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One of the best ways to find potential birth moms is through friends and family.  It's nice that adoption agencies can match birth mom preferences and adoptive family preferences.  But a lot of birth moms prefer to place their babies with people that they know or who are at least friends of friends.  Those birth moms will place babies with adoptive families that they hear about from other people.  We have found several birth moms this way, though none of them ended up being "our" birth mom.  Of course, we also have pass along cards with our contact information that our family and friends give out whenever they hear about a potential adoption situation. 

It  helps that most families have more open adoptions than they did in the past.  It would be difficult to have a closed adoption if the birth mom was acquainted with the adoptive family beforehand.  When we adopt, we will send letters, email, pictures, texts, etc. to our baby's birth mom.  We will also invite her to occasionally visit.  The difficult part about all of this is that many potential birth moms aren't comfortable telling all of their family and friends that they are considering placing their baby for adoption.  That's why we need people who support adoption to be so proactive.

So, get the code snippet from the right-side column of our blog, and help us spread the good word about adoption!

Merry Christmas To One And All

We had a very merry Christmas yesterday, and we hope everyone else did, too!  We try really hard at our house to center our Christmas around Christ.  We read stories and scriptures that keep our thinking along those lines.  We have several Nativity scenes as decorations.  Another thing that I think helps is doing most of the Christmas shopping in November.  My kids know if they ask for more presents in December, they aren't  going to get them. 

We started off the week before Christmas with our Bethlehem dinner.  I love exotic food, and I've collected several recipes for food that people might eat near Bethlehem, most of which I probably couldn't spell or pronounce correctly.  Of course, we also had traditional stuff like pita, olives, figs, and dates.  

On Christmas Eve, we especially like to take time to remember the "Reason for the Season."  This year, we spent Christmas Eve with Wayne's family.  We read Luke 2 and told some Christmas stories.  We were also excited to have Wayne's brother Devyn there because he just returned home from his two-year mission to Chile. 

On Christmas day, we opened presents and went to visit family.  We visited Wayne's grandma, and we went to see my parents.  There were a variety of other relatives at both houses.  It was great to visit with so many people that we love!  

Happy 60th Birthday to My Mom!

On Monday night, we went with my brother Brian and his family up to Salt Lake City.  That's because my dad planned a surprise birthday party for my mom!  We met at the Lion House for dinner, and I'm pretty sure my mom was surprised.  My brother Mike and his family were also there.  We had a really yummy dinner and walked around Temple Square to see the Christmas lights.  My mom isn't really into presents (she likes people calling or coming to see her more), but she received several thoughtful gifts.  My sister-in-law Krystal had a cool idea to have all of the moms interview their kids about Grandma.  She sent us a list of questions like "What is Grandma's favorite animal?"  The kids loved participating in it, and the answers were really cute.  Then Krystal typed it all up and emailed it to me so that I could put it in a notebook and bring it to the party.  Krystal wasn't at the party, though, because they live in Seattle and had just been down for Thanksgiving.  And her kids were two of the kids who got really sick from that family togetherness.  Speaking of sick, Benjamin was sick again on Sunday (this time vomiting repeatedly), so he missed the party on Monday.  Poor kid.  My fabulous mother-in-law babysat again.  On Tuesday, he was finally all better.

Daniel at the Lion House with his Grandpa and Grandma

Christmas fun. . .and not so fun

We had our church Christmas party last Thursday.  Wayne, who helps me out with that kind of stuff, was out of town.  Good thing I was only in charge of the food.  For the entertainment, there was a Christmas play called "The Empty Room" with several very talented people from our neighborhood.  

The bad part was that Benjamin was sick.  He missed school last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  He was coughing a ton each night, and he hardly got any sleep.  Which meant that I got hardly any sleep.  Benjamin was also very concerned because he lost his voice entirely, which was just a tragedy for him.

This is what my poor Benjamin looked like for 3 days straight, until I made him come to the Christmas party.

So, I was very concerned about being in charge of anything at the Christmas party.  I dragged Benjamin and Daniel over to the church in the afternoon to help a little with the set up and to drop off a bunch of stuff we needed for the dinner like paper plates and cups.  

