Grandparents

Backyard fun

Summer fun at the lake

Samuel

Brad

Jessie

Bree and Katie

Hanging out together.

Playing together.

Activities

Puppy love

Birth family

Kids

Marriage

Beth and Brian

We feel so blessed to be a family. We would love to share God's love, our love and our Christian faith with another child. Our children's birth families are an important part of their child's life and of our family. You can always have an important part in your child's life. They will know that you love them and chose a great life for them. You will be able to watch them grow up happy and healthy through frequent contact and visits.

Family fun is the best kind of fun. We enjoy individual activities like soccer, martial arts and music and we enjoy playing together as a family.

Dear Birth Family,

Hello, we are Brian and Beth. We are both 42 years old. We have 5 children. Bree is 21, Katie is 18, Jessie is 16, Brad is 10 and Samuel is 4 years old. We are hoping to add just ONE more child to our family. We want to share God's love and our love with a child.  We have a strong relationship and so many blessings to share. We live in Missouri in the Kansas City Metro area in a nice suburb in a 5 bedroom house. We have an excellent school system. We have a very close family and supportive friends. There is a great preschool in our town for children with special needs called Great Beginnings. They have therapists at the school and teachers who can be a great resource. We live near a great Children's Hospital called Children's Mercy Hospital. It is known nationally as a top ranked Children's Hospital in all specialties including Cardiology.

Our oldest two daughters are in college and are both getting married this summer! Jessie is a junior in high school, enjoys soccer and track and is looking for a job. Brad is 10 and enjoys martial arts. He will test for his black belt this year. Samuel is 4 and enjoys playing with trains and cars. He goes to preschool 2 days a week. Brad and Sam both have minor medical needs of ADHD and asthma. Our kids love each other very much and would love to have another child to love. They play games together and help each other and are really best friends. They are all caring and kind and we are so proud of them. They are all involoved in our church with activities such as choir and youth group. Our Christian faith is the most important thing to us and we are so happy that each of our children have become Christians, except for Samuel who is only 4.
We show our faith as Christians in our daily lives through Bible study and prayer. We pray with our children and for them each day. We tell them Bible stories. We also show our faith through serving and helping others. We enjoy teaching the college age Sunday class at our Baptist church. We had the privilege of serving as missionaries in Nigeria West Africa for three years and that was a great experience for our whole family. While we were there we had a close friend who had an adopted daughter with Down's Syndrome. That led us to hope to adopt a child with Down's syndrome.    

Our family has been blessed through adoption as both of our sons are adopted.  We have an open relationship with Sam’s birth family and a closed relationship with Brad’s birth family, according to their requests. We want to give them as much privacy as they want, while still giving our children a chance to get to know their birth family if possible. We hope that you will choose an open relationship with pictures, e-mails,phone calls and frequent visits, such as monthly. Birth families are part of their child's family and we feel that the more people who love a child the better.    

Beth is a registered nurse and Brian is a high school principal. Since we have medical and educational training we feel prepared to care for a child with medical/special needs. We will need lots of help and advice from therapists, doctors and experts but are very willing to provide hard work and love. Beth only works two days a week so the baby would be home with her except for two days a week. The baby would stay with grandma until old enough to go to preschool two days a week. Samuel and Beth have so much fun hanging out at home and going to the park and other fun places and would love to have another baby to join them.
In addition to Beth's medical experience as a nurse she worked as an aide with special needs children and adults. The children's needs included cerebral palsy and down's syndrome. Brian has experience in the educational aspect of children with special needs. He helps to write and oversee the IEP's or educational plans of children in his school. We have both had lots of training in child development.
We have had friends with children who have Down's syndrome and we love them. We have babysat them and they have been friends with our children. Our 16 year old daughter volunteered with the YMCA Challengers program and also was a camp counselor last summer at Camp Barnabas. She was paired with a camper who had Down's Syndrome. 

Being experienced parents gives us a head start on caring for another child. We will give them all the hugs and snuggling they need. We will enjoy every minute of being with them. We will share God's love and our Christian faith with them. We want to share our love and support with a child and give them the chance to reach their full potential in life. We will encourage their interests and God given talents and teach them to be a successful adult. We hope that you choose us to be the adoptive family for your child. We hope you can be part of our family as a birth family. 

Thank you! Brian and Beth