Hello! We are Karen and Doug. We believe that everyone’s life is a story. It is filled with happiness and sadness, opportunities and challenges. We want to hear your story and are thankful for the opportunity to share ours with you at this time.
The Love Story
Like so many couples, we met in college. We both had gotten out of long term relationships, and were ready to start dating again and hopefully find “the one.” A mutual friend set us up on a date and we were engaged a few months later. All of our family and friends attended our elegant Christmas wedding. After being married for several years, it became apparent we were unable to have a baby. We immediately knew we wanted to build our family through adoption.
Adoption in Our Lives
Adoption is such a big part of our lives as we adopted our daughters, Maddy, Kayleigh and Breigh. Being excellent parents is so important to us as we have so much love and fun we want to share. We love our daughters so much and would do anything for them. We have always dreamed of having more children in our family. Adoption has given us a family we’ve always dreamed of having, one so big and full of love. We are so excited to grow our family again and welcome another child into our home.
A Little Bit About Karen:
Karen is my smart and beautiful wife with blonde hair and brown eyes. Karen spends the day caring for our two youngest girls. She loves filling each day with outings, activities, and creative play. Most days include a walk with the stroller around the neighborhood, playing, and reading stories. Karen also enjoys taking them to swim, music, and dance lessons. She loves watching her girls grow up and develop their own personalities.
Before she became a mom, Karen earned a doctorate of education specializing in students with learning and emotional disabilities. When she has a free moment, Karen usually spends her time cooking delicious foods. I frequently find her baking chocolate chip cookies or decorating cakes in our kitchen!
She is very structured with the kids and loves to be with them. We are fortunate that Karen can stay home to raise our children as well as keep order and harmony in our home. I am always blown away by how she gets it all done. After the baby arrives, Karen is thrilled to continue in her role as a stay-at-home mom!
A Little Bit About Doug:
Doug is an amazing man with brown hair and brown eyes. He is a wonderful and dedicated father. He and our daughters play together every day. One of their favorite activities is swimming in our pool. I’ll never forget the very first time he took Kayleigh to swim. He was so excited to be the first one to go in the pool with her. It was the beginning of summer, and our outdoor pool had just opened up. She had a blast floating in her inner tube and blowing bubbles back and forth in the water.
Before he became a dad, Doug earned his college degree in business and owns a successful construction company. His hobbies include biking, going out to eat at restaurants, and vacationing. Doug enjoys traveling with our family to Disney World and even took us on our first Disney cruise. He is counting down the days until he can take our little one on our family’s next cruise.
Maddy is a typical first born—strong and determined. She is very kind and has such a heart for other people. She has a great group of friends as well…her friends always say how lucky she is to have younger sisters. Her hobbies include downhill skiing and swimming.
Kayleigh is our wild one, always full of energy and super social…she definitely keeps us on our toes. She loves reading and playing with her sisters. When she loves something, she goes all out…nothing can stop her! Her current favorite Disney princess is Jasmine, which also happens to be her middle name. Just like her other sisters, she loves to dance and swim. Her dance instructor always comments on how gracefully she moves. Kayleigh also started music lessons and is picking up rhythms so quickly.
Breigh is our silly one. She is incredibly sweet and has such a sense of humor. Just like her sister, she loves to swim and dance…especially to any of Princess Tiana’s songs from The Prince and the Frog. Last month, she was able to dance with Princess Tiana at Disney World! At swim lessons, she always encourages the other kids who are scared to go in the water. She is such a good friend to others.
All of our girls are so excited to welcome a new baby in the family…they can’t wait to meet him or her.
We built our two-story home in a really cute neighborhood in Michigan. It’s such a family-friendly community. We can easily and safely walk to the park, playground, basketball court, and even a pond where our girls like to wave at the ducks.
Our home is perfect for raising a family and our neighborhood schools are some of the best in the state for student culture. Many of the students are also adopted. Our schools prioritize, encourage, and celebrate diversity.
We love spending time outdoors. In the summer, our girls happily play in our pool with the pool toys and learn how to become really good swimmers. In the winter months, we find ourselves going outside on a snowy day. We love to play in the snow and build a snowman. Our snowman wears a bright red scarf and a large hat that stays on until the snow melts in the spring. We are so excited for our future child to help us build our next snowman!
In addition to our home in Michigan, we spend time at our family’s lake house throughout the year. In the summer months, every Saturday is a family day. We gather on the beach to enjoy boating, swimming, and jet skiing. When the sun sets, we roast marshmallows over the fire pit and make the world’s best s’mores. There is nothing more magical than spending our summers at the lake house. We can’t wait to make memories with our future baby at the lake house and in our home.
We are so lucky to have so many supportive and loving family members close by. With lots of young cousins under the age of four, a new member of our family will be surrounded with love and laughter from other kids in the family.
Both sets of grandparents have big houses on the beach and we spend many weekends in the summer enjoying the sand and sun with our extended families. Our family has so much fun building large sandcastles together. We search for the perfect shells to decorate our sandcastle creations. Each summer we outdo the previous summer’s sandcastles and can’t wait for another little one to help us decorate the sandcastle with shells he or she may find along the beach.
All of our family members have been so supportive throughout our past and current adoption experiences. Our family is excited to welcome another child with open arms. We have many family traditions that include large birthday, Christmas, and Easter celebrations. Birthdays are a big celebration with both sides of our families that include a tradition of having a special birthday dinner with cake. After eating a delicious meal as a family, all of the kids, and sometimes the adults, break a pinata filled with candy and toys. In our family, a party is not a party without a pinata.
We are excited to welcome a baby of a different ethnicity than ours. We are blessed to live in an area rich in cultural diversity. It is important for our children to have daily contact with children of different ethnicities. Cultural diversity is important for us and we want our child to experience culture in ways that help them become respected and strong individuals. Some of our closest friends and family members have been touched by transracial adoptions. They are so excited for the new baby.
Our daughters Kayleigh and Breigh are from different ethnic backgrounds than us and we have celebrated their ethnicities from the very beginning. Maddy, our oldest daughter, was internationally adopted from Ukraine. We want our daughters to be proud of who they are and embrace their backgrounds. We continue to enrich our lives on a day-to-day basis, but also during the holidays. We are excited to hear about your cultural and family traditions so we can celebrate them in our family.
Our names are Doug and Karen and we are so glad that you took time to read our letter. While we don’t know your circumstances, we know that adoption is a loving choice. If you select us as a family for this child, we will forever keep our promise to be the very best parents. We realize you may have so many questions, and we hope this letter lets you know more about our family and lives.
We have a strong marriage and would do anything for our daughters and future baby. We cherish our adoptions with our daughters. We send frequent updates with pictures and letters about Maddy, Kayleigh, and Breigh. Our daughters’ biological parents are able to look at the pictures and read all about how special the girls are and how much they are loved.
It is our desire to create and honor an adoption plan together with you. We want the baby to know their adoption story and to feel proud of it. We want them to be able to understand they are loved even before birth. Just as with Maddy, Kayleigh and Breigh, our family wants to share with your baby a deep level of love and respect for you.
We are so ready to love and welcome another baby into our lives. Our families and circle of friends, many who have adopted, are so excited to meet and cherish this little person.
Thank you so much for reading about us. As we stated, we look forward to hearing about you if that is what you choose. Thank you for considering adoption.
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