Can you imagine if halfway through our adoptions, we learned Carter and Cassandra would never come home to us?

That's a truly horrible thought, right? And yet, thousands of American families are possibly facing that exact scenario right now, because our own government, for whatever reason, is not opposing a plan by the Guatemalan government to halt adoptions.

It's complicated, and if you want me to explain the whole thing, I will try, but others have done so and I will link to their sites below.

But the reason I'm posting this is to ask you to help. You can write letters, make calls, and sign a petition, telling the powers that be how terrible you think this situation is.

I'm not asking anyone to endorse Guatemalan adoptions, I know some people don't agree with inter-country adoptions. What I'm asking you to do is tell our government, the Department of State, to honor their previous commitment to grandfather in the current adoption cases, those that are properly filed and commenced before the deadline looming for implementation of the international adoption treaty (Hague Convention).

Many of you may have been reading about Guatemalan adoptions over the last few months, and so have I. I'll tell you, 99% of the media coverage is sensationlist, inflammatory, and poorly researched. I have confidence that our adoptions were done ethically, and I may do a post about that later. Yes, there are adoption workers out there that have done terrible things, and unfortunately this happens everywhere, not just in Guatemala. But the important thing is, there are women that want to place their children for adoption, there are children that need homes, proper nutrition, and education, and there are so many people that can't have children and want to adopt these gorgeous tots from Guatemala. Surely our two governments can figure out how to safeguard the birth families and children, while allowing Americans to adopt?

OK, back to the present. Here is the petition I would love for you to sign:

http://www.petitiononline.com/foafoa1/petition.html

Feel free to add a note about why you care - are you a potential adoptive parent? Know one? Grandma to a child from Guatemala? Etc.

Next, you can go to www.Guatadopt.com, and download sample letters to your Congressional representatives and to the Department of State at this link:

http://www.guatadopt.com/archives/000715.html#000715

And while you're there at Guatadopt, read this post, it's what its all about, man.

Let me know if you need help figuring out who your reps are, but an easy way is to go to www.congress.org, and enter your zip code in the upper left side of page. You can customize the letter to send to your senators and your rep in the U.S. House of Rep's.

Here are some other sites/blogs that explain the whole mess:

http://www.adaguatemala.org/English/news/

http://www.sunflowersandladybugs.com/blog.asp?ID=545

OK, I'm going to stop rambling and post this, with a few videos of our family. We are so grateful that we were able to bring our tots home, and not a day goes by that we don't consider how lucky we are. Thanks for helping!


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Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Share Photos - Free Video Hosting

(Cassie doesn't eat enough at dinner, so Jeff tried some reverse psych!)