Scott & Laural
– Missouri –
Ethnic Background
White/Caucasian
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about us. We have so much to give in resources, opportunities and --above all else-- love, and we are hoping for a chance to give it. We look forward to doing everything we can to help our new baby grow into a strong, beautiful, and amazing person. Your strength and courage with this choice is unmatched and we are grateful for your consideration.
By Laural: When I met Scott I immediately realized that he was incredibly smart but grounded, self-suffcient and thoughtful, and one of the truly kindest people I’ve ever met. His sincerity has this amazing ability to break the tension with some quirky statement and make people feel safe enough to be themselves. He knows his own limitations and makes it safe for you to also have limitations and find ways to work around them as a team. In fact, his patience helps build me up and want to be a be˜er person. I’ve been lucky enough to watch Scott effectively and gently guide our adopted daughter, Berlin, age 2, through her natural exploration of limits as a toddler.
Laural is simply stunning. Her intellect, curiosity, empathy, and compassion are unparalleled. Each day I fall more in love with her. Laural is like a good book in that her unique perspective opens new worlds. There isn’t a day that goes by where Laural doesn’t teach me something new and make me laugh in the process. The thing that truly drew me to her is that she is a natural mother. She was protective of her friends’ children and loved to teach them cool things about nature and how things worked long before we were married. I’ve never seen a person comfort, console, and challenge our daughter with such grace. The delight on Berlin’s face when she comes back into a room is a gift.
We live in a historic five-bedroom home in the middle of a metropolitan area in the Midwest. It is a unique area filled with old homes with plenty of yard space, a large park, museums, zoo, restaurants, and theaters all within walking distance. As a tenured college professor and Interim Dean of the school, Scot has a flexible schedule which allows him to often work from home. Thus, his job provides excel-ent educational opportunities such as free college tuition for the family. Laural is currently pursuing a doctorate afer spending 15 years as nurse and is finished with coursework, now preparing for her dissertation process from the home office. Her goal is to eventually teach as a professor of nursing. This flexibility provides ample time to focus on our family providing the love, dependable presence, education, and play.
We have a diverse set of family and friends. Sco˜ has a brother (Greg) and sister-in-law (Zendyn) and 2 nephews, Malcolm and Zane, who have been ecstatic to have a cousin to teach everything they know to! There are frequent trips to India to visit Zendyn’s parents. Sco˜’s mother has a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin, allowing us to go boating and jet skiing in the summer, and snowmobiling and skiing in the winter! Laural’s parents live 1.5 hours away, which we LOVE, as they both adore Berlin and want more grandchildren.
