Lifebook Day

Here it is Emilie!! My entry about Lifebooks. I went to a class on Saturday about Lifebooks - a scrapbook that details everything about your child's journey through adoption and life in general. There really isn't a place to go buy an adoption baby book that entails everything an adoptive family wants to include in their book, so a Lifebook is a great way to make it your own. Karin (from Hand in Hand) taught the Lifebook portion. I wish Karin taught all of the classes I took in life. She makes everything so easy to understand, and exciting to learn - I feel like I can take on anything! She had great examples of Lifebooks, and the one she has for her daughter is absolutely amazing.

I am in awe (and a little jealous) at what Karin and the other ladies who are regulars at this class have done. Their scrapbook skills are to be envied. They have such patience, and such an eye for these things. I decided that I am definitely more of an online scrapbook kind of girl. A new online soon-to-be adoptive mom friend of mine, Emilie, made a super cool book that she is going to send to her child after they get their referral while they are waiting to go pick him/her up. I LOVED what she made.

So here are some of the things that I learned about Lifebooks this weekend:
-Our children will want to look at their Lifebook over and over and over again.
-We need to include information about their birth (even if we don't know anything about it!) - what was the world like when they were born? What were we doing at the time they were born?
-Information and/or pictures about both the birth family and the adoptive family.
-Cultural heritage - Karin even had these cool pouches that could hold coins or currency from their birth country. I thought that was such a cool idea!!
-A section about why they were adopted (very cool ideas for this very important section) - the loss and grief needs to be acknowledged and addressed.
-Planning - what did we do to plan for bringing our child/ren home? I loved the idea of writing up the prayers that we have been praying for our child/ren into this book.
-Placement - delivery day!!
-Coming home, and their life

I got to spend time with an adoptive mom named Jill (who I met on this day of training last year with her husband and son Louie). We really clicked and we are both more of online-book making people than scrapbookers. We tried hard at making our first pages, and you can see my results below. This took me 2 HOURS to make!! I don't have the patience for that :)

Page one:

Page two:

Next weekend we'll be going to a banquet for the Children's Shelter of Cebu (it's in the Philippines) at Bethel University. We'll be sitting with Karin and her kids, and Jill, her husband and Louie (their cutie pie). I guess Louie is very excited about wearing his barong, and I'm excited to see it!! We'll also meet a new couple who just began their adoption journey with Hand in Hand. It should be a fun time, and I'm really looking forward to it!