Pulaski County Heart Gallery Gala

Saturday was the Pulaski County Heart Gallery Gala at Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock. I have been so excited about this event coming up. The Heart Gallery rotates to different churches throughout Pulaski County every week, and I have helped move it a few times, so I get to see it, but this time they were honoring all the kids that have found their forever homes! Back in September, (about 2 weeks after our family grew by 2 more so I was too busy to blog about it) I had the awesome honor of getting to photograph 13 familes that have adopted children through DHS. Wow. It was such an exciting time. Many of the ones I photographed, were children that I had photographed for the Heart Gallery, so to get to see them happy, with their new family, was just indescribeable. They played a video at the Gala of the family photos I took, and I was fighting back tears majorly. I get so emotional about all this! My parents came up and I was also there with my hubby and 6 kids, and it was so humbling, honoring, exciting, so many emotions rolled into one to see all the photographs I have taken of these beautiful children. I am not the only photographer, but I have been the main one this past year, so a lot of the photos I took. I have never had the opportunity to be a part of something so important! What is even more touching than that though, is remembering each of these children the day I met them, and the prayers that have gone up on their behalf, and the joy I feel whenever I hear they now have a family.

Also, the Pulaski County Adoption Coalition now has website that features all these children, so if you know of anyone that would be interested, please pass the website along to them. These children can be adopted by someone living in any county, and also any state, so get the word out! I am going to link it to my sidebar too.

http://www.pulaskicountyadoptioncoalition.com/

The above picture is of all the kids that are waiting for adoption in Pulaski County. There are around 50-60 photos I believe, but I know there are many more kids we haven't been able to get photographed yet.

The below picture is the one I am SO excited about. These are the children that HAVE BEEN ADOPTED! Woo Hoo! There are about 30 photographs, but there were over 50 children adopted this past year from Pulaski County.

What is even more exciting, after the first photo shoot Kelly and I did last year, I came home and looked at DHS's website, and cried over the children that had been on that website for 3 or more years, waiting to be adopted. I was so saddened to see they had been waiting so long to be adopted, and then we took new photos of them that day, and they had grown so much. Two stand out to me, one was a group of quadruplets, one having cerebral palsy, I thought, how hard would it be for someone to take on that responsibilty? . I prayed for these kids, b/c I knew they would be so hard to find a family for. Another boy, he was around 14, his picture had been on the website a really long time. I cried as I watched him on a video...and these have all found a home!! Can you tell how much I love these kids? They deserve a loving home...everyone of them.

I had a man come up to me and tell me that he was so excited to see what this Heart Gallery has done. He said that some of these kids that had now been adopted, had been available whenever he adopted his child a few years ago.

One of the adopted kids with his new big brother
And here are the boy's parents talking about their adoption experience. They are in the process of adopting 3 year old twin boys. Kelly was with me the day we took their picture, we had a TIME trying to get them to smile! She had to actually hold them, and me crop her out of the photo to get one of them still.
This is all the adoption specialist for Pulaski County honoring my friend Christie for all the hard work she does for the Heart Gallery. I don't know of anyone that is more deserving. She does SO much work for these kids. And, she has fostered over 40 kids in the past 12 years, has 4 bio kids, 1 adopted daughter, and 2 foster daughters, she moves the Heart Gallery to a new church every week, and totally organizes these events like this, and the Disney thing this past summer. She is an awesome lady!
Please, pray that all of these children find a home. Leah asked me when we got home, how many of them had I taken. I had no idea, so I went through my photos, and I have taken over 60 portraits of them this year. I didn't realize it was that many. Over half of those are sibling groups, so I have probably got to meet close to 100 of these children.

Today is National Adoption Day!