an orphanage and being an I800a family puts us in the best possible situation for families right now.  

The crazy thing is that we were almost an I600a family.  We had I600a approval with Ethiopia that was still valid and I could have just transferred it to Haiti when we started the process, but being aware of the Hague enforcement date (I looked it up at the time) I opted to just start clean as an I800a family and we applied for Haiti that way from the beginning.  I also very much wanted to travel to Haiti to learn more of this country of our child's birth and to find some way to give back while I was there...after thinking it through I decided that Mark and I wouldn't travel to Haiti until after our official referral "just in case" there was ever a circumstance that our having been there could have been misconstrued and would require more investigation and/or delays in our adoption.  

I am now so grateful that we are in the circumstance that we are right now.  I800a family never having traveled to Haiti. I don't think we made these decisions by chance. And it wasn't because I was clever. I feel that the situations we witnessed in Ethiopia and the widespread corruption with adoptions there currently, that I approached our adoption in Haiti much more conservatively that I would have otherwise.  I normally jump into things head first and full on. I would normally welcome something that would have been faster (not having to get new I800a approval) and less expensive,  and would have jumped at a chance to go start building my bond with Haiti right away...but our experiences made me more cautious and reserved.  I'm grateful for that now, and don't see that as a coincidence. I believe that the Lord has had His hand in our adoption all along. This may not have been the only reason why things happened the way they did for us with Ethiopia, but I am convinced that it is one of the reasons. I may be anxious to see our little girl and to know her story, but I am also equally convinced that things have worked out the way they have, with the timing this way for a reason.  And that my Heavenly Father knew just what little girl would join our family and when. I hope that is sooner than later, but more and more I am learning to trust Him and His timing!

So! We had the excitement of finding out we have our remaining adoption fees all set aside, followed by being unsure if our adoption could even happen anymore, followed by finding out that amidst families who still have to undergo more hold ups and scrutiny - that we'll be spared this and allowed to proceed with our adoption as expected.  I'd say that week counted as a roller coaster.

I have to add that because of the huge push on both the U.S. and Haitian side of things to get I600a families referrals before the deadline that there was a HUGE flow of referrals with many agencies.  This is primarily wonderful for these children (and their families), but also could potentially speed up the process of us getting our referral too!  So back to hoping we meet our little girl sometime this year!...

Itsy-bitsy update

I got an email from Chareyl (our agency adoption worker) today. She periodically sends out an email update to all WIAA waiting families within the Haiti program. It was mostly a little nuts and bolts type email about the current process and how things are going in Haiti.

The only change that really affects us is that IBESR is now requesting the second foreign fee to be paid to them just before referral (it used to be afterward). So, once they have our file ready and a child referral ready for us they will request that fee. Once the fee is paid they will issue the official referral. So, we will need to be ready with the money a little bit sooner, but not a huge change...more than that I know that when I get a call from Chareyl it won't be with info and a picture about our child, it will be to request our next payment. It will be interesting to see how much variation there is in the timeline between submitting that fee and actually getting the referral. I would think that knowing the referral is so close at hand will be a bit torturous, so I hope that they are fairly regular with how quickly that's actually issued. Right now it is so unknown when a referral will actually come that you can't just sit by the phone hoping it will ring...that may be more challenging not to do that once you know that your referral is imminent.

Stuff like this doesn't really change anything, but gets me thinking (and feeling). I wonder when it will be? I wonder...I wonder...I wonder...

Things can be both big and small.

I'm not concise with words, so if you don't want to read everything (this is my journal, you know...so it's therapeutic for me to get it all out) then at least scroll to the bottom at look at the photos!!

So! Two weeks ago we passed our one year mark since changing from adopting from Ethiopia to applying to adopt from Haiti. There is nothing important or ceremonious about this, but documenting time seems to be something we as humans like to do. When recognizing anniversaries of any kind I think people find an increased element of sentiment...around the anniversary of marriage, death, birth, or other big life event. We look back and reminisce, we look forward and imagine what we hope will be or perhaps think of what could have been.

While turning in adoption papers (again) may not be as life changing as a birth or death, it certainly marks the beginning of something that eventually will be that big. It's easy to think forward to what that date next year will hold.  Will we have seen her face and know a bit of her story? Will we have met and held her? Will we be nearing a time that we could be bringing her home? Then there is the sentiment of the holidays, which is clearly a factor to how I've felt lately. I'm wondering how much these things (anniversary of turning in adoption application and the holidays) has played into this feeling that I've had lately...a profound feeling that someone is missing. It's not like I don't already know that, but I have been feeling it lately.

