adoptiversary - our family celebration

Today, we celebrated the day our adoption was finalized for our oldest daughter, who is also the inspiration for the character Scoochie.  We call this day "Adoptiversary", which is referenced in the book, Scoochie's Adoption Story.  It is an annual holiday in our home and one that involves taking the day off work and school to focus entirely on family.  This year, we had a special lunch and planned a series of family-fun activities at home, including a goofy Adoptiversary family dance to (you guessed it) We Are Family by Sister Sledge, creating a canvas with everyone's handprints, slaying dragons in the basement, and having a special custom-made scavenger hunt that ended with ... chocolate!   One of our other traditions is to hire a photographer to help memorialize each year's activities.  These photos find their way to our walls for the next year, onto mugs, blankets and other household items, and finally, into an annual Adoptiversary photo book.  We are so grateful to JPG Photography and their photographer, Chloe, who has been with us every single year.
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Adoptive families celebrate their special day each in their very own way.  For many, this day is commonly referred to as "Gotcha Day".  Early in our adoption experience, the phrase "Gotcha Day" never resonated with us.  It just did not capture the spirit of our adoption.​

So, we spent time researching what others do, but more importantly, we spent time exploring what felt right for us and our family.  We knew we wanted to always remember March 22 as the day our family was legalized by the courts - we wanted to celebrate the anniversary of that momentous occasion.  At that point, it was just a matter of word play and Adoptiversary just organically emerged.  Of course, the internet revealed that we weren't brilliant - this had long be thought of by others, but we didn't need to be original.  What we needed was something that fit our family and Adoptiversary did just that - it fit.

Of course, as happy of a day as this is for us and other adoptive families, we can never forget that to get here, it takes the sacrifice, courage, and selflessness of a birth family.  We can never know the depth of loss felt by a birth family and, in particular, a birth mom who brought a life into the world and then made a decision to entrust another family to love and provide for that life in a way that she, for whatever reason, felt unable to do.  I hope that Scoochie's Adoption Story honors the bond that will always be shared between birth parents and adoptive parents.  We are forever grateful for the birth moms that brought us our two girls and we love our girls' birth moms as an extension of our own family.  Afterall, our ability to have an Adoptiversary celebration is first because of them!  

AM & AH - we love you!