We each have a different story to tell. Sometimes that story follows our plans, but often that’s not the case. Many women have children with varying degrees of problems. Others experience great loss through miscarriages. Many struggle with fertility treatments. Some may never have children. My journey to motherhood didn’t go according to my plan, but looking back I can see how it went according to my Heavenly Father’s plan. Here’s a brief synopsis of my journey:

In August of 2007 my husband and I received our last confirming diagnosis of infertility. We were devastated and heartbroken to say the least. It was truly the most difficult trial we have each faced. I learned from firsthand experience that the grief experienced from infertility is comparable to the grief from the death of someone close. Although nobody has died, a dream has been shattered. I was cut to the core. Through prayers, time, family and friends who rallied around me, and faith in my Savior, I experienced reconciliation and healing.

During that time of healing I felt the whispering of the Holy Ghost to pursue adoption. I learned about the tens of millions of children around the world who don’t have a Mother. My heart was broken for them. Their loss and pain was far greater than mine. I knew my path towards motherhood was through adopting one (or two) of them.

We began the adoption process in 2009. As many of you know that process includes background checks, visits from social workers, paperwork, letters of recommendation, etc. After completing the paperwork we waited and waited to be matched with our children. The “wait” was a trial in itself. But we prepared in every way possible and prayed for our future child(ren).

In June of 2011 we were matched with two beautiful children; Abriha (a 3 year old girl) and Axum (a 1 month old boy). It was one of the happiest days of my life. Nate and I saw pictures of them and instantly fell in love with them. We knew without a doubt that these were our children. We celebrated with family and waited another 5 months to bring them home.

As I stated before, the journey was difficult. I often felt alone and wondered if I had been forgotten. But deep down I knew there was a reason, and I held onto that. Nate and I are amazed at the miracles that took place that led us to our children. Here’s one example – Approximately 9 months after receiving our final diagnosis of infertility a little girl was born; our little girl. It took over 3 years to be united with her and her brother, but we weren’t forgotten. Heavenly Father was making plans for us to be united with them after losing their birth family. There were many other miracles along the way.

I have had my precious children home for 5 months now. I often look at my kids and am in awe of our story which is far more beautiful than I could have imagined. It has brought me closer to my Savior, made me stronger and brought me to my children. Today is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. Each day my kids bring me so much joy. It is an honor to be their mother.

The retreat was great. There were 450 adoptive moms, many of which adopted from our agency; All God’s Children International (AGCI). For the past year and a half I had corresponded with some of them through email, our agency yahoo group, blogs, and Facebook. I enjoyed meeting them in person and spending time with them. In fact, we had so much fun that we made it to bed at 2:00 AM most nights! Here are a few pictures:

I spent most of my time with these amazing ladies:

Here’s a picture of AGCI adoptive moms:

The retreat was held at the Legacy Lodge. Here are a few pictures of our view:

I learned a lot during the sessions. One of my favorite topics was Empowered to Connect. They presented parenting techniques that are very nurturing for adopted children. During the other sessions we heard from adoptive moms, individuals who were adopted (and offered their perspective/advice), as well as experts (therapists, doctors, etc). I took a lot of notes but overall I came away with some insight that I don’t want to forget:

• All of us have the potential to change lives. We cannot forget to ACT. I was amazed at women who started ministries to help people in need. One of the vendors was Ordinary Hero. Here’s a video with more information about their cause in case you’re interested.
• The past affects the future but it does not determine it. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the loss my children have experienced. But, their lives will be full of opportunities for healing, growth, and happiness. I want to focus on those opportunities.
• As long as I can remember, I have wanted to alleviate the orphan crisis. 147 million orphans in the world today. I am honored to have adopted two – they are truly my most precious gifts. I don’t know what lies ahead in our future, but I am certain our efforts to help orphans will continue (in one way or another).

It was a powerful weekend. It was so great to spend time with women who felt the same passion and love for orphans. Together we had adopted over 1100 children. We watched a video of each of us with our families. The song “Beautiful Things” makes me tear up every time I hear it because I think about our journey to adoption. Honestly, it was one of the most difficult things I’ve gone through (infertility, waiting, waiting and more waiting) but in the end, God has brought more beauty to my life than I could have ever imagined.

