Background

I guess to follow our story, you would need to know something about the characters, the setting, and the plot!

My husband, Scott, and I met in 1991. We were 5! Well, not really, but we were really young - high school sweet hearts. I had wanted children for as long as I could remember, and while I was in high school, I was touched by the stories I read about orphans in other countries. I worked with special needs kids at school, and when I graduated, went to nursing school and continued to work with kids. I have always loved children and knew that I wanted to have many!

We married in 1996, and looked into international adoption very soon afterward. There was one little girl with special needs on a photolisting. We called the agency and found out that there was another family that was interested in her, and they were much further along in the process than we were. We needed to be able to take the plunge without a specific child in mind. My husband wasn't quite as ready as I was, and so we waited.

And in 1999, God blessed us with a beautiful baby boy, N!




I quit my job to stay home full-time with him, and just enjoyed him so much! A more awesome kid I could not have asked for! He is a smart, compassionate, and loving boy. My dream of being a mother had come true, but I still wondered what God's plan was for our family, and prayed that He would reveal His plan for our lives. I still felt called to build our family through adoption, but didn't have very much time to think about it, because less than 2 years later, we were blessed by the birth of our wonderful baby girl, A!




A can be so sweet and be such a booger all at the same time! She is a girly-girl princess and a rough-housing tomboy all in one! She's smart, ornery, tenacious, and an awesome gymnast!

At this point, my mind really turned to adoption as I wasn't sure how many more children we could realistically have in our family. My husband still wasn't as interested in the idea, so we again waited. I tried to talk myself out of adoption, tried to think of reasons we shouldn't pursue this path, but every time, I was strongly reminded of this calling. I had never been so sure of anything else in my life! I looked at photolistings of children that needed homes regularly, wishing that we could share our blessings with just one of these children. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't the right time yet, but then in 2004, I got a glimpse of maybe why we were still waiting - another precious baby boy, M!




What an absolute joy he is! He is so funny and so charming! He started making up jokes at 18 months!

Being parents has been the most rewarding and the most challenging thing we have ever done! We feel so blessed to have 3 such wonderful kids, but yet we kept realizing and saying to each other that A needs a sister. On my husband's side of the family there are 6 grandchildren - she is the only girl!

Then, last December (the 6th) to be exact, I saw a picture of a little girl in Uzbekistan. She looked so ornery in her picture! Her description reminded me so very much of my other children! On Jan. 8th, Scott agreed that we should pursue an international adoption (in an e-mail conversation, of course!), and on June 14th we matched with this beautiful 6 year-old girl who happens to look very much like our oldest! I probably shouldn't have been surprised to find out that her name means, "God's promise." After all these years of feeling God leading us to a child, I finally knew that this was the child He had promised us!