I've heard other people talk about this feeling. I've experience it multiple times lately, but I can pin-point where I was twice when it happened: Once was when our family was at Christmas Village together. We were having a really nice time enjoying hot cocoa and looking at Christmas lights and displays together. It wasn't particularly busy, but I kept counting and re-counting the boys and kept wanting to look for a fourth child and had to keep reminding myself that we don't have a fourth child yet. It sounds like a simple mistake, but it felt more profound and urgent that that. The other time was when we were pulling out of our driveway and I checked to make sure we had everyone and stopped the car because I thought we left someone. I had to check a couple times and remind myself that there wasn't another head to count! So, it was more the feeling than anything else...but if you've experienced this you know how strange it feels.

So! With the context of added sentiment and this strange occurrence happening, perhaps it shouldn't have caught me off guard when opening a certain birthday gift this month sent me into another room in tears. Let me tell you about it. One week ago and we were enjoying a nice combined birthday celebration for myself and my sister-in-law (Katie) at my parents house. We were having a nice time and each opening nice gifts from our siblings and parents. Katie handed me a birthday gift from her and Matt and I opened it. 

I saw a stack of beautiful cards and immediately knew they were from Haiti. I continued to look and saw two photos of beautiful children. Katie began to explain that she had seen me posting about sponsoring education for a child through Haitian Roots. (She obviously also knows that we are waiting to adopt from Haiti) She wanted to buy me a gift that would help support the cause of educating children in Haiti and found a place that sold art work from children in Haiti. These children produce this art through a fantastic nonprofit organization called ACFFC that helps provide empowerment and education for children in Jacmel, Haiti! How fantastic is that?! I continued opening the gift and found the most LOVELY painted bowl (made perhaps from paper mache?)...it looked like something that would stop me in a store window anyway, but knowing that these children made it in Haiti made it even more precious.  There was also a beautiful yellow bird ornament. THEN, to really ramp up the sentiment, Katie asked the organization to send her a couple images of the children who make the art-work (she knew I'd love that) and she printed them to include with the gift. I seriously could not handle it. These beautiful children. The thoughtfulness Katie put into this gift. Haiti. This beautiful gift. I couldn't hold in the tears. It was just too much, but in a good way. Eventually I had to leave the room and pull myself together. 

Here are the beautiful hand painted cards - the young man who makes these is deaf and these provide him income to support himself in rural northern Haiti. The photos are of the children who made the bowl (you can see some they are working on in one of the photos) and the ornament...

Such a thoughtful birthday gift. It is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Thank you putting the effort into something like this, Katie & Matt. I love it. And I love that you knew I would.

I titled this post "things can be both big and small" because, an anniversary date is just a date...but it can also feel like something big. A little gift can be just a bowl, card and ornament...but it can also be something big - providing an income and education for someone and also filling my heart to overflowing. So yes, something can be both big and small. If in this post I had just written that it's been a year since we turned in our first adoption application for Haiti (with no other context) and that my brother and sister-in-law gave me this gift (insert photo)...it wouldn't have seemed like anything very big. But those have been huge to me this month. I suppose perspective really can determine size.

FAQ

Since I'm mailing out holiday cards tomorrow and I shared this blog in the card's text, I figured that I'd better throw an update of sorts up here (for the 2 or 3 people that decide to take a peek anyway)! ;)  I decided that since most people aren't going to want to wade through pages of posts, I'd just try a quick question/answer form of update here with the questions that I get asked the most:

Q: How long have you been waiting to adopt?

A: For a more thorough answer read my previous post here.  More concisely: on Dec. 12th it will have been one year since we turned in our application to adopt from Haiti through WIAA.  We originally started our adoption process (from Ethiopia) 3 years + 2 months ago with AGCI and that program eventually closed.

Q: How old will she be when you bring her home?

A: Likely around 2 years old.

Q: Do you know who your child is already?

A: No. We haven't received a referral of a child yet.  We are hoping that will happen sometime in 2016. 

Q: What does it mean when you talk about "referral"?

A: A centralized government authority (IBESR) in Haiti is the one who matches a child with a specific prospective adoptive family. Once they deem a child legally adoptable they issue the official referral.  We receive a picture of the child as well as any history available on the child.

Q: What happens after you get a referral?

A: After we receive our referral we review the information and submit an official acceptance for the match.  Then we travel to Haiti for a mandatory 2 week "socialization trip" where we will spend time with our child and be observed by a Haitian social worker.

