Airen & Andrew Kuster Higgins

Thank you so much for taking the time to view our page and considering helping our family. We have been a waiting-to-adopt family for the last four years. We signed with a local adoption agency and, while we enjoy working with our local agency, we have not had an adoption match. We are happy to announce that we have signed with a nation-wide adoption consultant and are excited about this new opportunity!

Initially we announced the news that we are planning to grow our family though adoption with a fundraiser we called “Sock-tober” and we sold funky socks to raise money for our home study. Our plan is to host another fundraiser to announce this new adoption news. During Sock-tober we had several people reach out to us that wanted to make a donation to assist our family but did not want to purchase anything from the fundraiser. Hence, this time we have started a crowdfunding campaign and it’s tax deductible! It may surprise you to hear that adoption-related costs can easily total up to $60,000 or more. We are setting a goal of $6,500 to help ease the financial burden. Our first fundraiser raised $1,000 that went directly to our home study. Of course, we've also been saving our personal pennies in an adoption savings account.

Our Story & Adoption Plan: Our dream has been to grow our family through adoption. Three months after our marriage we started our adoption journey. We would have been overjoyed to also have a pregnancy, but it’s now clear that this is not an option for us. This makes us even more sure that adoption is the right path for our family. Both of our parents and siblings are very supportive and excited for us to become adoptive parents.

Since the start of the year we have been talking to and researching different agencies and adoption consultant. The consultant we choose to work with allows us to continue working with the local agency we have built a relationship with over the past several years. Our local agency is still responsible for our homestudy (thank you so, so much for the sock-tober donations that helped make our homestudy possible) and post placement reviews.

We are planning on an open adoption, in which the biological parent(s) participate in the process of placing their child with a family. Ideally, our extended family grows as we stay in touch with bio family though emails, letters, photos, etc. We hope this will be best for our future son or daughter, as they will benefit from the opportunity to know and form a relationship with their birth family. We cannot wait to bring home our new little one and to hold him/her in our arms. We have no idea how long our waiting period will last. We could be chosen next month, or it could take another year. In the meantime, your support means a lot to us!

Andrew’s words: Since I learned that one of my cousins was adopted, I’ve always had a deep admiration for my aunt who made the courageous, noble choice of helping a child in need. With so many kids in need of a stable, loving family, this was clearly the right path. So I hoped to walk in my aunt’s footsteps, but only with someone who shared my values. Airen is that someone. Finding out that she also wanted to adopt was one of many reasons I knew I had found the one for me.

Airen’s words: The want to adopt has been ingrained in my heart since I was a child playing with my Barbie dolls. My dolls would often have stories that included adoption. The idea of adoption only grew when, in high school, I heard a story on NPR discussing adoption and orphanages.

Adoption was brought up early in the start of our relationship, as I already knew that was the path my heart was leading me on. As a teenager I was diagnosed with PCOS and Endometriosis, conditions that make pregnancy very unlikely. This news strengthened my heart’s desire for adoption.

I was overjoyed when I learned that Andrew also felt strongly about adoption. Hearing his story reinforced the desire in my heart to adopt . . . and thus our journey began.