The Beginning...

We made the decision to start our journey toward adoption today. We know that it will be a long process, but it is one that we are looking forward to. Our journey did not start the way we had planned, though.

Ashley has been following adoption blogs for a few years now, and has seen how much it helps with the process. It also creates a really good story to share with people along the way. I have always been good at creating websites, so I decided to get on my computer and start designing. It was going really well, and then I came to the point where the site had links to Facebook and Twitter pages. So I took a break from the site to visit Facebook and Twitter to create pages for our new blog site.

At this point, we weren't necessarily ready to tell all of our friends and family about our decision, but I figured there was no harm in creating the pages. So I got the pages finished, and headed back to editing the site. Ten minutes later, I get a text message from my cousin asking me if I just created a Twitter account. I immediately started to freak out, trying to figure out both what to tell him, and also how he found out. So I picked up my phone and called him. I proceeded to tell him that it wasn't what he thought, and Ashley is not pregnant. He then asked me if I got hacked. I then decided to just tell him the truth; that we were starting the adoption process. I felt a lot better after telling him.

Before I hung up the phone, I asked my cousin how he saw the Twitter account. Evidently, when you create a Twitter account, Twitter notifies people that may know you, that you are on Twitter. Because I created the new email address, the account didn't have my name on it, but it turns out that setting the profile picture was where I made the mistake. When my cousin's phone notified him of the new account on Twitter, he clicked it and saw our photo.

Even though we weren't ready to tell everybody, it had to happen eventually. Maybe this will turn out to be the thing that finally gets the process started. We have been talking about adopting for the past 3-4 years, and have been putting it off. I'm sure a couple hundred people got the same message that my cousin did tonight, which means we are probably going to have to answer a few questions tomorrow. There's no putting it off now.