It’s that time of year! I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is done and Christmas is upon us. Everyone is busy decorating, shopping and making plans for the holidays. The staff at Family to Family are doing the same but we are also looking forward to the birth of many babies this month as well as getting ready to start our foster care program next year. This is also our favorite time of year because we start receiving holiday cards from our adoptive families that we can put up around the office. This month promises to be a busy one.
We have many birth families this year and most of them with children and our agency strives to provide Christmas for each of them. If you are interested in donating or would like to sponsor a family please contact us. Also if you are an adoptive family this is a great time of year to remember your birth family. Many of our families send gifts to their birth families so we ask that you get those to us in the next couple of weeks so we can ensure that the birth families receive these by Christmas. If you have not finalized your adoption and you have plans to travel for the holidays please be sure and let us know. We hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.
On this Valentine’s Day, Family to Family celebrates our 10 year anniversary. We were founded on February 14, 2001 as an international agency and did our first domestic placement in August 2001. We invite you to visit our history and statistics page and see how it all started and our successes. We have met and had the privilege of working with so many loving and supportive birthmothers and adoptive families this past 10 years. We could not have made it without you and we thank you for all of your support. Our staff is excited and anxious to see what happens next. Happy Anniversary Family to Family!!
September 1st, 2009
admin
The next Family to Family conference will be held on September 19, 2009 from 10 AM to 3 PM. The conference will be at our office at 1000 Austin Street, Suite B, Richmond, TX 77469. The conference will be $10.00 per person and space is limited. Come and meet adoptive families and birthmothers and hear their adoption stories. To sign up please contact Maxine Seiler at 281-342-4042 or max@fam2fam.org.
The upcoming dates in 2010 for conferences are January 16, 2010; May 15, 2010; and September 18, 2010.
Tapestry Books has information for all members of the adoption triad including children’s books. The books are helpful for both adoptive families and for birthmothers and for domestic and international adoption. They even have books to help you get started on that Lifebook for your child. If you are looking for some more information on the adoption process, check them out online.
Family to Family Cookbooks are now for sale. Please email Jennifer O’Leary at jennifer@fam2fam.org if you would like to purchase one or more of these as a fundraiser for the agency. All of the proceeds will benefit Family to Family Adoptions and our educational fund provided to help our birthmothers achieve a higher education. The cookbooks are $18.00 each. Thanks to Tami, one of our adoptive mothers, who created and published the cookbooks for us, and thank you in advance for your support of Family to Family.
Many of our friends maintain blogs and have been kind enough to mention their appreciation of our services to adoptive and birth families on their blogs. We know that others are active on Facebook and might want to let their friends know about us as well. To make this process easier, we have added a “Share on Facebook” link to the right side of this page.
The process is simple. If you have a Facebook account, just click the link and a message will be posted to your “wall”. You will have an opportunity to add your own comment to the posting before it goes up.
If you have a Facebook account, you can help us and stay in touch with what we are doing by joining our “Friends of Family to Family” group on Facebook!
This is a very easy way to let your friends know about what you are doing, and to tell them about our services if they have any need for them. We appreciate all the support and kind words that we receive from our many happy clients, both parents of newly adopted children and birth families who have successfully placed children in loving homes.
We at Family to Family have always prided ourselves on our attention to serving the needs of the birthmothers that we are associated with. We have a list of birthmother services that we provide to our clients and maintain a list of questions and answers of interest to birth families.
We are always gratified when our constituents recognize our efforts, and many of them mention us and our dedicated staff in their blogs describing ways that we have been supportive and helpful to them in their efforts to expand their families. One of our clients has written a personal note about his own experience as an adopted child and his sensitivity to issues that birth mothers have. His story points up how our approach serves birth families as well as adoptive families.
Family to Family Adoptions began placing domestic newborns in January 2002 and our statistics through December 2008 show that we have placed 232 babies and created 232 wonderful adoptive families.
- 43% of those children were Full Caucasian
- 16% were Hispanic/Caucasian
- 16% were Full Hispanic
- 1% were Caucasian/Asian
- 2% were Native American
- 11% were Caucasian/African American
- 2% were Hispanic/African American
- 8% were Full African American
- 12% of our families have adopted a second child through Family to Family
- 1% of our families have adopted a third child through Family to Family
Hi Everyone, I received an update from one of our adoptive families who has a fully open adoption with their birth parents and their extended family and I have asked their permission to share it with you. This just proves that
Open Adoption is Normal!!!
About 4 years ago, we helped a married couple in North Texas place their first born child. The couple wanted to place this child because the father did not want children. We placed the child with a childless couple from the Houston area. After placement, the birth mother’s parents found out that she and her husband had placed the child and were heartsick they would not be able to share in their granddaughter’s life, but fate was in their corner. The placement had been an open adoption and because of this, the adoptive parents were able to reach out to the birth grandparents in an open manner and thus began the saga of this wholly open and wonderful adoption. The adoptive mother recently sent me pictures of the baby and a quick update of their family. The following is word for word.
” I just wanted to update you and all the Family on how our very
open adoption arrangement is working out. We really couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, and ‘Angel’ s’(name has been changed for privacy) birth family feels the same way. We continue to see ‘Lori’ (name has been changed for privacy), her sister and her parents every few months. Her mom and I have become very good friends. it’s weirdly amazing how similar we are. Her sister has a son close to Angel’s age and Angel just loves him, as well as the rest of the family. Lori became pregnant again last year, moved to Houston and divorced her husband. She chose to keep the baby, ‘Jenny’ (name changed for privacy), who was born December 20, 2007, and she is engaged to be married in May. Her fiance loves Jenny like his own and his parents are very attached as well. Angel knows Jenny is her sister and adores her, but she isn’t really old enough to ask “how can that be?”. That will come in time, I suppose! Lori’s parents kept Angel and her cousin last Saturday night and you’ve never seen such excited grandparents. They are just so thankful that we keep them in Angel’s life, but after meeting them, we wouldn’t think of doing it any other way.”
“It seems so normal to us since we don’t know any other way, but if I really stop and think about it, it probably sounds very unusual to most people. Angel’s family just keeps growing and growing and I feel she is lucky to have so many people who love her.”
September 10th, 2008
admin
All of our adoptive families have been carefully assessed and approved by a licensed social worker as an adoptive parent. Adoptive parents have been through a home assessment, criminal background checks, child abuse checks, and have also provided information about their medical, financial, and family backgrounds.
Each adoptive family has applied to adopt a child and has been through all of the necessary steps to become approved as an adoptive parent. You get to choose the family for your baby and meet them. You will know by talking with them and asking them questions if they are the right family for your child.
To learn more about this process, please download the Common Questions by Birth Parents on our website.
