Our Story

Click the following linkto view images of our children:photos

Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed about being a mother. That was my biggest dream and all that I thought about as I grew up. So three years after I married my husband, David, we started talking about starting a family. I think that because I wanted children so badly, I often feared the possibility that I may not be able to have my own. I even discussed it with my husband, during the months that we were trying to conceive. At that point, we agreed that adoption would be the natural course for us. However, it was with much relief that I became pregnant and gave birth to my son, Ryan, who is now almost 11 years old.

We were equally as grateful when we conceived, Ryan’s brother, Matthew, who is now 9 and ½ years old. However, 6 months after Matthew was born we began trying again, as we had always dreamed about having a large family. This time things didn’t happen so quickly and after a year of trying, we were told that we had “secondary infertility”. It was at this point that we began contemplating adoption more seriously. We investigated all of the adoption options and decided that International Adoption was our path as we felt strongly about adopting from an orphanage. The Ukraine seemed to be the best place for us because both of our grandparents had been born there. Thus we began the process, even getting as far as completing a home study. Then to our amazement and delight, I became pregnant with our third son, whose name is Nicholas.

The book was not closed, however, because even though I had been blessed in every way possible with my three sons, I kept thinking about the orphans. Every single night I would go on the internet and download the pictures of the children “waiting” for homes. It was during this time that I realized that this feeling I was having would not go away because adoption was part of our destiny. In July of 2000, we officially began the adoption process. I researched every single aspect of the international adoption journey and focused on familiarizing myself with all of the requirements for a Russian adoption, including the very critical decision of hiring an agency. I was fortunate to be guided to a small agency in Houston,Texas that had actually just opened but was run by experienced adoption professionals. My contact at this agency, literally held my hand through every step of the adoption process. As a result of my determination to complete all of the paperwork and my agency’s close connections to the in country facilitators, exactly five months after beginning the process, my husband and I were matched with our daughters, who were waiting for us in an orphanage in Vladivostok, Russia.

We traveled to meet them for the first time in August of 2002. Then we returned less than one month later, to officially adopt them and bring them home. On October 16, 2002 we returned home with our twin daughters, Marina and Reenie. Marina and Reenie are now four years old and their beauty, love, light and incredible sweet souls have enriched our lives beyond measure.