Q: Once you've met your child, how long until you can bring her home?

A: This varies greatly, but my best guess is anywhere between 6 months to 1 year from the time we meet her until we get to bring her home.  We definitely will visit her as much as possible during that part of the wait.

Q: Why does this process take so LONG?

A: This is a very complicated question, with long multi-faceted answers.  Here is the simplified version of that, broken into four parts that I'm guessing that most reasons will fall under: 

1. Part of the reason it takes so long is that there are procedures in place to ensure that adoptions are completed ethically, that families are properly vetted and that children being placed are indeed in need of adoption.  That takes time.

2. Another part of the answer is simply government red tape and bureaucracy including sometimes unnecessary, frustrating hold-ups (sometimes on the Haitian side, and sometimes on the U.S. side of things).  Haiti is frequently tormented with social and political turmoil, which can periodically put the brakes on the processing of adoptions.

3. Also Haiti recently overhauled all their adoption laws and also became Hague ratified (joined the Hague convention which oversees the international adoption of children), so it takes time to change and implement all these new guidelines, and there are bound to be wrinkles to iron out when so many changes happen. 

4. Lastly, simply because it's Haiti. Things take time to process through our U.S. government with all modern conveniences.  Documents in Haiti are all hand written and documented (not typed or digitally archived), and people can be difficult to track down for interviews and signatures.

Q: Why Haiti?

A: I answer this question differently depending on my mood.  I usually answer in one of 4 ways...

1. Simply "because that is where we feel like our child is." 

2. We've always had an interest in adopting internationally (we decided this before we got officially engaged to be married) and we actually began paperwork to adopt from Haiti back in 2006-7 after we adopted Noah, but we ended up being offered another opportunity for IVF which worked and brought us Lincoln (and later Max from frozen embryos). When we began revisiting the idea of international adoption for our family, Haiti was grappling with the after affects of their big earthquake and it wasn't a good time to start the adoption process there. I began to feel led to pursue adoption from Africa and we began the process of adopting from Ethiopia.  When that fell through we felt strongly that we should pursue adoption from Haiti again.  And so here we are full circle pursuing an adoption from Haiti again!

3. Because there is great need there. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. They were so even prior to the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country killing 100,00-200,000 people (estimates vary greatly) and decimated infrastructure and creating even more acute struggle with disease and abject poverty. Haiti has struggled to recover from this and disease and severe poverty are still very much a part of life in Haiti, and the number of children in need of homes has increased dramatically.

4. "Why NOT Haiti?" Every child everywhere deserves a home and a family. No child should live on the streets or in an institution, be forced into child slave labor (prevalent in Haiti, called restaveks), die from lack of care, or be left for greedy/evil people in the world to exploit them in various ways.

Q: Does it bother you when people ask how the adoption is going?

A: No! Thank you for caring about us and wanting to ask. We may not always have anything noteworthy or interesting to tell.  Or you may catch me on a day that I get weepy or want to vent, but as long as you're cool with not hearing much...or possibly hearing more than you wanted to - then always feel free to ask! (And if you're curious, but don't want to risk possible tears or taking on psychiatrist duties then you can always check this blog for updates too)

Q: I know someone who is interested in adopting. Would you be willing to answer some of their questions?

A: Of course! Our answers will be based on our own opinions and experiences obviously, but we are very open with sharing what we have experienced and know regarding adoption or infertility struggles/treatments. We have been very blessed by adoption and modern medicine and we enjoy being able to share our thoughts and feelings on those topics. Heaven knows that we've reached out to strangers we don't know during this roller coaster journey of international adoption.

Q: How can I help? Is there anything I can do?

A: This is such a thoughtful question to ask (thank you to those that have)! Mostly just keep us and our future child in your prayers (I pray daily that she is being fed, held, and kept safe). Other people you can pray for specifically are our agency's adoption worker Chareyl (who we have huge trust and respect for), our child's birth family and care takers, IBESR (that will be referring a specific child to us), and the people of Haiti in general. The only other thing I can think of is that if you ever find yourself with travel miles that you aren't going to use, we would gratefully accept donations of miles that we would use for the multiple trips we will be taking back and forth from Haiti.  We've been working on accruing and saving those too.

Q: Do you think adoption is the answer for Haiti's problems?