Miss Abriha is doing great. She is such a happy and funny little girl. We are amazed at her language skills.  She enjoys reading books (it is our nightly bedtime ritual) and occasionally I catch her in her room with a book. She is doing great with recognizing capitalized letters and remembering words that begin with each letter. She will begin preschool in the fall. She is currently playing soccer with her 3 cousins. They have played a number of games and will finish on the 12th. It is fun to watch the kids play (I’m sure you can imagine 3-5 year olds playing bunch ball, picking grass, running off the field to give mom a hug, etc.). Here’s Miss Abriha practicing soccer:

There is an elementary school a few blocks away so we go there when the weather is nice.

Abriha is such a good big sister. She is always watching out for Axum, making him laugh and giving him love. One day in the car I turned around and saw here holding his hand:

 Abriha had her first visit to the dentist last month. She did a great job as the hygenist cleaned her teeth. She loved the toothbrush and toy that she got at the end:

 One of Abriha’s favorite things to do is HAIR. Nate is especially nice and has the patience to sit for long periods of time as Abriha post rubber bands in his hair.

 One thing we LOVE to do as a family is eat out at the Ethiopian restaurants in town. (BTW Salt Lake has THREE Ethiopian restaurants and a FOURTH is opening up this week.) Abriha is a pro at eating injera and take extremely huge bites. Here we are waiting for our dinner to be served:

Axum is doing extremely well. He is now 11 months old. He is sure getting bigger and his personality is coming out more and more. Many of you know he has been wearing a helmet for the last few months. He will likely wear it another month. The shape of his head has improved a lot and we are anxious for him to be helmet-free soon. Here is one of my favorite pictures. Axum loves to grab at our faces:

Axum enjoys being outside. He and I were at the school watching Abriha and Nate kick the soccer ball. He was having so much fun:

Nate and I always have to make sure to hide cords or make sure they are unplugged. If there is a cord in the room, Axum spots it in seconds and goes for it.

 I think Axum looks so big in this picture (my baby is growing up!):

 We can’t have enough dirty-face, post-mealtime-face pictures:

The post is called UNvitation. It is about hosts of a party who “uninvited” a family’s daughter because she is HIV+. In fact, the hosts were angry with the family because they hadn’t disclosed their child’s health status, and their daughters had “played together.” Hopefully all readers of this post are as horrified as I am. Hopefully most of us know there is no harm in an HIV+ person being in the presence of other people. Hopefully the host family is an outlier (who doesn’t read the news and happened to miss the HIV/AIDS lecture during Health 101).

Unfortunately I have read other stories similar to this one. Sadly the social stigma of HIV/AIDS still exists.

A few years ago I become familiar with an organization, Project Hopeful, which advocates for children with HIV/AIDS. They have done great things to save the lives of many children AND reduce the stigma associated with the disease. They have initiated a campaign called Truth Pandemic in an effort to teach the facts about HIV/AIDS. Here’s a link to their campaign:

All of us should know the three ways to contract HIV. They are:

1. Unprotected sex

2. IV drug use with a contaminated needle

3. Mother-to-infant transmission during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding

I have met families who have adopted HIV+ children. Some of the children I played with and held at the orphanage in Ethiopia were HIV+. It breaks my heart to think of them facing ridicule and meaningless judgement because of a disease they happen to have.

So what can we do about it? Luckily there are many things we can do. We can try to eradicate the social stigma. We can be a voice of truth. We can take Project Hopeful’s challenge to spread the truth to at least five people. We can bring it up at the dinner table. We can share a link to the Project Hopeful video on Facebook. We can pass any of the links on this post to our contacts.

Last night I read that the most difficult part of living with HIV/AIDS is social stigma. Let’s change that.

FYI – Many families who adopt children with HIV/AIDS choose to disclose their child’s health status (as did the family who received the “unvitation”). While I respect parents who keep their child’s health status private, I also see why parents disclose. Here’s the rationale:

HIV/AIDS is no one’s dirty little secret. The issue of whether or not a family should hide their child’s leukemia, or diabetes, or down syndrome is a NON issue. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it being that child’s story which only they should share. Kids are born with many diseases, yet it seems that HIV/AIDS is the singular chronic disease everyone wants to shame kids for having, or discourage from openly communicating their story. No one bats an eye when a mother blogs about her child’s congenital heart defect. No one condemns her for sharing such personal information about her child without her child’s consent.

