Let's start at the very beginning

I guess I should introduce us. My husband is Bill, and I'm Cheri. We have decided to begin our family through adoption!

We've been waiting for years for God to bless us with children, but appears that is not God's plan for us (or at least not at this time). So we prayed and talked and prayed some more - finally ending up at the decision to seek out adoption.

I had already read a couple of books and a few magazines about adoption, but today was the first time Bill and I sat down together and talked about what I had discovered. We had NO IDEA that there were so many choices open to us! We both had assumed that if you wanted to adopt, you went to an agency. Well, that's ONE choice, but there are so many more. We did know from the beginning that we wanted to adopt in the U.S. and that we wanted to adopt a newborn. Today we sat down with our list of states to decide what state(s) we wanted to pursue. Right now, it looks like our home state (Alaska) and two others are the front runners (Illinois and Michigan). But we are far from making a final decision on that...

Next time I post, I'll share a bit more about our decision process - how we arrived at the decision to adopt out of state, why we chose IL and MI, and a strategy that may be unconventional. In case you're wondering, we are using an excellent book, Adoption by Randall Hicks, as a guide on our journey. If you have other suggested reading, let us know!