GA – Reece's Rainbow

A GIRL for the Parrish family — GA

Hi! We are Steven and Anna, and we have four amazing kids! We got married in 2010 and immediately started talking about having a family. We knew that we wanted adoption or foster care to be part of our story, but there is no way we could have envisioned how God would bring us all together!

In 2014, after attempting to do foster care locally and having doors closed, we faced the heartbreaking reality of infertility. We decided to lean back into the idea of adopting, and began working with our agency to pursue domestic infant adoption. While in the homestudy process, we saw our son Eddie listed in an advocacy post. We immediately contacted our agency and couldn’t believe it when they said we met all of the criteria to be matched with him! We were overjoyed. Eddie is now eight years old, and has been home from Bulgaria since Fall 2015. He loves music and the outdoors with a passion!

After bringing Eddie home, we knew that our family was not complete. We also saw how quickly his health and overall development improved after leaving the orphanage, and we felt that we should act quickly. To many, it seemed overzealous to start the process again when Eddie had only been home for a few months, but we knew that if there was a little girl out there in a crib somewhere, it wasn’t too soon for her. We began the process to adopt again from Bulgaria, and were still in our homestudy phase when another Reece’s Rainbow mom contacted me to share Rosa’s photo and advocacy profile. We were immediately drawn to her! Rosa came home in late 2016. She is eight years old and loves video chatting with grandparents, playing with siblings, family bike rides, and reading books together.

Shortly after Rosa came home, we saw Victor’s photograph. We immediately knew that his needs were urgent and that it was pressing for him to get out of orphanage care. After just a few weeks, we inquired with our agency about the feasibility of starting the adoption process for the third time in two years. His adoption was completed in less than a calendar year, and he came home right before Christmas in 2017. Victor has a smile that lights up the whole room. He loves vestibular stimulation, his fiber optic lamp, and riding in the bike trailer. We are so thankful that he was able to come home to our family.

In 2019 we got an incredible gift of new life! Karyn, our biological child, was born in the Fall. It has been so wonderful to watch her grow up with such diverse family members and how much she loves them all. One of Karyn’s first consistent words was “Vic!” and she chirps his name constantly! “Vic! Vic!” Victor, who doesn’t always like a lot of touch, loves her and will even smile a little as he hears her running towards him. She has inspired Eddie to play more and has given Rosa a chance to nurture to her heart’s content. Karyn is full of moxie!

In late 2020, we realized that we had room in our hearts and home for another kiddo. As we contemplated adopting again, Anna saw an advocacy post about a specific kiddo that sent the family in the direction of Latin America. We are so thrilled to have the chance to adopt again and bring home a beloved sister and treasured daughter. Children belong in forever families, and we can’t wait to meet our little girl!

3/3/2021 — HOMESTUDY in PROCESS

March 3, 2021/by Michelle Zoromski

Traveling Now

IVEY for the Pfenninger family — GA

Hi! We are Jonathan and Melissa Pfenninger. We have two beautiful daughters named Ivy (4) and Elliott (2) and are in the process to bring home a third!

We did not start out the adoption process in your typical way. While very open to adoption, our plans were always to build our family through biological kids, begin being foster parents, and adopting later on. Of course, our plans often don’t go according to plan and ours changed in November 2019 when we first laid eyes on a girl while scrolling through social media. This little girl caught our attention not only because she needed a family but also because she has a medical condition we are very familiar with. She has Turner Syndrome (TS) which just happens to be the same diagnosis our oldest daughter Ivy has as well. TS is very rare, with only 1-2% of babies making it to birth. We both joked that we should adopt her and kept on scrolling as we normally do.

A week later, out of the blue, we both brought up to each other “the little girl with TS” who we just couldn’t get off our minds. We began to talk and pray seriously about what we could and should do. We both felt God calling us to make a move, whatever that may be. We talked about how, while not ideal timing, God had given us all the resources to be able to adopt. How could we know about her and not do anything? So we took a leap of faith and started the adoption process. We were still not 100% sure this is what God had in store for us but we believed that if this was the path we were supposed to take, it would be made known.

A couple months later, we thought we got our answer when another family was chosen to adopt Ivey instead of us. While we were sad and disappointed, we came to the conclusion that what we wanted for Ivey was to be loved and cared for and whether it was us or another family, she would be and we could be content in that. We talked about what to do now that we had started this process and we decided to make sure that we had everything in order so that if something happened and Ivey needed another family to love her, we would be ready.

Almost 10 months later we got a call that we were not expecting. Our agency was on the phone asking if we were still open to adopting Ivey! Almost immediately, we said yes. We had been praying for this little girl for almost a year now and have been loving her from afar. And now we were beginning to see God’s plan fall into place for her- us! There are so many emotions that go into an adoption but the resounding one is an overwhelming feeling of love for a little girl we haven’t even gotten to meet yet. We are excited (and nervous!) to embark on this adventure but cannot wait to see what God has in store for our family.

4/5/2021 — TRIP ONE COMPLETE; AWAITING USCIS APPROVAL