Meet our 2024 Funding Love Families…

When Paola and I married we both agreed that we wanted to make adoption part of our family. Because we are a multicultural family, and we enjoy other exploring other cultures, we decided to adopt internationally from China after having two biological boys. The process went well and we were blessed with a beautiful 3 yr old girl. At the time, we thought we were done with expanding our family. After a few years, we got an email from our adoption agency noting that they were expanding their portfolio of countries into Colombia. This got me interested since my wife is from Colombia, and I realized there were certain benefits to "heritage" adoption. So we kicked it around again and thought that Michaela really needed a younger sister, and we felt we were in a more stable position and could take on another. So in 2019, we started the process again and just recently brought Evelyn home from Colombia. Despite the age gap, it has been awesome to watch our family integrate with Evelyn. Michaela has become a great big sister, and both Garrick and David love to play with Evelyn. We are true believers in adoption and would love to see it grow. While we do recognize that it isn't for everybody, and that it can be very challenging, it has certainly been a blessing to our family. We appreciate and treasure all the various families, churches, individuals, and charitable organizations who work together to encourage, promote, and support adoption.

Caitlin was adopted and when Eric and Caitlin were dating they already knew that they would want to build their family through adoption. Caitlin had been on a service trip to Thailand in high school and left believing that her children would be from Thailand. When Caitlin and Eric got married they researched countries to adopt from and came to the conclusion that due to their ages, length of marriage, and most importantly the strong foster care system they both came to the conclusion that Thailand was the best fit. They began taking Thai language classes, cooking classes, and creating a support system to welcome their children. They adopted Ian in 2018 and then became one of the first families to adopt from Thailand during the pandemic, meeting Ara in January 2021. Caitlin is a teacher at the school that Ian and Ara attend and has worked hard to bring Thailand to school. She teaches Thai cooking classes and camps, celebrated Songkran with the school, and provides education for classes about Thai language, history, and culture. The Breitenstein family has committed to traveling to Thailand every 2 years to stay connected with their other home.

Zoey and Lizzy came to me due to my sister being a drug addict. They came extremely neglected and malnourished. While we were waiting for the bio mom to try to complete her case plan, Lizzy started school and her therapy, Zoey started day care and they both started finally talking and enjoying life as they should. After their mother did not complete her case plan I was blessed enough to have an official family.

Our family began in April of 2018 when my husband and I got married. We met in college and moved to SC for him to pursue a career as a fireman. We knew from the beginning we wanted to be foster parents. Our son and daughter were placed a few months apart in 2019. We were prepared to love them for as long as God had planned. Little did we know that they would forever become a part of our family. Since then, we have had 2 more children to make us a family of 6 with 4 kiddos 5 and under. This year, both our son and daughter officially were adopted into the Miller family.

In 2019 my husband and I were blessed to have Jayden join our home and in 2020 Hadlee. Our goal was to help give them new starts, with love, for as long as they needed us. My husband passed away in May of 2021 and we were devastated. I was suddenly a single parent going through the adoption process. It has been a blessing to have adopted both Jayden and Hadlee. In many ways we have saved each other these past 2 years. We have grown together as a family and are looking forward to what the future brings.

Almost 6 years into our marriage back in 2019 we didn't have any children of our own. Rather than fighting the stars to get pregnant we decided we were meant to take in children that are in need of a loving family. After taking 2½ years to become foster certified because of lost paperwork, & multiple workers quitting at the foster agency we were with, Kayden came into our lives in September 2019 just weeks before his fifth birthday.
All we were told was he was a 4-year-old child, still in diapers, maybe just a little behind on speed but otherwise basically with no special needs. We could tell right away that was not the case. But he was the
cutest child who had a three-word vocabulary – hi, bye and no. Before Kayden we were waiting on an infant adoption that failed so all we had was an infant room ready & Kayden had to sleep in a crib the first
night. He crawled out of the crib in the morning, crawled on my chest and called me ‘Mama.’ We later learned Kayden had a chromosome deletion and would require lifetime care. Then, the night before Halloween 2020 we received a call to foster Maryah & Ezekiel. We were unsure about taking in 2 together, but since they were a brother and sister and we didn’t want to break them up, so we took them at the time, as foster only.
That same night we received the call, after we got home from the wedding at 2 a.m., they came to our house from Amarillo. We had to blow up an air mattress as that’s all we had. We wondered how Kayden would react in the morning as he was already asleep. Well, he woke up to siblings and took them by the hand to his room and started giving them all his clothes and toys. He’s always been very inviting. To this day everything of his is theirs. Seeing all 3 kids together melted our hearts and we hoped they would all get to stay together forever. We adopted Kayden in July 2021 and we finally adopted Maryah and Ezekiel in December 2022. Our family is complete and we are so happy to have all 3 kiddos in our lives forever.

Want to help make their trip extra magical? Click the link below to donate to our Adoptive Family 2024 Vacation!

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