When you finally welcome a child through adoption like most parents you will experience a huge, almost undescribable surge of pride. Believe me you will want to show and tell the whole world how great your kids are, and who could blame you!

I remember in May, 2003 when my girls Danika and Cierra were 5 ˝ years and 10 mons respectively I must have snapped a dozen pictures one day on our front porch, but their wonderful, giggly smiles in one particular photo was so sweet that I mailed it off to Adoptive Families Magazine for a possibility of being included in the “Family Album” page. Soon it was August and I had almost forgotten that I sent it when one afternoon I received a little surprise phone call. I was so excited when Marie from the magazine called and let me now that the girls photo had been chosen for the August COVER!

I admit I must have popped a few thousand buttons! I am sure we boosted the magazine’s monthly “readership” significantly( for the August issues at least) with the 30 extra copies we bought to share with family and friends. Cierra’s birthfamily also must have purchased about ten copies and we bought additional ones to send to Danika’s birth grandparents. It was a very exciting thing to have happen, and wow what a way to brag to the world about our very special girls!

With all this there was still one additional copy I really needed to have, and I had to return to an old favorite place to get it.

You see when my husband and I had finally given up on all our infertility treatments that had amounted to nothing more than a huge pile of bills, we went to our old favorite place, a local bookstore, to talk, cry, and perhaps find information about adoption. That is where we purchased our first copy of Adoptive Families. I recall us both combing over it in utter amazement. There was so much information! To us the information truly provided some hope, Hope for future children, hope that we would be parents. Eventually we were parents (and would later welcome a third child, a son). It was coming full circle in a strange way to travel back to the bookstore and purchase a copy of the magazine which had inspired us to change our future. This copy with the images of those living breathing little changes in wonderful, giggly smiles all over the cover is HOPE in tangible, photographical form.