We have BIG news!
We are starting the process of adopting a sweet little girl!
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 $35,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $35,000 that to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents. We hope that with the initial financial burden out of the way, we will be able to focus on helping our newest family member get situated in our home.
For those of you who are not familiar with our family, my name is Janisse and my husband's name is Lenny. We have three amazing boys, Lenny (5), Dominick (4), and Russell (1), who love each other and life in general so much! I have a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Development and Education. I LOVE children so much! Before I had children of my own, I loved going to work and creating learning experiences for my littles at work. I am now a stay at home mom, occasionally working odd jobs to fund extra expenses, like an adoption. My husband is a Fire Fighter/Paramedic and also teaches Fire Fighting Courses at a local College. When he is off of work he loves spending time with the kids. He is also very handy and enjoys building things around the house for our kids to enjoy. We have beautiful planters for growing food and a tree house that he built for our boys.
Because we have three boys already we were going to adopt a little girl. Our boys also agreed that they would love a baby sister. So here we are! We have our eyes on two agencies in Florida, but we wanted to fundraise a little early so that we are not hit with more fees than we can handle. Our favorite so far is Heart of Adoption because they offer so much support to the birth mothers. The mothers are assisted through their pregnancies and provided counseling, as well as other services to help them get on their feet. After working as a home visitor with the Children's Home Society, that piece of the puzzle just seemed like the best fit for me. Just knowing that my future daughter's tummy mommy will receive the support she needs was another detail that we loved about some of the agencies that we researched.
We are in the process of getting our house ready for a home study and start a journey that we have heard is an emotional rollercoaster, but we are ready and have a great support system in each other and our family and community.
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. I am hoping to keep everyone updated as we continue through this process. We would like to be as transparent as possible through all of this. We will be having many fundraisers in the next year and hope that you will be a part of them. We are not experts and appreciate any and all support and ideas.
