Brianna & Clark

We love our family! Brianna has 3 siblings. We get together as a family every year at a different sibling's home to celebrate Thanksgiving. This year, we went to Jason & Aimee's house in Ohio. We went bowling, visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and made a delicious home-cooked Thanksgiving meal with all the fixings! We love adventures (we've been to Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon together as siblings), and we also love talking and playing games together for hours. This photo includes all of Brianna's siblings, significant others, and nephew.

Last week, we got to spend a week with Clark's grandma on the East Coast and celebrate her 100th birthday! What a milestone! We had lots of great family time, including a big dinner party with all of the cousins and their kids. We can't wait for your child to become part of this family and join us for the next family trip!

We're so blessed to get to spend Easter Weekend with Clark's dad (affectionately called "Granddude" by our nieces)! Last night, we went to a baseball game at our local minor league park. We had a lot of fun watching the game, eating baseball snacks (nachos and peanuts are our favorites), and just being together. There were lots of kids from local Little League teams there too which reminded us how excited we are to welcome a child into our own home one day!

The people in our life are so important to us! Earlier this month, Jacque took Brianna out to lunch for her birthday. Jacque is a very special lady in our lives. When a child joins our family, Jacque will be his or her adopted grandmother! Jacque has been part of our lives for 10+ years. She helped us plan our wedding and she recently purchased the rocking chair for our nursery!

Last weekend, we had a Live Nativity for the preschoolers at church. I (Brianna) love that my job includes planning great events like this one! We had a live cast act out the story of Jesus' birth, complete with Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, a donkey, and two-week-old baby goats like this one! Here's Clark holding one of the precious goats. I loved that the kids were more excited to see Baby Jesus than the baby goats...but those goats really were cute! We hope to bring your child with us to this event next year!

We love our friends! We had a game night with friends from our church last month. These are people we do life with. We've been in each other's homes, we support each other in good times and in difficult times, and we just love spending time together. All of them are so excited about our adoption and can't wait to meet the newest addition to our family!

We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last month! Clark was in charge of planning the evening, and he did a great job. After work, we went out for Malaysian food at a delicious restaurant near our house. Then we had cream puffs at a yummy dessert place. Clark brought home flowers and Cheetos (my favorite junk food) too, so extra points for that! We're hoping to celebrate next year with a little one in our home!

Got to travel to Guadalajara, Mexico for the wedding of a dear friend this week! It was our first time to Mexico, and we loved it. We did a lot of sightseeing and met some amazing people. The wedding was beautiful, and Clark did a great job officiating. (It was his first wedding to officiate, and he was so honored to do it ) The food was amazing too. We can't wait to come back to Mexico again sometime soon!

Brianna is a sweet, kindhearted woman who loves people well. She is very passionate about dance, starting from childhood and making her way to a professional dance company in a major Texas city. Although she doesn’t dance professionally anymore, she can still be found dancing her own creative choreography around the house with a huge smile on her face. She has had the pleasure of teaching dance classes to kids for 20+ years of her life, sharing her gift and love for dance with the next generation. She has worked for our church for 10+ years in the Preschool Ministry in a variety of capacities helping lead the little kids to Christ while creating a safe environment for them to learn and grow. She loves little kids so much and her job allows her to make huge impacts in the lives of countless numbers of children and families. When she interacts with little kids, the smiles and laughter come so naturally and it’s wonderful to witness. She works hard at her job, but she also cares deeply about me, our dogs, and other family members too. She lives sacrificially, putting the needs of others before her own. She is an amazing support system for me providing the respect, love, and encouragement needed to help me lead the family. Brianna has one of the purest hearts on the planet. She gives of herself daily for others and her empathy and compassion for others is astounding. Brianna may be a little shy in big crowds, but she’s intentional about who she meets and strikes up conversations with. If you become friends with her, you have a friend for life. She is the sweetest woman that I could have ever dreamed to live out life with.

Clark loves fun, adventure, and spending time together as a family. He loves fishing and hunting trips with his dad and other male mentor figures in his life. Clark is faithful and loyal to his commitments and to the people in his life. He became a high school teacher right out of college and has continued faithfully in this profession for the past 14 years (he can’t believe it’s been that long already)! He is passionate about his work and about impacting the lives of the next generation. He teaches business classes as well as career prep and digital art/animation classes at a large high school and is also the head adviser of their local Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). He loves taking his FBLA kids on trips to state and national competitions and workshops so they can have experiences he didn’t get to have as a child. Every year, Clark gets at least one letter from a student telling him that he was their favorite teacher and inspired them to pursue a career in business. Clark cares deeply about his students and their futures. His students know it, and they confide in him as a mentor and father figure. Clark loves to participate in extracurricular activities at school too. He regularly serves as the PA Announcer for district football games, pairing his love of football, love for students, and great radio voice! (He did radio announcing earlier on in his career.) Clark is also active at church. He has taught our adult Sunday School class for the past five years, making sure that the lesson is ready and teaching it with skill each Sunday. He also volunteers as a Door Greeter/Security Guard for the Preschool Ministry at our church once a month. Clark is the kind of man who is always there when you need him. He’ll drop everything to make sure his family is okay, and he’ll do it graciously. He is easy-going and is well-loved by everyone he meets. He enjoys being the life of the party as well as spending quiet time at home with me and our two dogs. He is prayerful and takes initiative to pray together with me nearly every morning before work. He also loves taking day trips, road trips, and other adventures with his family!

We have two fun loving dogs in our lives named Jack and Lucy. We adopted Jack within our first year of marriage. He was a rescue from the local animal shelter in town, and he quickly became part of the family. After about one year with Jack, some friends of ours offered us the chance to take care of a sweet little female puppy. We thought Jack could use a friend, so we tested out their relationship with each other to see if it would be a good fit. Jack right away become a mentor figure for Lucy, and we could tell that they would get along with each other just fine. Since then it’s been almost six years as a “pack” together, and they bring us joy every day. Personality-wise, Jack is the quiet, reserved one while Lucy is sassy and vocal. We have a wonderful dog park about a mile from our house, so we take them there frequently to run around and play. They make friends with whomever they meet (dog or human)! They are also great with children and love when our nieces come over to visit. They are the sweetest dogs, and we are blessed to have them in our lives!