What led you to adopt children from Ethiopia?
How many of your children are adopted?
Why do you promote the adoption of children with HIV?
Does having HIV+ children pose any risk to the rest of your family?
Which adoption agency do you recommend?
Why did you adopt from Ethiopia when there are so many children who need families in the United States?
Did you adopt out of birth order, and do you recommend it?
Did you adopt a sibling set?
I feel strongly that I want to adopt, but my husband is not interested. Do you have any advice?
Is Ladybug really your daughter’s name?
How old are your children?
Are you and your family real?
Why do you blog?
Do you get paid to blog?<
Will you recommend my product, Etsy site, website, etc.?
Why do you moderate comments?
You must have a huge house, don’t you?
How do you feed such a large family?
Why do you homeschool?
Do you homeschool ALL of your children?
What curriculum do you use?
Do you have a schoolroom?
What led you to adopt children from Ethiopia?
This post tells the story of how we began this amazing journey.
How many of your children are adopted?
We were blessed with seven children by birth before we adopted our four children from Ethiopia.
Why do you promote the adoption of children with HIV?
Up until recently, the adoption of HIV+ children was very rare. Due to many misconceptions about HIV/AIDS, these children were not considered adoptable. That has changed as adoptive parents have become aware of the great many HIV+ children in need of families and educated themselves about HIV. HIV is a very manageable “special need” with most issues revolving around stigma and disclosure rather than significant medical needs.
In our case, God led us to adopt two older HIV+ children. We didn’t set out to adopt HIV+ children, we set out to adopt two little boys, and in the process, we fell in love with two girls who happened to have HIV. These children were the very “least of these” that Jesus speaks of and we are honored that He made them our daughters.
For more information on HIV+ orphans and adoption, please visit From HIV to Home.
Does having HIV+ children pose any risk to the rest of your family?
No. Period. You can read more about HIV on my HIV Fact Page.
You should also visit From HIV to Home, the organization I work for as Project Coordinator.
Which adoption agency do you recommend?
While there are many wonderful adoption agencies, Russ and I personally recommend Adoption Advocates International. After a bad experience with our first agency, we used AAI for the adoption of Honeybee and Dimples and could not have been happier. Their humanitarian work is significant and they are utterly ethical. Their fees are also known to be reasonable. If you are interested in adopting a child with HIV, AAI has placed by far the most HIV+ children. If you are open to adopting older children, sibling groups, or special needs children, AAI specializes in helping these children find homes.
That is a very good question and one we have been asked many times. While we definitely have a heart for children in the US foster system, and love to see children being adopted out of the system, we were moved by the devastating number of orphans in Ethiopia. While foster care is not an ideal situation for any child, at least we have a system that attempts to care for children needing families in the US. In the United States it is rare for:
- a child to die of starvation
- a child to die of a treatable childhood illness
- a six year old to be the sole caretaker for his younger siblings
- an HIV+ child to have no medication resulting in the eventual development of AIDS
I could go on and on, but at the end of the day I can only say that God led us to adopt our children from Ethiopia. He allowed our hearts to be broken by the devastating orphan crisis and then blessed us by allowing us to respond by adopting four children.
Did you adopt out of birth order, and do you recommend it?
Our original plan was to adopt two little boys younger than Sunshine. It made sense to us and seemed to fit our ideal plan. God stepped in with a different plan and led us to adopt Dimples (one year older than Sunshine) and later Honeybee (the same age as Ladybug). We also adopted the two little boys we had hoped for.
As for recommending it, we would say that in our case, adopting out of birth order has been much more challenging than adopting our two little boys, but we have no regrets. We encourage families to take a good hard look at the children they already have, and ask themselves how resilient they are? How well will they fare with the potential upheaval? Some children are very resilient, others are not. Some families have a greater capacity for withstanding stress than other families. What sort of support community do you have? Do you have extended family nearby? Do you have a close circle of friends or a church to support you? How available will dad be when the children come home? If he travels extensively for work, that is something to consider. We are very fortunate that Russ works only a few miles from home and has a fairly flexible schedule.
All that being said, if you firmly believe that you are called to adopt older children out of birth order, then do it. It may be a smooth and easy adjustment, or it may be challenging, but hard can be good, especially when it is in obedience to God.
As it turns out, none of our children were related prior to their adoption. In the process of adopting the first time, we requested two little boys (siblings, twins, or unrelated) and we were referred Eby and Little Man. Our girls did not come to us by referral. We were Dimples’ sponsors through her orphanage and then requested to adopt her. We met Honeybee on our first trip to Ethiopia and also requested her.
I feel strongly that I want to adopt, but my husband is not interested. Do you have any advice?
