::Kindness in giving creates LOVE::

This is a very much needed story to share with you all!

A while back, we received one of the most moving and uplifting emails from Violet. We didn't really know who Violet was until she expressed her inspiring story about a little boy, Theodore, from Africa. Violet mentioned that since we opened so much about our adoption and that she felt she needed to share her story with us, too. She's such a sweet soul!

Prepare to be inspired! Here's Violet's story below:

"I am a Social Work graduate student at Gallaudet doing internship in New Mexico— the very last thing to do before graduating in May!  I find time to travel in between my studies— I grab every opportunity to go abroad during summer, winter and spring breaks. Out of all the places I've been, it’s with no doubt that I emphasize my love for (Togo) Africa the most.  It’s true, Togo has my heart.  It’s home.  Two of the biggest reasons for my heart for it: my African family and Theodore. 

Long story short: I first went to Africa four summers ago as a volunteer teaching at a deaf school, and I stayed with a host family for 10 weeks.  The host family became my family— they took me in as if I was their daughter all along.  They made every effort as possible to truly know and love me in so little time.  At the same time, while I was teaching at the school, I fell in love with Theodore, who was 7 then.  He was a troubled boy to many, but he was loving to me.  Though he may be sneaky, stubborn and handy at times, he’s also smart, sweet and protective.  I don’t know how to explain this in a better way, but it felt like he belonged to me.  I made sure that he was fed well, understood how important giving is, and knows that there’s more to life than what he knows of it.  It torn me apart when it was time to leave.  I honestly almost panicked— I was this close to taking Theodore with me to America.  Seriously, how could I just leave him behind?  I loved him as if he was my own.  I felt helpless especially the fact that realistically, I may never see him again.  

Violet and Theodore

During my entire stay, I dreamt of growing money to take my family and Theodore home— every single night… on every single star.  I’m not kidding but his family actually gave me their blessing to take the little boy.  Don’t get this the wrong way— they sincerely love him and he’s well taken care of along with his three siblings, but they saw how much I cared for him, how he was with me and mainly, they knew that he would be given a much better life here.  I promised them that I would take it into serious considerations.  The fact that I was only 20 years old then didn’t matter, or the fact that I was still a college student didn’t either.  I was so determined I’d adopt Theodore somehow.  Words can’t explain how devastated I was to have found out that I had to be 30+ year old to adopt a child from Togo.  And obviously, I needed a lot of money.  I grew anger against the system for a while, how cruel they were to make people pay to have a child.  In my case, Theodore’s family wanted me to take him— why was that not enough?  Instead of adopting, however, I did three things: I raised money for Theodore’s family to get a motorbike so that my little school boy can have a better transportation to school and I wanted the best well-being for the family.  

Theodore's family

New motorbike for Theodore's family

I received donations in total of $1,366, a little more than what I needed, accomplished with the community’s help!  Secondly, I surprised everyone when I visited again last winter.  I had to fulfill at least a promise that I would go back, right?  It was until then that I realized that it was home— I had to always go back for as long as I live, even if that means saving money, making the time to go, and being patience with all the lost time together for a (very) long while.  But then again, nothing matters more than being in the arms of the people that you love with all of your heart in the end.  Thirdly, I have been celebrating Theodore’s birthday with a cake every year.  He’s now 11.  :)

I never get tired of sharing this story over and again.  It’s a bittersweet feeling, really— the whole thing.  My point of sharing this to complete strangers like you was to let you know that I have been following your blog for a while now, and again, you inspire me.  I admire your energy, determination and positivity throughout this whole process, so much that I don’t think you need my positive thoughts at all.  Though it’s with my hopes that you do realize that there are people like me out there that believes that you will take in your children as if they were yours forever like how my family did it.  This is a dream come true, and I wish I could make my own.  Whenever you feel frustrated and/or impatient at some point during the process, do take this as a reminder that you are going somewhere with the adoption compared to some who have failed to do so.  

 Remember my story.  It’s unfortunate but be happy for yourselves— obviously, this is meant for you. And lastly, the community is behind you all the way until the kids are in your arms.  I have never believed so much in the community until my experience, and you probably didn’t until you begun the adoption process, too." 

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My goodness! Doesn't her sweet email make you want to go out and sprinkle love on every child in need!? Yes! Awww. What Violet said about the unity in the community that contributed to meeting Theodore's needs really made the whole giving concept possible is very uplifting. You know the saying, kindness in giving creates love. :)

Thank you, Violet, for sharing your story with us. We appreciate people like you out there. 

