Our Story

This is our story that lead us to the orphanage gates. 

Dennis and I met when I was 17 and he was 21. I was still in high-school and was working at Dunkin Donuts; he was working for Jennings Funeral Home. He would come in for coffee every day. In May of 1974 he asked me out and on August 3, 1976, my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, we were married. We went through the turmoil of not knowing if we would be able to have children, but then three years later we had our first baby girl, Jennifer - our first little blessing!  When the funeral home that Dennis had washed cars for during high-school offered him a job we made the move back to Brooksville, FL from Ft Lauderdale, FL. It was difficult leaving my family but the city life was never for me, so we moved back to Dennis' small home-town and bought a small house on an acre of land. It was beautiful but took me awhile to adjust because I so missed my family. My mom was my best friend growing up. I was raised in the military so we moved often, and making friends was very hard for me. But God's Hand was in this move. Then we were blessed with the births of Adam, Andrew, Aaron, Alex, Austin, Addison and Nora. Eight blessings God gave us to raise! In between their births we also were blessed with 9 little ones who took their first breaths in the arms of Jesus.             

Mine and my husband's hearts have been lead to adopt. Dennis was adopted along with his 3 siblings. He and his brother were adopted from California, while his two sisters were adopted from Korea. 

We had never planned on adoption, until we met a family in our town who was in the process of adopting two little ones from Ukraine. When I saw little Gabe & Levi's pictures my heart broke and that's where it all started. I got to speak with their adopting mom Lindy and then with another group of women as we organized a fundraiser for her adoption in downtown Brooksville. I started to see where it could happen, so I went onto the Reece's Rainbow website that had connected Lindy to her two little boys and I started to look at all the children. I came across a little girl named Sarah and fell in love. As I watched Lindy, my eyes were opened and my heart was broken and there was no turning back. But now how was I going to convince my husband. We had already walked through years of people thinking we were crazy for having all our little ones, but after I gave birth to Adam God told me to Trust Him for how many children we would have, so we did. Even when it got difficult, even after the birth of our youngest Nora and going through 3 years of having 6 little ones go into the arms of Jesus, we still said 'yes Lord'. The last time I was pregnant I was 45. Then at 55 I hear the call to adopt. My husband was 59 , what would he think?! I spent almost a year looking at Sarah's picture when another family committed to adopt her. My heart broke, but at least she had a family. Then a week later as I went on Reece's Rainbow a little baby girl Adalyn popped up and I just knew. I would check the website every chance I had, which wasn't often because we didn't have internet in our house at that time. I asked a friend of mine to inquire about her for me because I also was not very knowledgeable about navigating the internet either. She did, and by the time I got to her house she had already been given more pictures of the little girl. I knew, and now I had to talk to my husband. 

This was how I knew Adalyn was meant for our family - Adalyn was born with a cleft lip and palate just like our son Addison. In fact we have 3 boys born with different forms of this. Then her name - Adalyn. Our son Addison's middle name is Alyn, and so is my husband's. Addison Alyn, Adalyn.... I just knew!!! But by 3:00 that afternoon she was gone. Another family committed to adopt her and I was broken. Did I get this wrong? I had two friends Lisa and Debbie tell me 'hang in there, she'll be back'. Now I thought they were crazy!!! The next night I was in a spiritual battle and it was so bad I called Debbie and she gave me scripture, she prayed with me and told me I had to talk to Dennis, Adalyn would be available again. We would be the back-up family if the other family decided to back out. Since we didn't have internet my friend Lisa did the communicating for me. On May 26 , 2012 Dennis and I were talking in our bedroom and the phone started ringing but I ignored it because we were talking, but they kept calling back. I finally answered and it was Lisa, she had gotten a message that the other family let Adalyn go and she was ours if we said yes. So now I had to talk to Dennis. We did, and on Saturday May 26, 2012 at 12:30 we committed to Adalyn. This is where our adoption journey began.

This will be too long of a post if I continue, so I will finish the story in another post!

Blessings, Cindy......................