why we aren't fundraising for our adoption.

In the 'gathering information' stage of our adoption process, we read books and blogs and advice about fundraising for international adoptions.

Turns out, this is quite common. 

It struck me as odd, then smart, then weird, then necessary.

Then weird again.

Something about it didn't feel right to me. We didn't fundraise for our wedding or for school or for buying a home- all expensive endeavors. If I were pregnant, we wouldn't fundraise for the birth of our biological child. Yet, it's so common that we continue to encounter overwhelming amounts of blogs and ideas and books about fundraising.

We are not fundraising for our international adoption.

And here's why.

1.) We know we will receive unbelievable amounts of support from our loved ones. They will emotionally support us and celebrate with us and wait with us for our baby to come home. That is the most important thing we could ask of them.

2.) Our baby is not a cause. We are not making some grand statement by adopting from Ethiopia. It is not our intent to 'rescue' a child from Africa- this is not a political or humanitarian act. We are adopting because we want a baby. We want to be parents. There are many reasons we decided to create our family through international adoption. Our baby is not a victim who needs things from us, we are not the heroes selflessly giving those things. We are a family.

All this is definitely NOT to say that we think it's wrong to fundraise or that we don't understand why people do. We purchase items and donate for adoptions weekly. BUT, we don't think that we could feel right about fundraising to bring our baby home. 

That being said, 

We would be THRILLED if anyone knows anything helpful about adoption grants, loans, or wants to help in other ways- such as donating airfare miles, emotionally supporting us, and checking out our baby registry (coming soon).

We love you all so much and are so happy you're part of bringing our baby home to us!

hooray, hooray!

now, on to more and more and more paperwork!

happy friday ya'll

hey y'all-

well this morning goes down in history as the friday morning that i was so stupid.

i arrived at a staff meeting and as i parked, i looked down and saw...

awesome.

sooo while i was preoccupied trying to think of some way to mend my pants/get a new pair in the five minutes before the meeting, i locked my keys in the car.

then i spilled coffee on my white shirt. 

luckily after being pretty horrified for a while, i remember that i have awesome coworkers and laughed the whole thing off with them. and then we did our nails. 

seriously.

ANYWAY-

the topic of this blog post isn't how stupid i am. 

in a training today we were doing a silly little game - something with statements being read and the whole lot of us organizing ourselves in order of strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree.

some were simply like 'i like the ocean better than the forest'-

but then there was 'i think the world is becoming a better place'.

i stood alone between agree and strongly agree.

now let me say, i do not consider myself an optimistic person. i have been known to stay in bed all morning because it's too hard to face the suffering i see on a daily basis. i have often used the phrases 'there is nothing good in this world!' and more often, 'people are so awful!'.

but for some reason, i stood there alone looking like an optimist. and i didn't waver and i didn't feel dishonest.

i do believe that the world is getting better. i believe there are people fighting every single day for a better world. there are people fighting for the rights of others, fighting to end animal cruelty, fighting to bring food to the starving and medicine to the sick, fighting to mend the extensive damage we've done to our planet, fighting to give hope and love and safety to those who need it most.

i couldn't live in a world that i didn't think was improving. i couldn't go to the shelter everyday and think- 'what i'm doing doesn't make a difference, there will just be more dogs here tomorrow- people are awful'.

i couldn't go to work and think- 'oh well, these kids are just going to get into drugs and crime and drop out of school anyway.'

for the world to be better, we have to be better. 

we have to wake up every morning and make the world a better place. giving our time and our energy to doing the right thing and teaching our children to do the right thing is the least we can do. and we have believe that we really do make a difference. 

because we do. 

guess what.

hey guess what.

did you guess?

 

 did you?

i'm going to be a big sister.

right, mama?

she said right.

awesome.

two funny little babies.

hey y'all! it's been a while!

hey y'all-

it's been a while since i've updated this little blog, but really nothing much has happened! we are still having such a good time with Bethany our adorable and SO SWEET foster pup. i think it might be bad luck to say out loud, but i'm typing, so i'll take the chance and say that we may end up keeping this cutie forever! of course our hope is that she will find the perfect forever home with another family who will love her just as much as we do. but i'm kind of starting to doubt anyone else could love her as much as i do! it's a good thing i'm not in charge of adopting her out or else no one would ever meet my standards and she really would stay with us forever.
she's been with us for about a month now and every day she does something that endears her even more to me. one of my favorite things to do recently is pretend to be crying and sit on the floor with my head in my hands. bethy runs over immediately whining and licking my face to cheer me up. i'm so mean. and she's so amazing.

this last weekend we had SUCH a good time getting to spend the days with our families and friends. on friday night kyle's brother and sister-in-law came over for dinner, which kyle and i followed up with a dance party- the pups were not amused at the late night noisiness. of course on sunday we enjoyed 'watching' the super bowl and celebrating a friend's birthday. there was good beer and good times had by all.

on saturday we were sooo happy to get to see my sister and brother-in-law and baby Grant! he is seriously growing like a little flower. he can hold up his own little neck! he is DARLING. they met us, the dogs, and little sissy in santa monica and we spent the morning together. it was quite eventful, with bethy breaking out of her harness and running wild on third street, lotte jumping on a table and eating a danish IN ONE BITE, and phil shaking hands with a tiny little monkey. seriously. it was an epic day. with epic salad involved. and cupcakes.
we looove getting to spend time with these lovelies-

there's a little update on our recent lives! things are about to change pretty quickly around here as i am starting a new job this month- hooray! i'm super excited and i feel sooo lucky to be given this amazing opportunity to work with children in an after-school program. to celebrate my new position (and mardi gras!), kyle and i are going to get beignets and chicory coffee saturday morning and spend the day together with the pups. it's going to be awesome!

resolutions update!

hey y'all!

the last week has been a blast- we still have sweet bethy pup at home with us and we are loving getting to know her more and more. she has SUCH a beautiful personality and i can't tell you how much of a lover she is.

i've been working hard on keeping my new year's resolutions! and so far i've been pretty diligent.
i might be a little behind on my books- i've read 11 so far. i'm loving all the reading- i've so enjoyed everything i've read and keep reading about more books i add to my list to read. it's awesome! my favorite so far is the one i'm currently reading- some we love, some we hate, some we eat: why it's so hard to think straight about animals by hal herzog. soooo amazing. it's seriously blowing my mind.

my mile a days have been a little sporadic, but i'm feeling really good about how often i'm running.
bethany is an amazing running partner and makes me run even if i don't want to. those long legs!

another 'resolution' update- though it's not an official resolution, this year kyle and i are working on being more conscious of our eating habits and the companies we support. mainly, focusing on being 'cruelty-free'- not eating meat, animal by-products, and not using products tested on animals/supporting companies that use animals for research.
the original plan was for us to cut back on dairy and have a vegan meal once a week, then eventually up it to full-time. but i've kind of gone all out already. since we already don't eat meat, it's not too much of a crazy transition, but cutting out dairy just takes a little more effort. i've been having fun finding recipes and trying things out-
so far we've had vegan meatball subs, falafel pie, and quinoa stuffed bell peppers. tonight we made raw peanut butter vegan cookies- delicious!! i'll share my favorite recipes at the end of the week!

on average, by living a vegan lifestyle one person saves more than 100 animals a year from horrible abuse.
we are really happy to be finally taking this compassionate and important step!