Brooke & Brian

::Helping others is like helping yourself.::

Want to know my initial passion in helping others? How did I really get myself involved? You know the old cliche saying, "things happen for a reason.." Really, this was coincidental.

So, here.. I'm going to share my story. 

One afternoon (about a year or two ago), I was just stumbling across many DIY house renovation blogs because we love to do renovations around our house. We have done A LOT-- basically, flipping our house. It has been fun tackling so many house projects! Anyways, I happened to be reading my friend, Elisa's DIY blog; she posted about her brother, Alex and his wife, Alexa, who ran the Operation Deaf Orphans (ODO), which led me to read their blog as well. With my fascination and curiosity in reading more about ODO, I adored over the pictures of the deaf orphans in Africa and wanted to do something to help. I loved the fact that ODO helped to build fences around the deaf orphanage (Lance's Deaf Orphans) to prevent intruders and to increase the safety of the children and the staff there. ODO also raised sufficient funds to provide personal/medical essentials for the deaf orphans such as kitchenware, clean bed mattresses, clothes, water, and shoes. They even built a huge vegetable garden for the children to eat from and worked with an organization, "Humura House" to provide two baby cows to produce dairy for the children. After reading more about their stories, I even wanted to be there to help because I know with my crafty and handy skills (based on my house renovating experiences), I could build something functional for them, too! :) The whole concept of helping others was truly inspiring and uplifting. I felt like I was living through their journey by reading every single blog post and checking out all pictures of their mission in Africa. I've decided to donate funds to help ODO to provide more necessities for the deaf orphans. 

"Lance's Deaf Orphans has always been and still is the main organization that supports the orphans' needs. ODO gave them a boost, increased their monthly donations by $200, and brought a team twice with major projects/funding." - Alex. 
 

I also had this aspiration to check into adoption because the pictures of the children (from Lance's Deaf Orphans) said enough for me to bring them home! During that time, I checked into Lance's Deaf Orphans adoption information to read about eligibility. To my disappointment, I found out that I had to live in Kenya for 6 months in order to adopt one of the orphans, which at that time seemed to be unrealistically impossible for me. Instead, I donated some funds to make myself feel worthy knowing that I did something at least to help. Naturally, it made my heart warm. :) Giving is better than receiving. The sense of community compassion without expecting anything in return should be practiced everyday.

Back then when I first donated to ODO, I was getting their newsletters regarding their status with their missions to help deaf orphans. From there, it really pushed me to seek into helping others and the potential of adopting from somewhere else (and look at where we are now- in the process of adopting from Colombia!). 

I love how a random afternoon reading about house renovations would lead me to an amazing opportunity in helping others. Things do happen for a reason! 

 

::One Love, One Heart, One Destiny::

We just launched our new T-shirt fundraiser and it is on www.booster.com/AdoptingASipek! The last day for this fundraiser is on June 21st.  Again, we want to wholeheartedly THANK Jennifer Cavalcanti for her fantastic design! She worked diligently to capture the perfect picture to represent our adoption journey. We love it the design so much! :) If you want to order the t-shirt, please take a picture of you wearing it and hashtag it at #AdoptingASipek. We'd love to add all of your pictures to our adoption album!

Please share this fundraiser with everybody or via social media to reach a larger community to be a part of this story as well! :) Thank you soooo much! 

Much love,

Brooke & Brian

P.S. We are done with work for the summer (yesssss!!!), thus we will be able to update more information regarding our process soon!

::All about Colombia::

Some of you asked us about what's in Colombia?

We thought it'd be fun to share some intriguing tidbits about Colombia; our curiosity got us navigating through several websites about Colombia and discovered some awesome tidbits. Possibly we'll tempt you into traveling there someday? Anyways, we knew that coffee and futbol's popular there; what really surprised us was that Colombia (Bogota, specifically) has the most extensive network of cycle routes out of every city in Latin America and almost the world... considering the fact that we live here in Austin and there are a lot of bike routes around here. Lance Armstrong is from Austin, but Bogota topped it all! 

