We have BIG news!
We are adopting a child!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $50,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $50,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents in addition to the normal costs of welcoming a child into a home.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up. We're so happy to have you with us as part of this process and we can't wait to share the gift of our child's life with you.
On October 9, 2024 we completed the last step in our adoption journey by finalizing Calvin's adoption in the county circuit court. It was a beautiful day and the judge had decorated the courtroom with balloons and a beautiful banner that read "Happy Adoption Day." She even had little gifts for Calvin. Calvin was even dressed for the occassion in suspenders and a bow tie.
We have dreamed of this day for so long we almost couldn't believe it was real. Thank you for helping us reach this day and truly making us a family. Calvin is the absolute joy of our lives and we feel so lucky that we found each other.
Sending you all so much love!
~Shannon, Sean, and Calvin!
We have the BEST news! On Saturday, February 3rd, after nearly exactly three years of waiting, we welcomed Calvin into our family and into our hearts. He's nearly three months old and loves dogs, cuddling, bouncing, and taking walks. We are over the moon and so grateful for all of you. Thank you for helping us bring Calvin home! We can't wait for you to meet him and we couldn't have done this without you. We still have some time before legal finalization, but we are on that track and will still have some court costs in the coming months. You've already given so much, but if you are inclined to continue to help us the funds here can go to our legal fees as well.
Thank you for being our village. We feel like the luckiest people in the world right now!
Love,
Shannon, Sean and Calvin
Hello everyone.
November is Adoption Awareness Month, so it seems like a good time to update you on our process. We continue to wait to be matched with a birth family and bring our little one home. As you can imagine, waiting as long as we have has been difficult but we remain hopeful that we will become parents one day and look forward to that time. We are often contacted with cases for which we need to opt in to be shown to expectant parents and we have received quite a few of these cases this year and have responded positively to them. Nevertheless, we continue to wait. Many of you might not know that the process involves the birth parents choosing the adoptive parents. So we continue to wait because we have not yet been chosen. Our social worker often reminds us that our profile is very good. We just haven't come across the right birth family yet.
Many of you may not know that we were actually chosen very early in our process (February 2021) and so matched. We celebrated the birth of a beautiful baby boy on March 13th and met him as we waited for the revocation period to end and he remained in foster care (called cradle care) throughout that period. Each state has a certain time period in which the birth parents can revoke the adoption and choose to parent their child instead. Our revocation period was 30 days. As you can imagine, we anxiously waited for that period to end, while also lovingly shopping for baby clothes and other necessities. However, on day 15 we received a call from our social worker that the child's parents were having second thoughts. She called as we were literally heading out the door to visit the baby for the second time. On day 16 we learned that the parents had chosen to parent and so disrupted the adoption.
Heartbroken doesn't even begin to describe how we felt. We were devestated, but choose to believe that this beautiful little boy, who is nearly three years old now, is cared for and loved. We pray for him nearly every day. We haven't told many of you about this because it has been so painful, especially as we continue to wait. But with some distance it also gives us some hope. We have been chosen once. We can be chosen again.
Shortly after this adoption was disupted, Shannon purchased a bracelet with the words "Nevertheless She Persisted" on it. It reminds us every day that we persist in hope. In spite of the really hard days, in spite of the days when this process feels hopeless and so frustrating, we persist. Yesterday was one of those days and Sean drew the drawing you see here of our future little family as a reminder of that hope.
Thank you for continuing to hope with us and root for us and for your continued support. We honestly will never be able to express how much it means to us that you are accompanying us on this journey.
In hope and persistance,
~Shannon and Sean
As the holiday season approaches, we just wanted to say how grateful we are to all of you and the support that you have shown us in our adoption journey. We continue to wait to be matched and ask for your continued prayers that the new year will bring our little one to us. We can't wait to share that joyful day with you!
In love and gratitude,
~Shannon and Sean
We've just added a second agency to help us extend our search for a child. We have been working with The Barker Adoption Foundation, which places children in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. While we will still be waiting with Barker, we have now added a second out-of-area agency. So now we are also waiting with Adoptions from the Heart, which places children in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.
While we are excited about this wider reach, it does cost a little more and so your help has become all the more valuable and has made us all the more grateful. We can't thank you enough for your continued support.
We'd also like to show you a page from our profile book, which is what is shown to expectant parents as they choose the adoptive family for their child. You've been such an important part of our journey and so we wanted to share a little bit of this book with you.
Sending you all so much love and gratitude!
~Shannon and Sean
