Hi friends! We are so excited to share this big news with you — we are adopting!
Thank you for celebrating with us, your prayers as we embark on this process, and your support in more ways than one! This AdoptTogether page will be our central hub for our fundraising efforts and the best place to keep up with the adoption process, information as to how your donations are utilized, family updates, and more. We want to bring you along the entire process as much as possible and share each moment with you!
We have discussed adoption as part of our family story since before we were engaged and since have learned much more about the adoption space. With Kaley's endometriosis diagnosis, we did not feel a peace about biological children at this time, so we decided to pursue the element of family we knew we always felt peace about — adoption! We will be pursuing a domestic infant adoption for our first child. We will share more of our heart in pursuing adoption and how your support helps more than our family, but all families involved in this process.
Any donations given to our AdoptTogether page will be going solely to these expenses. AdoptTogether is a IRS approved 501(c)(3) organization and your donations are tax deductable. If we raise more than needed, we can through AdoptTogether gift that money to another waiting family, request the remaining funds to donate to adoption organizations (like birth mother support which is our preference), or save the funds for a future adoption.
We are excited to begin our family, but also excited to love the birth family we are matched with as well throughout this process and after. Please pray for them beginning today! Also, pray for future Baby Martin because what a family they are joining! Ha! We can't wait to love them!
We will share updates as they occur and our fundraising information soon in the updates section below. Once you donate, you will be signed up to receive our updates via this website and email. Follow us on social media as well to stay up to date on our process! Thank you again for your support and love!
Hello everyone!
Now that his adoption is finalized, we wanted to share a new family photo featuring our son, Henry Graham Martin! We are so blessed he is here and look at those chunky cheeks. We wanted to thank all of you for supporting us in bringing Henry home, caring for our birth family so much, and your support to finalize Henry's adoption. Your support has meant the world to us and we are beyond words at the kindness you have shown our family. We ask for continued prayers as we parent Henry, continue building a wonderful relationship with his birth family, and all of us together as we support Henry as he grows big! We love you all and cannot explain what this community has meant to us. We can't wait to grow our family more in the future in this way if God allows.
Additional thank you's to our amazing birth family for choosing us to parent this little guy. It means more to us than you know that you would trust us with something so precious. We love you. Thank you to our lawyer, Amy, and the supporting clerks/assistants/etc. The judge, our home study coordinator Rebecca, our birth family's lawyer, AdoptTogether, our church family at Riverwood, and more. The thank you's are too numerous count.
For now, meet Henry Graham Martin! :)
Love,
Zac, Kaley & Henry
Hello everyone!
First, thank you for your support this year. 2022 has been filled with so many blessings and God has really been so kind to us. Speaking of extreme kindness, we are excited to announce for 2023 that we have been chosen by a wonderful birth mother with a baby arriving late April/early May!
This post is full of information regarding our placement, so we've divided it into the areas we need help in the most!
FIRST -- LOVE FOR FIRST MOM
We are only $3,000 away from our fundraising goal! Being that our adoption is a private adoption, our costs are significantly decreased. We currently have everything we need for the adoption expenses, but if you would feel so led, we would love to reach our goal of $10,000 to provide some additional post-birth services to our wonderful birth mom/family. She is the bravest, most wonderful person we have ever met. We are so blessed to bring her and her family into our family. Getting to love on them is the best blessing we've ever experienced and we are honored she chose us to care for her baby. We would love to provide these things to her for post-birth care and that is the main need we ask of our community.
SECOND -- HELP... HOW MANY ONESIES DOES ONE BUY?
A few people have asked if we have a baby registry and the answer is yes! If you are interested in supporting us in this way, we have included a link to our registry. Out of respect for our birth family, we are not sharing the gender until the baby is born so everything purchased for baby is gender-neutral. We should know the gender very soon as they are graciously telling us ahead of time, but we are refraining from sharing it for their privacy. If you support us by purchasing something on our registry, truly thank you. As first-time parents, we aren't even sure we registered for the right things. Ha!! Also, if you know how many onesies we need, please HELP SOME FIRST TIME PARENTS OUT. We are feeling a little overwhelmed, but so so excited!