We have been to New Orleans' Mardi Gras (we lived in Louisiana for a year plus) events including their parades... but seems like Mardi Gras is nothing compared to Colombia's festivities since Colombia is the home to the world's second largest parade and carnival. Wow. We'll need to check out when the festivities are. It would be fun to catch one while we travel there. Who holds the world's largest carnival? Rio de Janiero (Brazil).

Our Austin is the home to many watering holes, but Colombia is the home to the world's most colorful river! Caño Cristales aka "The River of Seven Colors" or "The Liquid Rainbow" is located in Serranía de la Macarena, a small pueblo with less than 4,000 inhabitants. The "National Geographic-worthy" photos of the Caño Cristales river is beautiful! An explosion of natural colors are really from the river weeds in case you were wondering. Yes, they really do exist. Let's hope we'll be able to see this river when we go down to meet our forever child.. whenever that happens!

We were told that Bogota is a mix of New York City and California in one place including the skyscrapers and seaside mountains. Very true based on the photos. We didn't really realize that Bogota is one of the most "up and coming" countries in South America. The pictures say it all. Looks quite busy and crowded, yeah?

We are foodies. Well, kind of. Perhaps, we should ask Anthony Bourdain about his go-to eateries in Colombia. We'd be more than willing to taste a variety of Colombian food while we are down there. We Googled and narrowed down the most popular Colombian food: arepas are cornmeal cakes and commonly stuffed with fillings ranging from cheese and beans to pork or shrimp. Sounds a lot like a stuffed biscuit. We'll confirm once we taste them in Colombia!

Colombian empanadas sound really appealing... "In Colombia, empanadas are also sold outside of the churches. They are usually small and just have potato filling. Some make them with yellow corn meal, others with white corn meal, some make them with beef, others with chicken, with guiso (seasoned sauce), without guiso, with potato, without potato. But, they're all very tasty." Ok, it's on our "to-taste list"!

Ajiaco is a Colombian potato soup. "Ajiaco consists of a thick soup made from meat of different types (beef, pork, chicken) and tubers: potato, cassava, yams, green bananas, pumpkin, corn and of course chili." We are adding this on our list as well.

 

Okay, enough with the food. The photos are making us hungry. 

How big is Colombia? To be specific, the total area of Colombia is around 440,831 square miles, which is equivalent to the areas of Portugal, France, and Spain put together. Meaning Colombia is bigger than the state of Texas by 172,251 square miles. The bottom line is, Colombia is a decent size country.

One last thing... wanna know which animal represents Colombia? The terrifying, we mean.. majestic Andean Condor. Andean Condors are huge... one of the largest birds of prey in the world. Great. Their average wingspan is 10.5 feet. To really think about the size, their amazing length is longer than a famous former NBA player, Shaquille O'Neal's height. Yikes. So, here's a beautiful (well, maybe not so much..) up-close photo of the Andean Condor...

 We checked airbnb.com for housing in Bogota to get a better picture of the cost for us to stay when we travel to pick up our child. The hotels are ridiculously expensive?! There are some hotels designated for adoptive families, but the prices are crazy as well. We figured that it may be budget-wise for us to rent a place during our stay there. We are required to stay approximately 6-8 weeks in Bogota to finalize our adoption process. So, we are thinking far ahead to gather information to get our expenses ready. Although, it would be really nice and preferable if we stay with a host family. We shall see when time's much closer. We truly cannot wait to travel to Colombia someday!

Colombia 101 is complete. You may be dismissed. :)

::Do Small Things with Great Love::

Apologies all around for our month-long hiatus from blogging, our plates have been really full and getting piled up on with ARD/IEP (only teachers can relate) meetings, end of year testing, and so on... our lives as teachers towards the end of the school year is quite overwhelming! We are looking forward to June 6th when our summer officially begins! Hooray! By then, we'll be able to focus on our adoption process with paperwork for our dossier wrap-up. 

Our adoption agency just informed us a while ago that they will be affiliated with another orphanage in Colombia, which is a great opportunity for us because they have seen Deaf children from there many times in the past. Fingers crossed. Until then, our focus is to get in line for ICBF (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar) approval.  This approval is in order to speed up the process of getting matched to  a potential child.  Other than this, there's nothing else new to report at this moment. 

We want to update you on our two recent fundraisers with Subsidy Shades and Noonday Collection; both fundraisers were a success! THANK YOU!