You can find more information about HIV/AIDS from the CDC at:

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/

Here are links to stories of families who have adopted HIV+ children:

http://www.projecthopeful.org/component/content/article/36-family-stories/124-four-daughters-from-ukraine

http://www.projecthopeful.org/component/content/article/36-family-stories/129-bringing-home-ermias

Here is a booklet for more information about HIV/AIDS (published by Project Hopeful):

http://www.projecthopeful.org/images/stories/PDF_2/yourqspressquality.pdf

Thanks for taking the time to be educated. Please spread the truth.

Abriha was really excited.  It took her a few runs to get her balance, but after that she was cruising.  Nate went up with Abriha each time to give her a little push and then to catch her.

Here are both the girls and their dads:

Charelle and I stayed at the bottom of the hill to cheer the girls on.  Axum was content in the ergo carrier.  The girls also got to try inner tubes.

I think Nate got a better workout than Abriha on this outing.  Here’s Abriha being pulled by Nate to the lift:

We may have a potential ski bum on our hands!

We hope you had a wonderful Easter Sunday.  It was our first Easter with the kids and was a lot of fun.  We went to church in the morning and decided to take some photos.  Abriha and Axum looked so cute in their Easter outfits.

After lunch we dyed Easter eggs and the kids took naps.

The Easter Bunny came by and hid plastic eggs, our dyed eggs, and baskets.  Abriha woke up and was so excited that the Easter Bunny had been here.  We loved watching her run around the house finding treats.

Abriha goes in daddy’s closet to get his shoes occasionally.  One day she decided to wear his boots:

We took the kids to Wheeler Farm on the 11th.  When we told Abriha to get her shoes on, she came out with tights; over her pants.  She thought it was quite funny:

After we got Abriha out of her tights and put on her shoes we went to Wheeler Farm.  We went around to see lots of animals since Abriha has enjoyed learning animal names with some flashcards.  She was a bit scared of the animals at first.  We don’t think she had much exposure to tame animals based on her reactions to dogs in the past.  Sure enough she seemed a bit scared and wanted me to hold her hand.  She warmed up pretty quickly and was happy to point out the animals to us (horses, cows, goats, chickens, sheep, rabbits, ducks, etc).  Here’s a picture of her and Nate after they fed the ducks and geese:

Axum was really content at Wheeler Farm.  He seemed to enjoy looking around and hanging out in the stroller:

We made Valentine’s Day special with Abriha making Nate a valentine and decorating heart shaped cookies.

Apparently she had  a sugar overload with the candy from grandparents and the cookies.  As she was eating a cookie she said “tummy hurt!”  Poor girl:

But her stomach didn’t hurt enough to stop her from wanting to finish that cookie:

Two days later Axum was full of energy and ready to practice his crawling skills.  Check out his enthusiasm:

Shortly thereafter he began going back and forth across the carpet.  Abriha would help by getting Axum excited about his toy car:

Here’s a short video of Axum crawling:

Axum is doing very well.  Our first picture of him was when he was one week old.  He was tiny and dehydrated from a long journey from the north and a lack of food.  Nate and I stood over his crib tonight and watched him sleep peacefully.  We noticed how big he looked (he is now eight months old).  The biggest change for him these past few weeks is that he got a helmet.  His head is asymmetrical from laying down on one side in the orphanage.  We hate having to put it on him but felt like it was the best thing to do in the long run.  We hope he adjusts to it quickly and that we see results soon.  Today we noticed one of his top teeth came through.  That’s #3!  It is so exciting to see him grow but bittersweet at the same time.  I remember months going by as he was in the orphanage and knowing that I was missing out on those first 5-6 months of his life.  I would have given anything to hold him and enjoy him as an infant.  But overall I am grateful he is growing and doing so well.  Here’s a picture of Axum with his helmet (yes, we chose the hardcore skull and crossbones).

Abriha and Axum share a strong bond.  When Abriha comes in the room, Axum’s eyes light up and he gets a huge smile on his face.  Abriha loves interacting with Axum.  She is always giving him hugs and kisses.  Nobody can make Axum laugh as hard as Abriha can.  It is so entertaining to watch her perform for him and hear him laugh.  These past few weeks she has wanted to hold him and feed him a bottle.  She holds out her little arms and says “come on! (AKA “let me hold him!)”

I don’t want to paint an unrealistic picture of life with the kids.  We have some crazy moments that all parents experience.  You know, the fun things like getting peed on, having our hair pulled, working through toddler tantrums, etc.

Congratulations kids, it truly is a blessing to be a US citizen!