Our family (Laura, Kim, Paul and Caprice)

We received our biometrics appointment next weds!!!!!  All dossier paperwork is done except for Kim's fingerprints which have been sent in for the 3rd time due to being to light and then to dark.  Hopefully 3s the charm.  We are starting a Yankee candle fundraiser next week.  Things seem to be finally moving!!  Yippee.  Please continue to keep all of us especially Conner in your prayers.

Where we are in the process

We have our son on hold for us in Bulgaria.  Our homestudy is complete.  We have just completed our I800A application and it has been sent out.  We have gathered most of our paperwork for our dossier and are just waiting on a few items.  We found out yesterday that Conner is doing well in school and is healthy and is looking forward to meeting us.  Just that little bit of information filled our hearts with so much joy.  We pray every day to our Father in heaven that he will keep Conner safe until we can bring him home.

Why we decided to adopt

We have been married for 18 years in August and tried getting pregnant right away.  Paul had two children from a previous marriage so we decided to have only one child.  We tried for two years to get pregnant, had 3 miscarriages but finally had Laura in October of 1998.  Our family was perfect.  We had 2 girls and a boy, we had custody of Paul’s 2 children.  Life was filled with college for Aaron, dance classes, softball, church youth groups, jr high school, preschool and birthday parties.   Then our world fell apart, in October of 2002.  Aaron was killed in a car accident.  The next three and a half years were like a bad dream that we couldn’t wake up from.   We were all living in the same house but our family was broken.  We went through life day to day hour to hour.  Kim tried to keep normalcy for Caprice and Laura.  We continued with the sports, dance, youth group, and school activities.  Paul barely existed.  He went to work, was put on anti-depressant medication and when the medication didn’t work he turned to alcohol to numb the pain.  Caprice decided to go live with her mom which made the hole in our hearts even worse.  Nothing seemed to be bringing our family back together at this point not even counseling.

  Until the night Paul was driving and wrapped his car around a tree he had been drinking it was the anniversary of Aarons death.  The police officer that had arrived on the scene first at our son’s accident arrived first at Paul’s.  He said his biggest fear arriving on the scene with Paul hanging out the window was that he would again have to come to our house and tell us of the death of yet another member of our family.  This was Paul’s turning point.  Paul survived the accident with only bumps and bruises.  Our lives changed after that night.  We started going to a Christian counselor, our friends invited us to go to Cross Creek church and we started going and even started volunteering there.  Life slowly got back to the “new normal”.

  Friends from our new church were foster parents so  we decided to honor Aaron’s life by helping other children. We started taking foster care classes and became foster parents.  We have helped 9 children over the last 6 years ages 2 months to 15 years old.  We have watched them come into our home scared and broken and leave happy, secure, healthy and most of them with Jesus in their heart.   We see the children and keep in touch through visits, calls and cards and are so happy that we were able to help them along the way.  This is one of the reasons that we would like to adopt because we would like to help a child permanently.

     Another reason is, our families have adopted.  Kim’s dad and mom adopted 3 children from Korea, her brother adopted a boy from Russia and her sister a boy from New Jersey.  Paul’s sister adopted 2 children from Korea also.  Our families and the love they have for these children have been a tremendous inspiration.

     Finally one of our biggest inspirations besides our son are a couple in our church who adopted a little girl with down syndrome last year.  We never thought about adopting a “special needs” child until they introduced us to a picture of “Conner” on Reeces Rainbow.   We fell in love at first site.  “Conner” has Hodgkin’s disease and went through 6 rounds of chemotherapy and is now in remission, he is also close to aging out.  We are his last hope.