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Dates have a way of etching themselves permanently into our minds, reminding us of great joy and sorrow. This site is our best representation of that great joy and sorrow in our lives...

July 20, 2006. Carmen was born in Guatemala to a young Mayan woman. One week later, we received the referral for this beautiful, healthy baby girl. At 8 ½ pounds, Carmen appeared to be the epitome of health.

August, 1, 2006. We accepted Carmen's referral on our 8th wedding anniversary.

January 10, 2007. We brought Carmen home on Steve's birthday (Dave's brother). What a joyful day! We arrived at Reagan International Airport in Washington dc. Grandpa C. was waiting with our three year old daughter, Lauren. We will never forget Lauren’s reaction as she looked at her new sister. “My sister! My Sister! My Sister! My Sister!” Lauren exclaimed over and over. Reaching from her car seat over to Carmen’s car seat, Lauren held Carmen’s hand the whole way home from the airport, about a 45 minute drive.

Over the next few months, we became concerned that Carmen was not progressing as quickly as expected. At 11 months old, she could roll over and sit up for short periods of time but could not do much else. Her physical therapist suggested that we take Carmen to an eye doctor so that we could rule out vision as a contributor to her delays.

July 2, 2007. The pediatric ophthalmologist took one look into Carmen’s eyes and sent us straight to a retina specialist. The retina specialist found cherry-red spots and was wisely rather vague as to what that might indicate. We couldn’t imagine the reality of Carmen’s situation in our worst nightmares.

July 5, 2007. We visited Dr. Tifft, a geneticist at Children’s Hospital in dc. “I am 99 percent sure that this is Tay Sachs,” she told us gently. Our worlds crashed to the ground. We sat silently in the examination room for what seemed like hours but what must have been only moments.

A young Israeli doctor stood quietly in the room with Dr. Tifft. I looked up at her and saw tears in her eyes. I am sure that our broken hearts were written all over our faces. Our beautiful princess was given 2-3 years to live.

Thus began a journey of tests to diagnose Carmen’s disease.

To our surprise, the test for Tay Sachs came back negative. Blood work pointed to Sialidosis. A skin biopsy negated Sialidosis.

October 15, 2007. After three months of waiting and wondering, Carmen was diagnosed officially on Dave’s 33rd birthday. A spinal tap revealed that Carmen has elevated gangliosides, pointing to the ultra rare AB Variant of Tay Sachs. Carmen officially has Tay Sachs, AB Variant, which progresses identically to Tay Sachs.

Carmen has a difficult road ahead of her as this wretched disease takes over her entire body. Tay Sachs leads rapidly and relentlessly to seizures, loss of sight and hearing, paralysis, inability to swallow and unresponsiveness to her surroundings.

Carmen is a beautiful child. It saddens us to know that, barring a miracle, she will never walk or talk here on earth; her first words and steps will be with Jesus in Heaven. Until that time comes, we have the awesome privilege and responsibility to care for our very special little girl.

We will do everything we can to give her a beautiful life here on earth. We know that incredible blessing will be mixed with the inevitable sorrow. We are experiencing some of these blessings already.

Ultimately, we know that Carmen will touch more hearts and make a greater difference in this world in a few short years than most of us will in a long lifetime.

Our Story

Lana and Dave met October 15, 1994 in the guys’ laundromat at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas. This is an easy date to remember because it was Dave’s 20th birthday. Lana was 18 years old, a freshman, and Dave was a sophomore. The washing machine in Lana’s dorm was broken (or so she claims!) so she headed over to the guys’ laundromat. Dave walked in a short while later. They were the only two in the room and Dave thought it would be rude not to say hello! (well, that’s his story!) One thing led to another and after 3 ½ years of dating, Dave and Lana were married in Lufkin, Texas on August 1, 1998.

Thinking back, we were as naïve as most young couples and had no idea where life would take us. We thought we would wait a few years to have kids, making sure we were stable financially and that our marriage was on a firm foundation (Advice directly from Dave’s parents who had Dave’s sister 10 months after their wedding day and then Dave’s brother 11 months after his sister!).