Yes, my advice is do not pressure your husband. This is one journey you do not want to take alone and you never want to hear the words, “This was your idea,” or, “I didn’t want to do this in the first place.” Adoption is a lifelong commitment. If you are a Christian, I strongly urge you to pray, laying down your desires and seeking God’s will for your family. It may be orphan care, it may be foster care, it may be raising funds for another family to adopt, it may be volunteering. It may also be adoption…but maybe not quite yet. Remember that God is sovereign and His timing is always perfect. The child you are meant to adopt may not be born or orphaned yet. He may not need you now, but He will need you when the timing is right.
If your husband is open to learning more about orphans, adoption, etc., I suggest finding a book or two in the Resources section of my blog and giving them to him. You might also suggest that he read Melissa Fay Greene’s article, Hope Lives Here. Russ took this article with him on a business trip and pulled it from his briefcase on the long flight home. It shredded his heart and changed our lives forever.
Is Ladybug really your daughter’s name?
No, we do have better taste in names than that. When I began my blog, the Internet felt like a big, scary place. I thought I could maintain complete anonymity and wanted to keep my children’s names safely tucked away. Our two oldest sons had strong feelings about not having “blog names,” but everyone else liked the idea, so we went with it. I have found it challenging to maintain anonymity, but I still use “blog names” for most of my children.
As of January 2010, my children are 22, 20, 18, 16, 15, 11, 11, 8, 7, 4, 3… and Russ and I are both 46 (if you want to know).
We are very real…so real that we get grumpy, make mistakes, sin, break things, argue, and do all sorts of unlovely things. I know that it is easy to create a nearly “fake” identity or life on the Internet…but I strive to be just who I am. Apart from the grace of Jesus Christ, I’m pretty much a failure. In Him, I have forgiveness and meaning.
A Bushel and A Peck started out as a small blog devoted to keeping our family and friends informed about our adoption process for Eby and Little Man. I published my first post on June 19, 2006, never imagining that I would still be blogging nearly four years later. At one point I nearly shut my blog down. I felt that I had no time to post and very little to say. That very week I received several emails thanking me for my blog and it dawned on me that maybe God had something for me to say and just maybe somebody might like to hear it. From that point on, blogging became more interesting for me. I love sharing what I am learning in the hope that I can help other families with adoption, homeschooling, attachment issues, or other topics dear to my heart. I also love learning from other women so I’ve created space on my blog for sharing thoughts and experiences through Tuesday Topics, Guest Authors, and the great comments you all leave.
Now that would be nice! But no, I blog because I enjoy it and because I want to encourage other families by sharing what I am learning. I have recently begun adding more Amazon and other products to my blog. If you purchase an item through a link on my blog, I get a small percentage. As you can imagine, it is no small feat providing for our large family, so the (very) small amount I may make is a blessing to us.
Will you recommend my product, Etsy site, website, etc.?
If it is a product, I will only recommend it if I have personally tried it and liked it. If it is a website or other resource, please send me a link and I will take a look.
If you would like me to review your product, please email at: lisa@onethankfulmom.com
Occasionally I receive very ugly, mean comments that are not worthy of sharing. I also receive spam comments and do not want them to post automatically.
You must have a huge house, don’t you?
No, and I constantly pray for contentment in that area. Our house is great, and we love it, but we are squeezed a little bit tight. One friend commented that we use every inch of our house, and that is true. We have four bedrooms, one for Russ and me, one for the four girls, one for the two little boys, and a basement bedroom for the three big guys. Up until last August (2009), the six youngest children shared one large bedroom. Then Sweet Pea moved to Seattle and Mimi moved into an apartment. We were sad to see them grow up and move out, but it did give us an extra bedroom for Eby and Little Man. The one thing our house lacks that I most desire is a playroom, which would be very helpful during our cold winters. We regularly contemplate remodeling our garage…but that hasn’t worked out yet.
How do you feed such a large family?
I have written posts about that in the past, which you can find here. I also hope that on this new blog site I will be able to share much more about managing my large family.
You can read about our decision to homeschool on my Why We Homeschool page.
Do you homeschool ALL of your children?
We currently have one daughter in medical school, two children at the local University, five children in our homeschool, one child at a small Christian school, and two preschoolers who are homeschooled too.
We use a variety of different materials and resources. Currently we rely most heavily on Sonlight Curriculum and Veritas Press. Over our nineteen years of homeschooling we have also made use of online courses, tutors, and correspondence courses. I simply cannot teach each of my children everything they need to know, so while we maintain control over their education, we do not run a one room schoolhouse.
No, we do our schoolwork wherever we are in the house. The older boys study in their room, while Ladybug studies in the dining room or living room. Honeybee and Sunshine stick close to me and generally do their schoolwork at the kitchen island or on a children’s table pulled up next to my desk. Best of all, we like to snuggle up on the sofa for reading time.
