Derek and Kelsie’s Adoption Journey
Derek and Kelsie’s Adoption Journey
Our Family Story
Hello we are Derek and Kelsie French. We met in 2011 at our local CrossFit gym. Derek had recently moved to town for a new job and Kelsie was still in college. We started dating and 3 years later got married in 2014. We quickly had our daughter Rozlynn and our entire life changed! Almost exactly 2 years later we had our son Hudson. The two of them are best friends and make our life exciting and fun! 3 years ago we decided to sell our house and vehicles and buy a camper and truck to pull it. We moved into the camper and traveled the west coast for 18 months while Derek worked restoring power after wildfires. It was the biggest adventure our family has been on! Our kids loved the time we spent traveling and we still plan to travel in the future. We homeschool our children and are fortunate enough to have flexibility to travel. We love showing our kids the country and different national and state parks. Our kids love having friends from different states all over the country and getting to travel and see them! We have both wanted more kids and have felt the Lord guiding us to adopt a baby. We are settled at home now in southern Indiana and all 4 of us are so excited for the possibility to add to our family. We are home studied approved and willing to travel. We pray for you and your decision daily. We know it is complex and are open to seeing how the relationship would progress. We want your child to grow up knowing the loving sacrifice you made and openly talking about their adoption and birth parents with them.
About Derek
Derek does not know a stranger! He makes friends with everyone he meets. When it came to our wedding, Derek was the one who had to narrow down his groomsman because he had too many close friends! In his 37 years of life he has made lots of friends and a lot of memorial experiences. He grew up playing sports and loves teaching our children how to play sports and have fun doing it. After high school he humbly and proudly served in the Army for 4.5 years and was deployed twice to Iraq. He is still close with his Army brothers and we meet up with them about once a year for a long weekend with spouses to reminisce and enjoy time together. He has never been afraid of hard work. After the military he went to college and received his associates degree in Electrical Distribution. He then got a job at our local utility as an apprentice lineman. He went through 4 years of his apprenticeship and has now been a Journeyman Lineman for 8 years. This job gives our family lots of opportunity for travel, and we have loved traveling as a family with his job. In Derek's free time you can find him working out at home in our barn, hunting, or practicing for his competitive shooting competitions. He loves showing our kids hard work and dedication, while also being the fun parent! Our kids are always excited at the end of the day when Daddy gets home so he can use his fun imagination to play with them! He leads our family humbly and is always pointing us closer to Jesus. His kind and dedicated heart would love your child as his own.
About Kelsie
You can find Kelsie on a normal day with a coffee in her hand (that probably needs reheated), checking on her garden or with her chickens. If you had met Kelsie even 10 years ago you would never have imagined she would be a homeschool mom, chicken keeper and gardener. God has a funny way of taking us places we never thought we would go. Kelsie grew up playing soccer and cheerleading and spending lots of time with her extended family. She went to college and received her bachelor degree is business administration. After college she got a job at the local utility in their billing department. Once she had their daughter Rozlynn her whole world changed and she became a stay at home mom. As she has gotten older her main focus has been her kids and trying to give them as much of a childhood as possible. She loves to have them outside helping in the garden, collecting eggs, exploring their property and getting dirty! She loves growing food to feed her family and neighbors. Summer is her favorite season and would live at the beach if possible. Traveling for Dereks work has been ideal as she gets to skip midwest winters sometimes and enjoy sunshine on the west coast! She loves vacations and quality time with family. Kelsie is organized and loves checking things off her to-do list. Derek describes her as a fierce mother and the glue that holds their family together. Kelsie typically cries anytime she holds a baby and has been dreaming of more kids for years. She would love your child unconditionally.
Rozlynn is 7 years old and in the first grade. She loves the ocean and learning about all sea creatures. We were able to take her to Monterey Bay Aquarium this past year and watch the joy on her face as she saw all the creatures from her books. She loves playing with her hatchimals and can quote movies just like her Dad! We think she would stay up all night watching TV if we never made her go to bed. She loves learning and helping in the garden all summer. She single handedly named all 37 of our chickens! She is a summer loving girl like her mom and would swim at her grandparents pool every day! She is a big helper and loves to "babysit" her little cousins. She has a heart for Jesus and loves telling her friends about him. We cannot wait to see her as a big sister again!