For Subsidy Shades, we raised $152.87; Noonday Collection $216. Each penny earned, counts! :)

We will have another T-shirt drive in June and wanted to reveal the shirt design now! All proceeds will go towards our adoption to bring our little Sipek home someday! We want to give special thanks to Jennifer Cavalcanti for her innovative design and support towards our adoption process! You can see that the Texas and Colombia flags are incorporated in the heart sign; how cool is that?! We will share further information regarding the T-shirt drive soon.

Here's the last, but not least news about Brooke's Bits & Pieces via Etsy shop and there will be new items coming soon this summer! We will keep you informed!

We are a part of a Yahoo! adoption discussion group, which covers many adoption-related discussions and wanted to share some fundraising ideas for you all who are interested in adopting. Check out the links at the bottom of this blog. We want to give you an honest heads up that fundraising isn't easy, but requires a full effort to raise funds for an adoption. Why, you may ask? It depends on how clear you are on your mission behind the fundraiser and how to reach a larger community to support your mission. Using social media is one thing, but you really need to share your story out there to increase visbility and supporters. We know we are not like the Burdens family who raised $35k in 4 amazing months. Patience and persistence will pay off for us. We will reach our goal someday. Currently, we have approximately $12-15k (we're about halfway) left to pay our entire adoption. We applied for two adoption grants a while ago and one of the grants will be reviewed soon in June... hopefully, we will get lucky with a grant! Fingers crossed. 

Someone contacted us regarding a community fundraising event (similar to crowd-funding) where our other supporters fundraise for us. It takes a village to make a huge difference, ultimately. Admittedly, we are... let's say, too humble or modest to ask for volunteers because of one main reason- we are not even sure if volunteers out there are willing to put the effort in gathering funds for us- especially for those who do not really know us. However, we will try and take a leap of faith in this to see what happens. We will create a Facebook page for volunteers by asking close friends/families all over America to share ideas on how everybody could contribute to the funding such as hosting a bake sale, selling handmade items, hosting a community spaghetti dinner, running a lemonade stand, etc. To assure the volunteers that their efforts will be greatly appreciated and for us to show you that our purpose is legit and credible; the donations will be directly donated to our adoption agency or via AdoptTogether. Your honest thoughts? Feel free to comment below. We want positive feedbacks, please. We are constantly seeking innovative ways to raise funds.

For prospective adoptive families, here are some fundraiser ideas:

http://showhope.org/3-ways-fundraise-adoption/

http://yestoadoption.blogspot.com/2010/12/adoption-fundraising-ideas.html

http://www.addingaburden.com/2012/08/adoption-fundraising-advice.html

http://whenatlast.com/2013/01/07/fundraising/

http://mycrazyadoption.org/crazy-fundraiser-for-a-mission-trip/

http://mercyfoundministries.com/blog/10creativefundraisingideas/

We personally would love to do all those awesome ideas, but as just two people to work, we cannot do them all! If we were able to grow 20 more arms and hands, that might work. Where's the genie in a bottle to grant us a wish? :)

We promise to update as soon as we are done with the school year!

Much love, 

Brooke & Brian

::Guest Post #2: Rose & James' Transracial Adoptions::

We would like to share our second guest post about Rose and James' transracial adoptions with two beautiful daughters, Jada and Tiana. We thoroughly enjoyed reading up on their experiences as a multicultural family, so here it is:

"Thank you, Brooke for inviting us to share our story!

My husband, James and I adopted our beautiful girls in 2009 and 2013. We are a multicultural family and I call our family “multicultural” because we all have different cultural/racial identities not only through adoption but also through marriage. James is Black and from St. Thomas, USVI. I am Irish-Canadian. Both of our girls were born in Canada but come from different cultures. Jada is 8 year old and Jamaican-Canadian. Tiana is 1.5 year old and Native (Ojibwa)-Korean. James, Jada and I are Deaf. Tiana has unilateral hearing loss. On top of our racial and cultural identities, our children also have special needs. Now that I’ve given you some background about our family, I can begin to share some of our experiences!

