I wish I had a photograph of my husband’s face as I handed him his daughter for the first time. I had been in Vietnam for almost two weeks, and he had been home caring for our three young sons, running the house and still finding time to hold down his job.

He had driven the three hours that night to pick Maggie and me up from the Salt Lake City airport. We were coming off of a 24-hour trip…we started in Ho Chi Minh City, then on to Hong Kong, then to Los Angeles, and then finally, Salt Lake City. I was oh-so tired as I walked through the terminal carrying my tiny nine-pound, fourth-month old baby girl, and as I neared the corner that I knew once turned, would let me finally see my... more

This un-photographable moment doesn't have to do with our adoption story, but with someone else's. It is about a father who traveled the same week as my husband and I did to go get our son from Ethiopia. The father was older, and he and his wife already had a good-sized family at home, with children already grown and young children still at home. They were adding to their family a beautiful little three-year old girl, who was living at the same orphanage as our son. When we met J. at the airport, despite the fact that he was an experienced dad, he was nervous (weren’t we all?). He was nervous about how this little African girl was going to react to this white man that she didn’t know coming... more

In this post, Owlhaven at the Ethiopia-adopt blog talks about writing about “unphotographable” moments on her adoption trip to Ethiopia.

Having just been in Ethiopia, it got me thinking about all of the many moments on our trip that I wished I had on film to treasure and share, but didn’t capture on film because it either would have been inappropriate or I just was not prepared.

Then I started thinking about life in general, and how many memorable moments end up captured only... more