Baby Registry (if interested): babylist.com/baby-reg-kaley-martin
THIRD -- PRAY
Third, we would love for you to pray for our wonderful birth family as they prepare to give birth to Baby. Pray for them now, pray for them after, pray for us to steward this wonderful gift well, for us to love them well. The entire adoption triad needs to be covered in your prayers and we appreciate them so. We love our birth family, we are honored to walk with them through such a hard time. It's a weird mix of emotions for darkness and light to come together in such a perplexing way. We are truly honored they have chosen us and we are forever bonded to them. We love them and hope you join us in loving and praying for them for the years to come.
We thank you for your support. This community of friends and family coming around us is so special. We truly feel such a sense of togetherness. We are so blessed.
Zac & Kaley
Hello everyone!
First, we are overwhelmed and so grateful for the support and kindness we have been shown since announcing our plan for adoption! We are so grateful for the community of friends and family God has placed around us. The showing of kindness towards our family has left us speechless numerous times. We thank you. Thank you! Thank you!
Because of your donations we were able to begin the home study process which is by far the longest and most detailed process because, once passed, allows us to begin being shown to prospective birth families! Once completed this also gives us an opportunity to apply for grants to help offset our adoption costs.
We have completed stage two of our paperwork and our home study funds were approved by AdoptTogether, so we are waiting for the check to arrive to our home study social worker to schedule those visits. Prayers for this process would be appreciated as we are nervous, but excited!
After we complete the home study, we will have more updates and new opportunities for support, but for now we wanted to remind everyone we are still running our "Adopt A Hogwarts Letter" fundraiser! The way it works is you essentially purchase the envelope that corresponds with how much you'd like to give. So, if you want to give $150, then you would purchase the $150 envelope. If we sell every envelope, we will have raised over 60% of our total adoption costs! Our second fundraising goal is to raise over $6,000 so we can sign on as clients of Mustard Seed.
If you check back on our previous post, you'll see what envelopes are still available for purchase and thank you to everyone who purchased an envelope already! Your support means so much to us and we can't wait to share more updates with you soon after our home study completion.
If you have any questions for us about our adoption process, please feel free to Facebook message, Instagram message, or text us! We are always happy to share where we are in the process and any other details. God has been really so gracious to us in this process and we are humbled. Just the fact that so many of you care and are so happy for us brings us to tears. We are one blessed family.
Zac & Kaley Martin (and the pets)
We are overwhelmed by the kind words and well wishes from our announcement. It truly was unexpected and means the world to us. Several people reached out and asked how to support us so we wanted to share our first fundraiser for our adoption — Adopt A Hogwarts Letter!
(This theme is obviously from Kaley LOL).
Check our AdoptTogether PAGE POST to see which envelopes have been claimed as the photo will be updated as envelopes are claimed to help those interested in giving know which envelopes have not been claimed. Envelopes run 1 to 250.
How It Works:
This fundraiser works like a typical adopt an envelope fundraiser with 250 envelopes. The envelope you choose determines how much money you wish to donate, so for instance, if you wish to donate $10 then you would purchase the $10 envelope.
Donations can be combined if your desired amount is already taken! For instance, if you wish to donate $30 and the $30 envelope is already claimed, feel free to snag the $10 and $20 envelopes.
All donations are accepted through our AdoptTogether page. When you click “Donate”, simply fill out the amount that you want, and in the “Message to the Family” section, indicate which envelope you would like to claim.
Check our AdoptTogether page to see which envelopes have been claimed as the photo will be updated as envelopes are claimed to help those interested in giving know which envelopes have not been claimed. Envelopes run 1 to 250.
Thank you! ----
Claimed envelopes will have a card with the donation name inside for us. If you have any questions, feel free to message Zac and Kaley via text, Instagram or Facebook Messenger.
Thank you for considering giving and there will be another fundraising opportunity once we have reached our first goal milestone!