Jada was 3.5 year old when we adopted her in 2009. During the process of adopting her, James and I had many conversations about our racial identities and how we can, as a family, bring those cultures together in one household. We did not fully appreciate the beauty and the challenges of transracial/transcultural adoption until we actually brought Jada home.  Jada shared same race as her new daddy but she shared same gender as her new mommy. For a while, she wanted to look like me and that was heart-breaking. I sought advice from many other adoptive families online, from books and from the Black community, and implemented many of those advices. I learned how to do Jada’s hair and decorated her hair in many different styles (at present day, she has braidlocks and absolutely loves it!). We brought home books from the library about Jamaica. We made sure we had toys, books and movies that reflect her cultural and racial identity. We’ve visited barber shops and through the barber shop in our town, she got to know some Nigerian women. We made an effort to visit them every weekend after Farmer’s Market for over a year but unfortunately, the barber shop closed last year when the owner moved back to Nigeria. Every now and then, we cook Caribbean food at home. This summer, we will be going to the big Caribana event in Toronto and hope to go there every summer. My husband’s family lives in the US, so we do not see them as often as we would love to but when we do visit with them, Jada gets the opportunity to be submersed the culture. We’ve visited St. Thomas and hope to visit Jamaica one day in the future. A couple years ago, Jada shared that she feels stronger affiliation with the Deaf community and feels it is too hard to immerse herself in the Black community as a Deaf person but appreciates knowing about her culture. This would be a blog for other time on my website one day!  

Tiana was 8 months old when we adopted her in 2013. Our experience with incorporating Native-Korean culture into our family is a different from Jada’s for many reasons. The Native community here is very strong, very present and very well-known. The adoption process before bringing Tiana home included a band representative from her Native community and their approval is required. The adoption agreement includes a contract with the tribe and a ceremony at the reservation. In the past 8 months, we’ve been to several teachings and ceremonies. The Native community also includes Jada in their events and treats her as part of their family. We’ve gotten several gifts from the community and have slowly added them to our home decor. Needless to say, there has been almost no real effort on our part to include the Native culture in our home because their presence is very strong and we absolutely love it! On the other hand, the Korean culture has not yet been incorporated in our family and we hope to learn more in the months ahead. My sister is Korean (she and myself are adoptees) and has two children who are Korean and white. Tiana and Sanja share same middle name.  Tiana will always have an aunt and cousins who share same racial identity as her but we hope to learn more about the Korean culture and share what we learned with our children.  

Tiana & Jada

Becoming a multicultural family has been a beautiful experience and we’ve learned so much along the way. We know there is so much more to learn about and so many more ways to celebrate our cultures and races within our family unit. Our goal is never to blend our cultures, but to celebrate each culture for what they are. We would never be a traditional family (not in today’s society) but we are a strong, loving and an authentic family who celebrate each member in the family.

I tried my best to share our story without turning it into a novel! It is a bit long but I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!" 

Thank you Rose and James for sharing your experiences with all of us! :)

Much love,
Brooke & Brian

::Noonday Collection Fundraiser::

shop. style. share. advocate. 
We want to share with you that our Noonday Collection fundraiser is now AVAILABLE for orders! 20% of the proceeds will go towards our adoption.  

First, we want to share with you about Noonday Collection's inspiring mission:

"Noonday Collection's first trunk show was hosted by founder, Jessica Honegger, in her home as a means to raise money to adopt her son and third child from Rwanda. The style and purpose of the products drew an overwhelming response, and the business quickly grew beyond a fundraiser. Thanks to Noonday sales, Jessica and her hubby brought home their son Jack in October of 2011. Orphan care and prevention remain a core value. At Noonday Collection, they believe every child belongs in a family. In the summer of 2011, they launched the ambassador opportunity. The desire for women in the US to earn an income while creating pathways out of poverty for the vulnerable was overwhelming. Jessica needed help! She soon partnered up with another socially minded friend, Travis Wilson, to enable her to grow the business beyond what she could do alone. Both Travis and Jessica spent years living in resource poor areas of the world and both dreamed of starting a business that would alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship." 

Check out their awesome website with the artisans' bios and further information regarding Noonday's mission. They even have a blog! It's very inspiring to read. 

(Brooke): I really LOVE their beautiful, handmade items! Hats off to the artisans because I know how difficult and time-consuming it is to make precise details for jewelry! Hint hint, Mother's Day is coming up- those items would make a great gift! :) 

Please be sure to go to this SPECIFIC link to order at:

www.KristineShafer.NoondayCollection.com

and write for  

"BROOKE SIPEK" 

at the check out when you are done with your orders 

for us to receive the 20% for our adoption.

You could order now anytime between April 17-May 1.

THANK YOU.  :)

Much love, 

Brooke & Brian