A: No. I don't. I do think that it is the answer for a child who needs a home and family now though. I believe lasting change for Haiti will come from Haitians. I also believe that to facilitate this, children need education. This is something that is difficult for most children to obtain in Haiti. The cost of providing education for one child is more than most entire families make altogether in a year. Because of this our family has chosen to provide an education for one child in Haiti who has an intact family to support them during their education and who will be staying in Haiti to someday provide for her own family and make a difference in her own community and country there. If this is something you are interested in, then I can wholeheartedly recommend Haitian Roots as a non-profit through whom you can sponsor a child or make a one time donation. For only $25/month (or $300/year) you can provide an education for a child in Haiti. This not only can change their life, but provide you and your family a deeply enriching experience as you are able to periodically communicate with the child you choose to sponsor. One-time donations are also gratefully accepted and can be done here online. The volunteers who run this organization have deep personal connections with Haiti and are doing much to ensure the continued success of their education sponsorship program, and of each child sponsored with them. 

Other random stuff:

This wasn't a deciding factor in why we chose to adopt from Haiti...but how wonderful and terrible is it that Haiti, who is in so much economic/social/political turmoil, is so close geographically to our own country? We love that we live close enough that we will be able to visit our child while we wait for her paperwork to clear, and that we can take her back to see where she came from later, and that this proximity will allow us to find ways to serve this country as a family. We love that our children participate in French immersion (one of the official languages in Haiti) and hope that this may provide some benefits that we don't yet see.

Some days I long to see our little girl's face and to get her home, other days it feels like it's gone on so long that it's become somewhat abstract.  I can only imagine what it must feel like to our kids.

3 years!

When someone asks me how long we've been waiting to adopt I never know what to say.  How long since our paperwork actually made it to Haiti? (7 weeks) How long since we finished our dossier for our Haitian adoption?  (4 months) How long since our home study was completed for ourHaitian adoption? (7 months) How long since the beginning of our Haitian adoption process? (10 months)...or do they mean including our prior failed adoption from Ethiopia? The answer to that question would be 3 years.  Three years ago today actually.  Three years ago today we turned in our initial application to AGCI to adopt from Ethiopia.  We were so excited, a tiny bit naive, and very hopeful.

The way I look at it is that there are likely reasons that I don't know or understand why we felt led to adopt from Ethiopia when we did, just for it to result in all that lost time and money. That being said, one thing that I do believe is this: the course things took led us to adopting from Haiti and at this time because there is a child there that is meant for our family at this time. I also believe that a lot of the things we went through during that 2+ years pursuing our Ethiopian adoption helped shape us and prepare us for this adoption. Things we learned, people we met and have communicated with, people we relied on in our lives here when things were rough, adoption stories we've become familiar with, familiarity with the unpredictable nature of the international adoption process, our concern to do things properly instead of just quickly...all these things weave together to bring us to where we are (and who we are) today. So, even though everything we went through with our Ethiopian adoption process isn't technically related to our current Haitian adoption, I certainly still consider it part of our adoption journey and part of the story of how we found our way to our daughter. In fact it feels inseparably interwoven.

So! If you ask me today how long we've been waiting to adopt our daughter I will say 3 years! And while another day I may not be feeling quite as ok with the wait, today I'm feeling faithful in His timing and encouraged knowing that it will happen someday and that it will all be worth it!

On that note! Let me share something that we participated in today that was really great to be a part of! We supported a fundraising effort by Haitian Roots to raise money to educate children in Haiti who could not otherwise afford an education. A couple close friends and several of my family members supported my "team" effort to spread this fundraising effort by donating money or purchasing t-shirts to wear while running or walking on October 3rd (today)! I named our team "Bay Espwa" and it means "Give Hope" in Haitian Kreyòl.

While adoption is obviously close to my heart, and I believe that every child deserves a home and family, I do also feel very passionate that the way to combat severe poverty (which is ultimately the cause of a great number of children who are in need of adoption) is through education of the people that live there. Education that will empower children to someday acquire jobs to provide for themselves and their family, but also to contribute to bettering their community and their country. Naturally, this is closer to our hearts because the effort is taking place in the country of our future daughter's birth. By adopting a child from Haiti we feel like we are in essence adopting another country into our hearts also.  Because of that it means a lot to me for so many of those people that we love to support this effort - it feels like them also rallying around us in our preparations to welcome this little girl into our family someday.

Here is a photo of my family in our "Running for Haiti" t-shirts:

While the Running for Haiti fundraiser had nothing to do with adoption, we are obviously waiting to adopt a child from this country. So, doing a little something today that we hope can be a drop in something larger that will help benefit the country of her birth...well, it seemed like the PERFECT way to "celebrate" our 3 year milestone since starting our adoption journey.

Now here's to hoping that it isn't another 3 years before we get her home.