In 2002, I began to chronicle my adoption journey and created Forever Parents, a supportive online community for adoptive and waiting parents. Over the next year, we grew our support forums to include an adoption shop and a blog. Forever Parents stayed active, helping thousands of people for over ten years. I’m in the process of updating and moving all the posts to this blog, in the Forever Parents section. This post was originally published on April 7, 2008.
Are you looking for ways to celebrate and honor your adoption anniversary? There are lots of adoption anniversary ideas, from ways to give back to activities that strengthen your family bond. I’ll share thirteen ideas for you, including a few that we’ve done over the years!
What is An Adoption Anniversary?
An adoption anniversary is the anniversary of the day you legally finalized your child’s adoption.
Note; If you’re an extended family member (aunt, grandparent, etc) or friend of someone who’s adopted a child, your support helps more than you know. As you read through the list below, look for ways you can help celebrate this special day. Trust me, they’ll love it. One of our family’s favorite treasures is a Christmas ornament we got on our first Christmas as a family. (How extended family helps adopted children)
See related: Adoption Life Book Ideas
13 Ways To Celebrate Your Adoption Anniversary
- Lighting candles to honor those who made the adoption possible.
- Family activities such as a picnic or a day at an amusement park.
- Purchasing a gift that represents the child’s birth heritage such as the country they were born in.
- Display or fly the flag of the child’s birth country in the front yard.
- Reviewing a child’s life book, and perhaps adding a page to represent the past year
- Preparing a presentation for your child’s classroom, homeschool group, or scouting troop about adoption and how all families are different.
- Remembering children still in foster care or orphanages by volunteering or sending a care package.
- Writing in a family journal.
- Take a professional family picture.
- Helping your child to write or draw something about their life, their adoption, or their past.
- Reading a book about families and/or adoption.
- Buying a book about adoption and donating it to your child’s school library or public library.
- Create something to remember each anniversary.
Shop our Amazon adoption products – Celebrate adoption with these books, decor, clothing, and more!
How my family celebrates our adoption anniversary
The first few years we celebrated our adoption anniversary we went BIG, especially the first year! Since we live so close to Orlando we spent time at Disney and Universal for a few years. We were able to use a friend’s timeshare one time which made it much more comfortable for our family of five. After those first few years, we settled into going out for dinner, planning family activities, and enjoying a special meal at home.
Regardless of what we did, we always made a point to acknowledge it because it was an important day for us. It’s also the day I celebrate Mother’s Day so there’s that also. That’s a whole other blog post but I’ve been doing that since the year we finalized our adoption.
How Families Celebrate Gotcha Day
Gotcha Day is how some families refer to their adoption anniversary. Here are families in our adoption group celebrating their special day.
** My daughter and I celebrate finalization day. She has no siblings, but I think we still would with each sibling. I take her to lunch and buy her a present.
** We don’t celebrate but we do talk about it on that day. We let him know that was the day we became a family. We tell him it was the happiest day of our lives and one we will never forget. We remind him what country he is from, and that he had to fly on an airplane to come home to us.
** We celebrate our “Family Day” on the anniversary of our daughter’s finalization. That was an important day not just for her, but for our entire family. In the words of my husband, it was the day the wagons were circled. So we’ve celebrated it now for the last few years by going to our county fair, eating too much junk food, riding crazy rides and just enjoying each others’ company. I love it. It’s like celebrating our wedding anniversary…it’s not the day our family was born, but it was the day our family was COMPLETE.
** We went on vacation for the first anniversary. It was so much fun. We do something different every year.
I was adopted when I was 3 days old, and now I’m almost 30. My adoptive parents, whom I call my parents, could not have a family of their own, so they turned to adoption. Though I’m an only child, I’ve always wanted a sibling. However, I was blessed with 9 first cousins, and we are all very close like siblings with each other. We are all around the same age too, the eldest turning 32 next month and the youngest turning 18 around Thanksgiving.
To this day, my parents and I celebrate both my birthday and Coming Home Day together as they’re mere days apart. Normally, we’d make a nice family dinner, the three of us. But now that I live with my in-laws (who also chose adoption, for the same reason as my parents, with their son, my husband), my parents will be taking me out to dinner to celebrate both days ON my Coming Home Day!
I was fortunate enough to reach out to my birth father, who actively states he wants to talk to me. He has since sent me a letter, though I have not yet received it. My birth mother, unfortunately and tragically, passed away in 2011. I’m thankful for the love and support my adoptive family as a whole has given me over the years, and am grateful to be matched with such a wonderful family.
What can I do on my adoption day as a 16 year old?
Hi everyone. My friend will be celebrating a year with her adopted son on January 21. I want to get he son a gift. Any ideas? He is very excited about the year anniversary, he’s 7.
Thanks. 🙂
We are going to celebrate the 2nd year of adopting our 2 girls being final this Friday, November 3rd. by doing a scrapbook page of all the special times we have had this year. My girls are 9 and 15.
We have two adopted children who are now adults. We still celebrate as we always have, by them choosing where they would like to go or what they’d like to do. On the finalization of our elder child the Judge ordered us to take him to Farrell’s which no longer exists, but we do still take him still to an ice cream parlour and a dinner if he also desires. Once at a an education forum the judge who finalized our elder child’s adoption was on the on the panel. I wrote a note and asked for it to be given to him. I saw him read it and get a huge grin on his face. He was amazed we continued his order and yes we got to speak to him later.
H there,
I am a birth mom and this years marks the 10th anniversary and birthday of my son who was placed with an amazing adoptive family. They are very special to me and I am just looking for any gift ideas or suggestions to help celebrate this special day.
Thanks so much.
Hello…we are celebrating our one year anniversary today. We are going to lunch and spending a nice day together. We also took our kids to a waterpark this past weekend to celebrate too!
We brought out daughter home from Bogota, Colombia on January 29, 1977 and every January 29th since then we celebrate “Family Anniversary” day. As a child, she got a special little gift on that day and now, as an adult, we go out to a special dinner. It’s a tradition we all look forward to celebrating.
We are celebrating our daughter’s year with us on January 31st…she is from Taiwan so we are having a Chinese New Year Party in honor of our youngest daughter!
Hi Christi and thanks for posting. 🙂 We always celebrate our “Family Day” because it was a very special day for the five of us. I love that your parents celebrated your day and it seems you have great memories of it!
My brother and I are both adopted, and our finalizations were one day (and two years) apart. So every year our parents would celebrate “Adoption Day” by going out for hamburgers one day and ice cream the next. The following year, it would ice cream and then hamburgers. And so on. We are now 39 and 41 and still our parents call to say Happy Adoption Day!!
What a wonderful list! I hope to adopt in the future so maybe I’ll get to use some of these! : ) Happy TT