Give a Day, Get a Disney Day

This post is about the "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" program.  Maybe you've already heard about this, but if not, I'll give you a quick rundown on the details. Basically, you do an approved volunteer project and get a one day, one park pass for Disneyland or Disney World to use this year.  There are a few other options for people who already have park passes--like a special fast pass or trading pins.  Kids over age 6 can volunteer with an adult. You register your household, pick a project, send some emails back and forth to the people in charge of that project, do the project, and then turn in the "paperwork." So, there are a few hoops to jump through.  If you want to see more details, you can check out Give a Day, Get a Disney Day.

Our family is signed up to make blankets for "Project Linus."  The blankets go to children who have experienced a traumatic event. There are tons of service projects to choose from, but you have to choose carefully if you have kids because they can't participate in some of them.

Whether we will actually go to Disneyland this year is still up in the air.  We have made tentative plans to go this spring.  But as Benjamin says, "We will go to Disneyland if we don't adopt a baby."  Either way, we have something to look forward to.  And we will probably go to Disneyland next year if we don't make it this year.  Besides, our kids have already gone to Disneyland four times.  If we don't make it before December this year, we can donate our passes to the Boys and Girls Club to send other kids to Disneyland!

The pictures in this post are from the first time we took our kids to Disneyland.  Little kids are just so cute at Disneyland!  Even if they do cry on Pirates of the Caribbean.

Adoption Language

We listened to a great talk at church today about repentance and not offending others. One of the points was that while the person who originally offends is at fault and needs repentance, the same is true of the person who chooses to become offended. And obviously, we all find ourselves on both ends of that equation from time to time.

While I was listening to the talk, I couldn't help but think about the words people sometimes use when talking about adoption. Although people seldom mean to offend others, they sometimes do based on ignorance. As for me, I don't think I'm easily offended by people using the wrong phrases while referring to adoption, especially since I have been known to slip up myself. But I know other people who have been hurt by the words used to describe their families. So, to help everyone out, I'm posting a link to some "Positive Adoption Language" recommended by LDS Family Services. One example from this list is referring to a child by saying that "she is adopted." The preferred tern is "she was adopted." The reason for this is that adoption is an event, not a condition.

Now that I've posted this list, you don't need to get all paranoid if you talk to us about adoption. As for our family, we are pretty open about discussing our decision to adopt, and there isn't much you can say accidentally to offend us. There may be a few things about our situation that are too personal to discuss with just anyone, but we'll be upfront and tell you that.  Hope you find this information helpful!

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If you have our blog button on your blog, it probably still says "2009."  I hope to get something fancier put together, but for now you can use this one.  It's just the front of our adoption card, and it links to our adoption profile.  Thanks!

Wayne's Snow Maze!

Wayne enjoys building snow mazes in our yard during the winter.  The mazes go throughout our front and back yard.  They never last long, though, between the sun shining on them and the neighborhood kids running up and down the paths.  But the maze sure is fun while we have it!  And when we get more snow, we can always make a new one.

In other news, our adoption profile at www.itsaboutlove.org has hit 1000 views!  We're still waiting for the right one, but it's exciting nonetheless.