The Learning Channel is airing a new series called “Kids by the Dozen,” which showcases families with 12 or more children. Several episode air this month, and show times and synopses of the episodes can be found on TLC’s website.

Not only can you watch the series, but if you happen to have 12 or more children, you can be chosen to appear on the show! It would be fantastic to see some large, adoptive LDS families represented. :)

Here are the specifics:

Seeking Families for TLC’s “Kids by the Dozen”

TLC's television series "Kids by the Dozen" is seeking... more

Adoption.com is having its annual adoption photo contest, and I would love to see a great showing of LDS kiddos included! The deadline for entries is May 31, 2007, with winners being announced on June 6th. With $2000 worth of prizes up for grabs, you’ve got nothing to lose!

Photos can be submitted here (click on “upload photos” in the upper right-hand corner) and winners will be decided by our members. Photos must be original and submitted by the owner (no professional photos, in... more

If you’re not interested in maintaining a blog but would still like to make your adoption experience available to the public, or just to friends and family, there are other options.

The first is to set up a private discussion group, such as a Yahoo group where you can post pictures and information about your adoption plans and experiences. These groups can made public or private, depending on your preferences. You can even elect to have them not appear in the Yahoo groups directory if you’d like. You can post messages and photos, and members of your group can do likewise, depending on the way you set the group’s permissions. One advantage... more

First, decide where you want to host your blog. There are a variety of free blogging sites with blogging packages that will suit most beginning bloggers. Below is a list of some of the more popular options:

Blogger Word Press Type Pad Live Journal

There are even blogs for people with specific interests or lifestyles, such as:

Homestead Blogger Homeschool Blogger

Second, decide on what level of... more

If you’re reading this, you know what a blog is. You may even have one of your own. If you don’t, perhaps you’ve thought about creating one but worried that you wouldn’t have enough interesting things to say, or that no one would read it, or maybe that too many people would read it and it would be an invasion of your privacy!

I avoided blogging for many years because frankly, I thought it was stupid. Why would I want to share my private life with a bunch of people I don’t even know? Eventually though, I was convinced to give it a try. I’d been sending out a weekly email to members of our family and some friends, and I decided the same end might more easily be accomplished if... more

For us personally, the news of Ethiopia's proposed family size restrictions comes at a crucial time. As regular readers of this blog may know, we’ve been wondering/thinking/pondering/praying about whether to adopt a boy or a girl for some time now, but neither decision seemed to be the right one. We kept putting it on the backburner, but when we mailed our dossier to our agency a couple of weeks ago, we knew we’d have to make this important decision sooner than later.

On our way to our fingerprint appointment last week, I finally confessed to my husband that I’d been feeling our “child” should... more

I am reeling from the news we received today that Ethiopia will be limiting adoptions to families with 5 or fewer children in the home. The good news for our family is that the new rules will not apply to us since we are already in the process. The bad news, however, is that a once large family-friendly country will join the ranks of many others who exclude families because of the number of children in their families.

From what I learned from our agency, exceptions will be made for families wanting to adopt HIV+ children, those with severe special needs and for sibling groups of more than three children. (There’s more than a little irony there. “I’m sorry, your family is too big... more

This weekend, a few friends and I headed to the big city to attend one of Deseret Book’s “Time Out for Women” conferences. I was excited to go and hear the speakers (including Mary Ellen Edmunds, Dean Hughes, Emily Watts, Camille Fronk Olson, Carolyn Rasmus, and even a surprise visit from Sheri Dew), but I was most anxious to be able to see Michael McLean (and Kenneth Cope) perform in person. I’ve always loved Michael McLean’s music, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in addition to being a fantastic musician,... more

Out of all the steps of international adoption, I dread this one the most. When we first began adopting, we had to travel two hours away to the sheriff’s office in our nearest big city. It was an inconvenience, but doable, and we ended up making a fun day out of it. The second time we adopted, we found out the sheriff’s office would no longer do the fingerprinting because it was too much hassle for too little money. We ended up having to travel two hours in the opposite direction to a tiny little town to have it done. This time, it was a pain, but it still... more

In part one, I wrote about specific recent conversations about birthparents with our daughters, but in this section, I’d like to talk about adoption discussion “environment” that exists in our family. I’m certainly not an expert on adoption discussions, but we base what we do and say on extensive reading of authors who are, and we rely heavily on prayer to guide us through the sticky spots.

First, we’ve always made adoption discussions A-OK. The kids know that they’re allowed to bring it up any time they want, and that any feelings they verbalize will not be challenged or hushed. They’re... more