This is me...John Christopher Grant Edwards and my family. My partner, Lee and our three children. My part of the adoption was completed 10 months ago and Lee's part is almost finished (finally). I have been thinking about writing this blog for a while so we could let our friends and families know some about what was going on in our lives and to allow some comments back to us.I guess part of this story ought to start in July 2003 when I met Mr. Lee. I had been looking for love. Maybe not always int eh wrong places, it was just that I lived in middle Georgia--Macon and there just was not much "datable" materiel there for me a recently out, 38 year old (see b/w on the side). I was 38 and had a Ph.D. but there was not any one to date in Macon. I looked maybe a little younger and could get plenty of 20 somethings to talk to me at the bar but I was looking for something more. And I found him on-line but he was in Atlanta :O
Lee was serious about a relationship and we started talking online on Thursday and on the phone Saturday and had our first date on Sunday--I don't like to wait. It was not long before we were in love but as with all couples there was much that had to worked through...for one thing, Lee wanted kids and I was afraid that two dads would never be enough to satisfy a family. I thought that we would be cheating kids that was until I spent six months in Eastern Europe in 2006. 
I visited orphanages and realized that I had far more to offer than any of these kids were getting. But I was scared to admit it since I had spent so long denying that I had any interest in parenting and knew that if I told Lee I wanted kids there would be NO going back.So after a year of ups and downs and a lot of frustrations and a near break-up, I finally admitted that at age 41 and 3/4 I wanted to be a Dad. Lee was really not in the mood to talk kids at that point because I had been a "real pill" for the last year and he was not sure if he could trust any thing I was saying but I was for real--I wanted to be a parent and especially to a child from Eastern Europe.
When we settled down, we started discussing options and learned some things that were good to know...
- Openly gay couples could not adopt any where internationally and certainly not in Easter Europe
- Openly gay individuals (especially males) were unlikely to be able to adopt internationally
- International adoptions were expensive
- Surrogacy and private adoptions were definitely a possibility but they were costly and contained their own risks
- There were thousands of children in the United States in foster care and most states, even repressed Georgia, were relatively open to gay couples adopting--in fact our local DFCS (Welfare) office was amazing supportive of us
