My Family, My Journey

My husband and I recently adopted two children from Uganda, East Africa. Chloe and Noah have been home just six weeks! A friend of mine gave us a copy of "my family, my journey" at the welcome party for our kids. It initially looks like a baby book, albeit not too cutesy or frilly. But page after page reveals the very unique story of adoption. Overall, this resource does an excellent job of helping us to tell Chloe and Noah's story so that our friends, family and kids can share in their two-year journey to their family. It begins with "The Story of Your Adoption" and progresses through the first year as a new family with lots of places to add pictures and spaces for telling the story in your own words. Some of the sections include "The Match," "A Baby Shower" and "What We Know About Your Birth Family and Where You Came From." My favorite pages include "People Who Helped Us Find You" and "Adoption Buddies." My mother teared up reading the headings before I even began to write! A few pages caused us some challenges though. The "Waiting" page had no place for photos and only six lines for text. We waited five months for our match and another 17 months for our kids to come home, so it was clearly not enough room for our story! Also, when we were matched, we received our very first pictures of our kids, and the page offered no space for those either. And, almost all of the spaces for photos were non-standard sizes and framed by awkward borders that were difficult to either mount a photo inside or try to cover the border completely with the photo. A small piece of clip art to mark the center of where a picture might go would have made mounting much easier. I have greatly enjoyed compiling Noah and Chloe's story using "my family, my journey" and would definitely give this book as a gift to other adoptive families. We hope that Noah and Chloe will someday treasure their story as much as we treasure them. Thank you for creating this delightful resource.