Meet the family!


Grand Canyon Fall 2018. Left to right: Mark (Dad), Shipton (4), Sennika (11), Gavin (10), Katy (Mom), and Leland (8). We love enjoying the breathtaking beauties found in nature, and we make special efforts to create opportunities for our kids to experience the wonders of this amazing world.

Dear Expectant Mom,

Thanks for stopping by to check out our family!<3 As an Expectant Mom, we admire your courage and willingness to grant life. Your faith and determination is a blessing! We don't know the details of your journey, but we send love and healing to you whether or not our paths cross any further than this screen.  We acknowledge we cannot even come close to comprehending the difficulty, heartache, and pain you may be experiencing at this time as you consider your future and the future of your child. What a challenging time for you!

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To the mother of our baby: we are praying for you!!! We love you already. <3 <3 <3 THANK YOU seems pale compared to the gift of this child and the gift of adding you to our family. 

{WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR YOU!!!}  
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An Expectant Mom should keep her baby if she can.  Children do better emotionally and mentally when they are with their own families.  We didn't know that as we stepped into the adoption world. If staying with the birth family is not possible/viable, then open adoption is a great second choice.  

We would choose as open of an open adoption as you and your families are comfortable with.  Through the experiences with family members' adoptions and adoption classes, we recognize that everybody usually does better with an open adoption. Open adoption is what we are picturing, but will respect whatever you feel like you need. 

What open adoption means to us is that birth mom, birth father, and birth families would play active roles in your child's life.  The details would need to be worked out based on the specific circumstances; however, Mark and I would choose as open as possible (i.e.-come visit regularly, spend holidays or birthdays with your child, obviously phone, letters, other forms of regular communication.  We know birth moms that babysit or even situations where the child visits the birth family regularly at the birth family's home.  All of these are what we would choose for an adopted child; however, the details would need to be solidified once we are aware of the specific situation).  

Our goal would be to minimize trauma from adoption as much as possible. Rather than a child always wondering, "Why didn't my birth mom 'want' me?"  We would prefer that s/he knows that s/he is loved by two mommy's.  We believe open adoption can help with that.  

{"A child born to another woman calls me mom. The depth of the tragedy and the magnitude of the privilege are not lost on me."} Jody Landers <3  

Check out THIS video clip for a beautiful explanation of open adoption.
Mark and the kids found these glasses at a yard sale...we love being
silly together. <3 Dad and the kids love going to yard sales on the
weekends.


*We are an ENERGETIC and fun family {passionate} about learning and growing! We work hard and play hard.

*As parents, our goal is to help our children learn skills that will serve them into adulthood.

*We encourage the kids to talk about their feelings, and we believe in parenting in ways that are respectful to our children.

*We create opportunities to explore and seek to instill a love of learning.

*In choosing our family, you are choosing a couple who has nearly 12 years of direct experience in parenting 4 very different personalities. We are excited to have Baby jump right into the intentional parenting skills we have learned and developed over the years rather than going through the “learning curve” of first, second, third, or or even fourth-time parents. :)

*We have learned that every child is different and needs different kinds of support. We are confident we have created a positive frame-work where children can thrive.



*We offer tried and true parenting skills and an established family since we aren't first, second (or even third or fourth-time parents)! :) PLUS Baby will have instant siblings!

We look forward to sharing this child with YOU...you and your family becoming a natural extension of our own.

MUCH LOVE!

~Mark, Katy, and excited little ones xoxoxo
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Meet our bio kids...

Left to right: Sennika (11), Gavin (10), Leland (8), and Shipton (4) at a recent trip to the aquarium. We love to create educational opportunities for our kids! We have passes to most of the local museums in our area because we go that frequently.



SENNIKA (Click names of family members to see more pictures and for more details) 


...is almost 12 years old and quickly growing into an amazing young woman. She is a major bookworm and loves to plan, then carry out art projects or other creative endeavors.  Sennika is the most beautiful of our children.  :)








GAVIN is our witty 10-year-old. He loves to figure out how things work. He love to fold origami, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park (and combines the three by folding intricate origami dinosaurs or Star Wars figures)





LELAND is a busy eight-year-old. He is as filled with energy as he is love! Leland is best explained by a few minutes in his presence. 





SHIPTON, soon to be 5, has grown into a confident and affectionate preschooler with a budding sense of humor (thanks to big brother Gavin). 




















We have learned about ourselves as we have welcomed and parented these children. We recognize that a strong family is made up of two parents who are individually strong and unite and work together to navigate through difficult times and create daily stability  We lead with strength, yet love and humor. We seek for long-term solutions and seek to create experiences for our children that will establish them as strong individuals ready to become productive and happy adults. We celebrate the individual characteristics that each has that strengthens our family! We are SO GRATEFUL for each of these incredible children in our home! Our family dynamic is a balance of shared responsibility and family fun and these energetic souls make each day filled with wonder and joy.