We ordered ham and rolls from BYU Food To Go.  It's a great place to get precooked food for large gatherings.  At least, it usually is.  They warned us to plan on a half hour wait to get our food when I called to order it.  The traffic was bad, so it took about 40 minutes just to get to BYU.  We walked in to where we were supposed to pick up the food and saw two groups ahead of us.  And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  It was about 45 minutes before they were even able to start putting our order together.  I'm still not sure why it takes so long, but I think it's because they don't start packing orders until you are actually there.  And the other people there had huge orders.  By the time we left, there were 6 or 8 groups waiting in line behind us.  Daniel had, of course, made friends with several of them, and everyone said they were glad my boys were there to provide entertainment while they waited.

We got back just in time to get the dinner set up as people were arriving for the party.  The dinner went great.  It did take a while to get everyone served because there were about 300 people there.  And we had a ton of extra ham, which I can't figure out because we had about the same number of people in attendance last year.  We had the same amount of ham both years, but last year it was pretty much gone at the end of the night.  My only thought is that we got it from Macey's last year (and I cooked all of it myself), and I think Macey's cuts the slices thicker.  Either way, I ordered as much ham as BYU told me I should for 300 people, but we didn't use it all.  I have no idea what the bishop did with all the leftovers, but I'm sure it was something good.

The best part of the evening was how much everyone helped with everything.  I tried to get Benjamin a babysitter for the party, but I couldn't find one because all of my neighbors would want to be at the party.   Also, I didn't want Benjamin at someone else's house where he would get all of their kids sick.  My mother-in-law met us at the dinner and took my kids off my hands for me.  Several of my friends helped with the setup, dinner, cleanup, etc.  There's no way it could have gone smoothly without so many great people.  Thanks to everyone who helped out!

Happy 35th Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my Fabulous Husband!

We celebrated Wayne's birthday over the course of the past several days.  First, we had his parents (and Wendy!) over for ice cream cake on Sunday.  Then on Monday (his actual birthday), he took the day off from work.  We went to lunch at Tepanyaki Japanese Steakhouse.  In the evening, we drove through the Festival of Lights with our kids.  And yesterday, I made king crab legs for a special birthday dinner, even though it was the day after.  For his birthday, I also made Wayne a book with our Hawaii pictures.  It was my first attempt at digital scrapbooking, and I think it went pretty well.  We're not entirely done with the birthday celebrating, though.  This weekend, we are going out to dinner and a play while his mom babysits.  Thanks, Wayne, for having a birthday so that we could party so much!  And thank you to my wonderful mother-in-law for giving birth 35 years ago and for raising a great son to be my husband!

Happy Thanksgiving. . . I think

I started off Thanksgiving with a fun Girls' Night on Wednesday with my brothers' wives.  I have five brothers, and some of them drove me crazy while we were growing up.  But, amazingly, they all married talented, beautiful, fabulous wives.  So, it was fun to spend the evening with them.  I do have one sister--she couldn't come, and we missed her.  

We went to the Cheesecake Factory.  I'd never been there before.  It was yummy.  It was also very crowded and dark.  And they don't take reservations after 5:00.  Isn't that weird, what other time would you need a reservation?  The evening was a nice chance to chat with everyone without kids climbing all over us, although I also had fun seeing my nieces and nephews the next day.  

On Thursday morning, we went to my parents' house.  We were greeted at the door with the fresh scent of Lysol and the bad news that my five-year old nephew was in the hospital.  He had been sick for a couple of days, but he had gotten a lot worse and had a high fever.  He was in the hospital for a few days with RSV and pneumonia.  His immediate family all got sick, too.  And my dad got sick.  And at least one of the other little cousins got very sick.  So, that wasn't the best Thanksgiving weekend for all those people.  We also had made plans for a big family picture with everyone on Saturday, but that obviously didn't work out.

We saw Wayne's family later in the day, and as far as I know, everyone there was more or less healthy.  

We are all very thankful for modern medicine, doctors, and hospitals.