Kiara is the light of our life!
About 2 1/2 years later we adopted our gorgeous daughter, Kiara and she has been lighting up our lives ever since. She will be 2 this July but we joke that she is going on 16! She is incredibly active and lively and loves to share her opinion! Kiara is fiercely independent and not afraid of anything (except having her hair done)! She is beginning to talk all the time and constantly keeps us laughing. Her little voice just melts away all of our stress and without even noticing, a smile will come to our faces. Kiara loves to read, color and swim. She also loves animals and anything to do with music. From the time she was only a few weeks old Kiara would respond to music and as she gets older her fascination only deepens. She can't help but dance when any type of music comes on and it almost always cures a grumpy mood. Kiara is a very sweet little girl and gives the best "loves" (hugs & kisses). She loves to help and share and enjoys making people happy, which is her specialty! We love her more than we ever thought possible and are so excited to share that love with another child.
Ben's family (except his dad who was taking the picture)
Now on to Ben (although we could talk about Kiara all day)! Ben is the oldest of 10 children, with 5 brothers and 4 sisters. His youngest sister is only 3 years old and was adopted from Ukraine last year. He also has a 6 year old little brother. His other siblings range in age from 13-25. One brother is married and another is engaged. Kiara is the only grandchild on Ben's side so far but having such young siblings makes them feel more like cousins than an aunt and uncle to Kiara. Ben's parents and the 5 children not yet in college live in New Hampshire and we love any excuse to go visit them. The 3 kids who are in college all live in Utah where all of Katie's family also lives. Ben grew up on 6 acres of land in NH and loved having all that room to "be a boy." He and his brothers built their own baseball field and campground on their property and spent all of their free time there when they were kids. Ben is a huge sports fan, especially baseball and especially the Boston Red Sox. Growing up in New England he had no choice but now even living across the country we watch at least one inning from every Red Sox game. Kiara has already learned how to say "Let's go Red Sox!" She loves watching the games with us and always yells "Woo-hoo" when someone scores. Ben has his Bachelors Degree in Business Management and works in the sports industry.
Katie's family
Katie is the youngest of 5 kids with 4 older brothers. All of them are married and have kids. In fact, starting with the birth of Kiara and in the 10 months following each of Katie's siblings had a child. For 3 of the 5 siblings it was their first child. It is so fun to have so many kids the same age and know that they will always have guaranteed friends. Katie takes her role as aunt very seriously and does her best to spoil all of her 11 nieces and nephews. It is very important to her to keep a close relationship with each of them and make them know how much they are loved. One time her niece was told no to something by her mom so she said, "That's okay, I'll just ask Katie!" That kind of sums up her relationship with her nieces and nephews! Besides being with kids Katie loves music and even plays the piano. She loves to keep up on the current music and is an American Idol junkie! She also loves to do crafts, especially card making and photography. We have so many pictures of Kiara we don't even know what to do with half of them! Katie also loves writing, shopping, going out to eat and swimming. Family is Katie's number one priority and she considers her job as a mother the most important and rewarding thing she could be doing right now. She has almost earned her Associates Degree in Social Work and has worked a lot in that field as well as working as a teacher's aide in elementary special education. She loves staying home with Kiara and will be a stay at home mom for all of our kids.
As a family we love to be together no matter what we're doing. We love to travel and Kiara has already flown on 9 trips. We find any excuse to go visit family but we will go anywhere. On Saturdays we usually spend the day exploring nearby towns or visiting places in our own city that we haven't seen in awhile. We love the beach and go as often as we can. We are very competitive people and love to play games whenever we can. We get together with friends quite often just for game nights and whenever we're with Katie's family we spend the whole time playing card games. We also love to just hang out at home and watch movies a lot. We have started the tradition on Saturday night to have pizza for dinner and rent a movie. It's been a lot of fun and we look forward to it every week.