We planned to have a large family; six kids sounded like fun! In 2000, Lana had her first miscarriage, twins, and then in 2001 she miscarried again, this time a girl. This was not our plan for our lives and was quite a reality check. After consulting with a reproductive endocrinologist, Lana was found to have a blood clotting disorder and baby aspirin was recommended for any future pregnancies.

December 5, 2003, Lauren Elise was born. Lauren is a gift, a blessing in our lives. She makes us laugh every day and has brought immeasurable joy to our home. Recently, Lana and Lauren were playing “doctor kit” and Lauren was pretending to be the nurse, checking in her patient. With her nursing cap on and with a very serious expression, Lauren asked Lana, “Are you female or email?” Kids do say the funniest things and we are so thankful to have Lauren as our daughter!

With Lauren nearing two, we decided it was time to think about another child for our family. Lana has always had a heart for adoption, going back all the way to elementary age. Dave was a bit more hesitant, questioning whether this was right for our family. In July 2005, Dave went to Peru and worked in an orphanage as part of our church's annual mission trip. While there, he wrote in his journal that he thought this trip might change his life. Little did he know! When he got home, God had worked in Dave’s heart and he, too, felt called to adopt.

We started the adoption process in January 2006 and brought 5 ½ month old Carmen Alesandra home from Guatemala in January 2007. Carmen’s adoption story is amazing! We hope you take a moment to read about how she came to be in our family and the miracles that occurred along the way.

Like her big sister, Carmen is a gift, a blessing in our lives. Carmen is teaching us so much: unconditional love, enjoying each moment, not worrying about unimportant stuff, just to name a few things. We have no doubt that God hand-picked Carmen for our family and us for Carmen.

We are humbled and grateful.

Once again, we have been hit with reality and our plan for our lives has taken a huge left turn. When Carmen was diagnosed with Tay Sachs, AB Variant, our lives changed forever. Suddenly we were caring for our terminally ill child, an enormous challenge in every respect. To be honest, we cannot fully imagine the future. We have read everything we can find on Tay Sachs about what to expect, but until you have lived it, how can you fathom such a terrible disease?

Our hope, the thing we hold onto was summed up beautifully by Carmen’s pediatrician. This wise doctor said, “God has a plan for Carmen’s life. Not just a plan for this life but a plan for her eternal life” (Jeremiah 29:11). Barring a miracle, Carmen’s life will be short on this earth, but we will spend eternity with her. And her body will be perfect.

This is our story so far. The canvas of our lives is not quite what we expected and we certainly would not have chosen many parts of it. But, in the end, we know that the picture we are a part of will be far more beautiful than anything we could have created or even imagined (I Corinthians 2:9).

Carmen's Story

Lana and Dave started the adoption process in January 2006. After six months of hard work, we finished our paperwork and were placed on the waiting list for a healthy, infant girl from Guatemala. At the time, our agency had a wait time of 12 weeks for a referral.

Carmen was born on July 20, 2006 to a young Mayan woman in Mazatenango, Guatemala. Carmen was her first child. She placed Carmen for adoption due to extreme poverty.

On July 27, 2006, three short weeks after being put on the waiting list, we received the call that we had a daughter! Our adoption coordinator commented that this baby seemed as healthy as they come, 8 ½ lbs. and 21.75 inches long. We were ecstatic but also surprised because we thought we had many more weeks to wait. Lana questioned our coordinator but was told that the agency must have caught up with its referrals.

After talking to other families adopting through the same agency and realizing that families ahead of us had not yet received referrals, Lana called our agency. We found out that our coordinator had incorrectly entered the completion date of our paperwork, which accidentally bumped us up the list several months.

We formally accepted Carmen’s referral before our agency realized its mistake. They discussed what to do and decided that God must really want this child to be a part of our family.

We chose to name our daughter Carmen Alesandra. Carmen means “song” and this child put a song in our hearts. We decided on Alesandra because Carmen’s Guatemalan name was Sandra and we wanted to honor her heritage by keeping part of her name.

