About Our Family

Two hippy wannabes working in a residential home for special needs adults in the early 70s. That's where I met John, my future husband and partner on this incredible life's journey. Through our work we became close friends and eventually fell in love. We recognized in each other the same passion to not only work with special needs individuals, but to improve their lives. We wanted to teach them to be self-sufficient and more importantly, to be compassionate and caring towards others.

We loved our job, but deep down yearned to work with special needs children. If we could make such great strides with adults, teaching them basic hygienic skills like bathing, brushing their teeth and how to complete simple household tasks, things that had never been expected of them before, imagine what we could accomplish with children! We also discovered it was much easier to teach our adult residents basic skills they have never learned than it was to teach them right from wrong, selfish from unselfish, as these concepts had never been introduced to them before. So, after a few years we quit the residential home and attempted to open a foster home, agreeing to take in children from a local state hospital. We rented a five bedroom home, furnished it and were able to take in a few children for weekend visitations until we were approved. Sadly, after a year of red tape and disappointed hopes we ran out of funds and had to abandon that dream. The day we moved out of the house we received a letter that we had finally been approved for child placement, but by then it was too late. We swallowed our disappointment and went back to working in group homes, but never gave up on our dream. We applied to every special needs foster home from here to Timbuktu (actually just Hawaii), we kept getting close, but always fell just shy of landing the job. Finally, one day I turned to John and said, "Maybe God wants us to adopt a special needs child." And down the rabbit hole we went!  We visited a private adoption agency that specialized in placing children with disabilities and filled out an application. Included in the application was a checklist of various disabilities, mental and physical handicaps both mild and severe. We were instructed to check the disabilities we felt we could not handle. As I skimmed through them I felt in my heart that it would be wrong to check a single box, so we left it blank, trusting that any child sent to us was meant to be a part of our family, no matter what their disability. Three home studies, several physicals, background checks and interviews later we adopted Shannon, our first girl.

After this we never sought out children, always trusting that God would present to us every child who belonged in our family. And boy did he ever!  Over the years we have adopted a total of twenty-four children, with special needs ranging from mild learning disabilities to acute neurological damage, Down Syndrome, Autism, etc. We also have four biological children, bringing the total to twenty-eight. Six of our beautiful babies have passed away. Four as infants, due to their medical complications. Jon Boy, our little Piglet, died of leukemia at age eight after a five year battle. The last, Nikki, my beautiful golden-haired, blue-eyed angel, died of a brain aneurysm after coming down with a staff infection. She was nine years old.

While I can't say we conquered every medical and emotional challenge laid before us, especially in the early years, with God's help we survived them. Though the scars remain, we too remain faithful to the belief that God's plan is greater than our own. Our children have met and exceeded every expectation. They are kind and loving, always look out for and care for one another. They each have their own household chores, which they perform happily and proudly. They are involved in dance, gymnastics, bowling, skating and Special Olympics. I hope, in this blog to share with you their accomplishments, the day-to-day challenges, the laughter and the tears that abound in our unique "little" family.