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Meet Us...


{Katy}  
Mom with Shipton on a family walk. Katy is an energetic mom and
parents in light-hearted ways. When emotions are high, she loves to
add gentle humor to turn the mood around. She loves what she does
as a mom and is intentional in the ways she interacts with and parents
our children.

Katy is 34 and has always dreamed of being a Mom. She grew up near Rexburg, Idaho, and is the third of eleven children. From a young age, she usually had a little one on her hip or in tow. Although she is currently serving as our Stake Relief Society President (the Women's organization) for our church, her favorite callings have been with the children in the nursery and as Primary Chorister.

Any room is brighter simply by her entrance.    

She is grateful for the years to mother younger siblings and the springboard it has given her as she finally became a mother herself. She loves being a homemaker and does a fabulous job of creating an environment of love and learning.

She homeschools our kids. It has been a delight to have such a natural addition to the ways we already seek to teach our children. As a family, we all reap the benefits of her dedication in our home classroom and the flexibility it gives us for extra free time and time together.

Outside of her skills as a homemaker, Katy is also a powerful and influential woman. She attended BYU-Idaho and earned an AS in Nursing in 2005, as wells as a BS in Music in 2006. She values education and is a life-long learner. She is always reading a book or two and (and is usually working through a novel with the kids, too).  She has spent her free time in recent years pursuing certifications and mentorships to further develop her understanding and skills. She has taught music lessons and other classes from our home in the past. The most recent, as a certified childbirth educator (and doula, birth mom!) :) and yoga classes.

In this new time and season of life with older-than-we-have-had-before kids, she has started using her nursing skills again, but this time in an emerging branch of the medical field called neurobiology. She is the only certified Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy Practitioner in Utah. In plain English :), Katy is a brain specialist.

She stays home with the kids during the week, then takes a light client load most Saturdays. She works with clients in the aftermath of trauma to help balance out their brains and to reset their nervous systems. Katy is also a certified Karma Kids Yoga instructor and has taught kids yoga at a local kids' gym in the recent past. She is almost finished with her 200 hour YTT for Hatha Yoga, plans to start her 200 hour YTT for Kundalini Yoga spring 2019, and is tentatively scheduled to start teaching a specialized yoga course out of therapists' offices beginning fall 2019.


This picture speaks volumes about the kind of dad Mark
is. Here he is with all 3 boys in the warehouse at work.
Look at how patient he is and the creative fun he comes
up with the kids. The kids LOVE when Dad is home and
they always find memorable things to do together whether
that is in or out of the house.

{Mark}

All three of the older kids talk about the fun they have wrestling with Dad, MARK, age 36. Mark and the kids created a few games together. The one that brings the most excitement and anticipated giggles is what they call "TACO!"

He is calm and level-headed, always thinking outside the box for multiple solutions to problems.

Mark is such a fun Daddy! He possesses a rare gentleness and patience as he interacts with our little ones. He is really good at stopping and listening to what the children are saying or needing, then mirroring it back to them in way that they feel heard and validated.

He is also good at helping the children to problem solve.

He does a fabulous job in his roles and responsibilities. He leads our family in righteousness and ensures we have couple and family prayers and scriptures and also Family Home Evening.

He works hard at his job and is a fabulous employee, always looking for ways to improve processes. He takes his roles as provider seriously, and has worked 3 jobs at one point for several years to ensure our family had what we needed. He is calm and level-headed, always thinking outside the box for multiple solutions to problems. He is admired and trusted by co-workers and friends for his valuable insights.

Mark grew up as the baby of six children in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He loves to play soccer and also enjoys hiking and camping...anything outdoors. He grew up as a huge scouter and was awarded the order of the arrow early in our marriage.  He loves learning about other cultures and especially cooking their authentic foods.

He attended BYU-Idaho and earned a BS in Business Management with an emphasis in Supply Chain. He is currently the Dealer Care Manager for a company called FreeUs. They manufacture and sell medical alarm devices to the dealers for redistribution, and their sister company supports the medical alarm calls. They have grown at an astounding rate! They are an extremely stable company with a bright future. We are so blessed and grateful that Mark has such a good job!

Mark grew out his beard as a hopeful extra for the LDS Church's recordings of the Book of Mormon movie clips.  He was privileged to be in the recording last summer, and we are excited to watch for him when the clips are available in a few years. Mark (and Gavin) also performed in Savior of the World, a beautiful musical production depicting the events surrounding the birth and death of Jesus Christ.  He loves to sing and has a powerful bass voice.  

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