Hey! We are the Anderson family! We are 28 (Craig) and 27 (Ashton) years old and live in Bentonville, AR, home of Walmart. Our story is a bit of a whirlwind but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We started dating in December 2015, got engaged in August 2016 and married in November 2016. It was fast but we were so ready to be married and start living life together. Adoption is a HUGE part of our story because Ashton is adopted. Ashton was adopted at birth into a closed adoption agreement which meant she could not know anything about her birth mom until she was 18. This was the agreement made through a private attorney between her birth mom and adoptive parents. At the age of 19 she reconnected with her birth mom through Facebook. They had started messaging back and forth and finally met a few months later. Her birth mom also had 2 daughters of her own. Ashton gained a new family through reconnecting with her birth mom and now she visits them often.
We talked about adoption when we started dating because of this. Ashton planted the idea of adoption in our hearts a long time ago and it has only grown since then. About a year ago we decided we would try to grow our family through conceiving a biological child. When we went into making that decision we decided that we would try for a year and if that did not work we would look into growing our family through adoption. We knew we were ready to grow our family no matter how we did that. We felt equipped to be parents no matter how we grew our family because of our background. A year came and went in a flash and we were still not pregnant. Our hearts groaned to become parents so we finally took the leap of faith we had talked about so long ago. We researched for about a month on adoption agencies, ethics and education surrounding adoption. We finally found an agency that was local to us that had everything we were looking for. We signed on with them in March 2020. This is where the bow designs come in!
We had just signed on with our agency and got connected with the wonderful Kathleen at Wanderlust and Mayhem. We chose these colors and patterns because it expressed how we were feeling at the time. We felt (and still feel) so hopeful and excited about becoming parents through domestic infant adoption. These colors and patterns remind us of the verses found in Psalm 23. The Lord has always been faithful to us and as we wait to be matched with an expectant mom and we will trust Him and His perfect timing. While we wait we are praying for, and would love for you to pray alongside us, for the expectant mom on the other side of this who is not feeling the same joy that we are experiencing. We pray for peace, comfort and complete confidence as she makes the choice to prepare an adoption plan to place her most precious baby in the hands of someone else. We are also praying for patience as we wait and for the Lord to fully prepare and equip us for this new adventure ahead. We are confident He has made adoption a part of Ashton’s story for this moment and are excited to see what His plans are for our future child. Thank you for supporting our family!
You are going to love these bows. Perfect patterns for summer and for this family! Can’t wait to see you in those bows! Click on the photo or the link to shop!