December 2006, when Carmen was 4 ½ months old, Dave, Lauren and Lana flew to Guatemala to visit Carmen. We will never forget the first time we met Carmen. Carmen’s foster mother waited for us in the “Baby Room” at the Guatemala City Marriott. We walked into the room and she handed Carmen to Lana. Lana said, “Hi baby!” and Carmen gave her the biggest, toothless smile we’ve ever seen!

Recollections of this first smile became even more special after we brought Carmen home and realized how reserved she is with other people; she smiles at very few strangers. It was as if she knew that Lana was her mom.

During our visit, Lauren fell absolutely in love with her new sister. Likewise, Carmen seemed most comfortable around Lauren, smiling and reacting to Lauren more than anyone else. We took the girls to the Guatemala City Zoo and to Antigua. Guatemala is a beautiful country, the land of eternal spring. We loved our visit, particularly the fabulous Guatemalan food! There is nothing quite like waking up to chilaquiles, guacamole, refried black beans, and salsa for breakfast! Dave was excited about the Coca-Cola in Guatemala and drank one at every meal! He says it tastes so much better than Coke in the United States because they use real sugar in Guatemala.

We were sad to leave Carmen and prayed that all of the necessary paperwork would be completed quickly and we would be back to bring Carmen home very soon. The morning we flew home, Lauren woke up and cried and cried. “We can’t just leave Carmen here!” she sobbed. We are so glad that we took Lauren with us on this trip but we did not realize how hard it would be for her to leave Carmen.

The day we flew home, we talked about how it could be many months before Carmen’s adoption was completed. We met families in Guatemala who had been in-process for years. We hoped and prayed that this would not be the case for us. We arrived home December 13, 2006 and Lana quickly checked her email. She was shocked to find several messages from our agency. Carmen’s adoption was approved and she was legally ours as of that day!

We flew back to Guatemala a few short weeks later and brought our precious daughter home at the age of 5 ½ months.

January 10, 2007, we arrived at Washington Reagan airport in dc. Grandpa C. and Lauren were waiting for us there. As soon as Lauren saw Carmen she yelled, “My sister! My sister!” She held Carmen’s hand all the way home.

We will cherish the first few days at home with Carmen forever. In Guatemala, Carmen was well-fed and healthy but did not receive much stimulation. We delighted in watching her discover toys, learn to roll over and hold up her head. The first time Lana took Carmen to Wal-Mart, her eyes lit up and she looked all around her, taking it all in. Carmen was a truly content, happy, easy-going baby who had a wonderful, hearty laugh and an infectious smile. We felt so blessed to have our Guatemalan princess home and doing so well.

Upon arriving home, we knew that Carmen had a bit of catching up to do. By American standards, she was delayed in all areas. We called our state’s early intervention program and Carmen qualified for therapy. For the first few months, Carmen improved. By 10 months, she could sit up, hold her own bottle and a teething biscuit, reach and play with toys, roll all over the place and push herself up when on her tummy. She was also very vocal and babbled da-da-da, ga-ga, ba-ba, etc. all day long (and sometimes all night!).

Carmen’s physical therapist had some concerns about Carmen’s vision since she did not seem to look at us. We thought this could be an attachment issue or a sign of vision problems. We scheduled an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist and the dreaded cherry-red spots were found, indicating Tay Sachs or a similar degenerative disease.

When we first found out that Carmen had a fatal disease, we just could not believe it. Carmen was still quite developmentally delayed but she had not been sick once since coming home, not even a cold! It just seemed so unreal.

We are so thankful that Carmen came home early and that we had six months of simply enjoying our daughter without knowing her future. We also realize that if Carmen had not come home earlier than expected, she might not have come home at all as she would have been considered too sick to be adopted. We are amazed that God orchestrated the events in Carmen’s life to bring her home at just the right time.

This is Carmen’s adoption story. We have no doubt that God intended for Carmen to be our daughter. Someday we hope to bring another little one into our family so we can experience the joy of adopting once again.

Please click here to continue reading updates about Carmen and how these painful events are shaping our lives.