Hudson is a wild boy who is always running 100 miles per hour! Which he loves to go on his dirt bike. He has rode full throttle since he learned to shift! He loves all types of machinery. Tractors at his uncles farm, bucket trucks and cranes at dads work, and anything he can possibly climb onto and learn about. He would be outside all day if the weather permitted. He loves "working" with his Dad and Papaw. He loves tools and figuring out how they all work. He is hilarious and always keeps us laughing. He is gentle and loves all animals and babies. He has asked for another sibling since he was 3! He says he wants to be a dad when he grows up. He will start kindergarten this next year and is excited to do "real school" like his big sister!
Our Daily Life
Our day to day life looks pretty laid back. Derek is currently working 10 minutes from our home and works 10 hour days 4 days a week. We all love having the extra day each week to spend together. Kelsie is a stay at home mother. With homeschooling our children we love being able to let the kids sleep in the morning and not have to rush breakfast and getting to school. Our daily activities include school, lots of imaginative play, taking care of the chickens (we currently have 37!), working in the garden during the summer, and going for walks on our property. Derek and the kids are currently doing JiuJitsu twice a week at a local gym. They love coming home and practicing their moves on each other. We have an 11 year old Boxer named Jack. He is Derek and Kelsie's first baby. He is a huge protector of Kelsie and the kids. He does all of the traveling with us and has seen more states than some people! We also have a 6 month old cat named Hitch. He was supposed to be a barn cat, but he somehow ended up a spoiled house cat (Definitely Kelsie's fault). Our kids go to a homeschool co-op on Mondays where they take classes with other homeschool kids. Rozlynn has been learning Spanish and taking ballet and Hudson has been taking a hands on math class and an alphabet class. They love getting to be around other kids but also not have to go to school for 8 hours a day. Its the perfect balance for us at this time in our life. The kids love being home and get so excited for days we have nowhere to go. We have an old farmhouse on 5.5 acres we are currently redoing a room at a time. Kelsie loves coming up with ideas for the house and seeing if Derek and her dad can accomplish them! The kids each have their own rooms but you can normally find them playing together in the play room or sleeping in their sleeping bags in each others rooms. They love playing "Mom and Dad" and they have lots of kids! It is so fun to hear them playing as parents and trying to act like Derek and Kelsie. Movies are a huge hit at our house. Derek is a movie buff and can quote movies that Kelsie has never even heard of! He is currently showing the kids all of the star wars movies and the kids are obsessed! Each day our kids love talking about if they will have a baby brother or sister. They are SO excited and love telling everyone we meet that we are going to adopt a baby. We have to gently remind them that we pray and hope for a baby through adoption but it is in God's control. We are ready with open arms for another baby to add to our family.
Our Families
Family time is one of our biggest blessings. We are extremely close with both sides of our family. We live 30 minutes from Kelsie's family and 2 hours away from Derek's family. The kids love spending time with their cousins and extended family. Kelsie grew up with one sister who is 4 years older than her who is now her best friend. But if you would have told them they would become best friends as they were growing up neither of them would believe you! Her sister Lindsay married her high school sweet heart Mark and they have been married for 14 years. So Mark is more of a brother to Kelsie since he has been around since Kelsie was in grade school. They have 3 kids and we see them at least once a week. Their kids Milo, Hazel and Evy are our kids best friends and we love watching them all together. Kelsie's parents have been married 45 years. They love having pizza nights and sleepovers with the grandkids. Every year for the kids birthdays they take them individually for their "day of fun". On this day the kids get to pick the activities for the entire day! Our kids look forward to this every year and getting to spend the entire day being center of attention! We go on a family vacation to the beach each year with Kelsie's parents and sisters family. We rent a beach house and spend the week getting too much sun and having too many treats! Derek is 4 years older than his brother Adam. They are best friends and when you see them together you normally can't understand what they are talking about because it is all movie quotes! He married his high school sweet heart Kerstine and they have 1 daughter named Nora. We love getting to spend weekends at Derek's parents home with his brothers family. It is an easy 2 hour drive and we try to fit in as much family time as we can while we are there! The kids love going to the farm and seeing all the animals and riding on tractors during planting and harvest time. Dereks parents have been married 38 years and love their weekends with the grandkids and spoiling them as much as possible during that time! Our kids are very fortunate to still have multiple great grandparents alive, great aunts and uncles, and second cousins who we see on a regular basis. We try to instill in the kids the value of family and how lucky they are to have it!
Please contact us at anytime!
FrenchFamilyAdopt@gmail.com
Our Social Media Accounts
Instagram: @dk_french @frenchkelsie
Facebook: Derek French Kelsie French
