Adoption Services
Creating loving homes since 1947
Steve & Brittany
About Us
Home/Community
We live in a split-level house with a fenced backyard, a turtle, and a betta fish. Our home is open and inviting, often filled with teens. We live two blocks from a nature preserve with a beautiful walking path and walkable distance to a summer farmer’s market and an organic grocery store. We have a university and a community college nearby, which brings in students from all over the nation and the world.
Children
Ava is 16 and just completed her freshman year of high school. She is super social and has many friends who are over all the time. She is on the color guard team and hates math. Ava has siblings and family members who live around Illinois; as a family, we work hard to help Ava maintain a relationship with her bio-family. Ava is passionate about her family, the ocean, color guard, her friends, and Roblox. Ava is currently learning to drive and hopes to study nursing after finishing high school. Ava cannot wait to have a sibling added to the family.
Hobbies & Interests
Steve loves bird watching, plants, and fish; he loves to travel and has been to many countries, including England, Israel, Canada, and Belize. Steve has a deep faith and a passion for caring for God’s creation.
Brittany loves to read, go on walks, and drink coffee. She is passionate about social justice, Jesus, the ocean, and loving people. Brittany also loves to travel and has been to India, Cambodia, and Russia.
Our Pups
We have a German Shepherd who is super sweet and great with kids.
Fun Facts
Brittany is a twin! Ava has 6 siblings. Steve received a perfect score on his ACTs in high school. (He doesn’t like to tell people this fact, so we tell people for him!)
Openness
A child never stops wondering about their birth family. You are irreplaceable. We want to have an open adoption, so the child never has to wonder who you are or if you love them. We are committed to sharing updates in whatever ways work best for you, from sending pictures to writing letters. We hope to create spaces for visits and phone calls. We are proud that adoption is an integral part of our family story. We will talk often about their unique story and work to create spaces for questions, grief, confusion, and joy.
Raising A Child Of Another Race
We have intentionally chosen to live in the most diverse city in southern Illinois. We have been blessed to have friends and family who represent many different faiths, racial and cultural backgrounds. We are committed to making choices that will honor your child’s culture and background. We know that representation matters and hope to create an environment where no child would feel out of place. We have friends and family from various backgrounds, including Eastern European, Black, White, SE Asian, Central Asian, and Hispanic cultures. We would work hard to teach a child about their culture, but also to place them in schools and churches that model diversity, especially within leadership. We also think books and art are beautiful and important ways to honor various cultural backgrounds.
Marriage
We met in 2017 through mutual friends. Steve was working on his master’s in central Illinois, and Brittany was running an emergency day center for women and children experiencing homelessness in a large city. Dating long-distance was very helpful in laying the foundation of a relationship built on clear communication, but it took work. Just before COVID, Brittany moved to the Midwest to be closer to Steve. At that time, we could not anticipate the impacts of COVID on our dating relationship. We learned during quarantine that we wanted to make a forever commitment to one another. We have been married for the past 4 years and can both say we are still each other’s favorite person.
Supports/Extended Family
Raising children can be hard. We are so thankful for the support in our community through our work, church, and school communities. We are also thankful for our family and friends who support us from afar. We have friends and family all over, including Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, Tennessee, and all over the world.
What Led Us To Adoption
Adoption has always been on Brittany’s heart. Steve didn’t have a strong vision for parenthood going into the marriage, but he was certainly open to fostering and/or adopting, and part of his decision to marry Brittany included a readiness to join her in that vision. That’s what led us to foster and then to adopt Ava. At the same time, we have desired to parent a child from birth and have tried to have a child biologically. That included several years of fertility treatments. Brittany became pregnant in early 2023, but she lost that pregnancy after 8 weeks. We knew the risks of pregnancy and that that was a possibility, but of course, it was very painful. We continued fertility treatments for some time after that, but stopped those in early 2024, when the emotional burden of that became too difficult.