All About Travis

Hi! I am Travis Smith. Thanks for reading about me. I graduated from college with a degree in management and computers. I work as a printing manager at a company about 30 minutes away from home. I have great insurance for our family. I am lucky to have a job which allows me to be home by 3:00, I get to be home with the kids alot. My mother and my sisters live about 3 hours away, and we visit alot.

I enjoy watching football and movies and spending time with my wife and kids.

Me and Anastasia at her first communion. 

This is the first day we saw Francesca and Victoria in Ukraine. 

Francesca and me in the orphanage. 

At the park.

This is my wife's birthday. She really likes chocolate.

This is my birthday. The kids all made me cards and pictures. 

Francesca got me this candy, but she wanted to keep it.

We are really proud of our kids and are looking forward to another sweet child to love.

The Days of Our Lives

We live in a very family friendly neighborhood. We have a four bedroom, three bathroom house. We have a very large fenced backyard. 

We live on a culdesac, so the kids can go outside and ride their bikes and skate without worrying about traffic. Our kids have many friends in our neighborhood. We have an elementary school right across the street. We also have a "community area" in our neighborhood, which has a playground, a pool and walking paths.

Our elementary school has a great special education program. They have

physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and special ed.

Assistants that work with the students on a daily or weekly basis (it’s based on

their specific needs and their IEP). They children with special needs are also

included in the regular classrooms activities as much as possible. The school also

offers an Early Childhood half day preschool for children, over 3 years old, with

special needs.

We have a wonderful hospital only a mile away, and we also have a specialized children's hospital about 6 miles away.  Our pediatrician has been very supportive of all our children, including our children with special needs. If we need a specialist of any kind, she will research and find the best doctor for the child's needs. 

We wanted to let you know about what our daily lives were like, so here goes!

Here is our house! 

We are a big game playing family. We like card games board games, any kind of game! 

(They decorated Francesca like a kitty cat!)

We really enjoy reading in our family. Every Saturday, we go to the library and check out about 25 books. 

Friday night is always movie night. We make popcorn and we have cheese and fruit for dinner. Francesca was really excited at the sight of all that food! 

The girls really like to make house tents out of blankets. They are very creative and will make a stove and refrigerator out of boxes. 

We all have fun swimming. Downtown there is a huge park with fountains everyone can play in. 

Piggy back rides are fun! 

We have a great time doing science experiments too. Here we are making moon craters. 

Grandma and Great are always thrilled to be able to cuddle a little one, or a big one! 

The three little girls are working really hard to learn how to swim. (Francesca has her hands bandaged from her surgery).

She may only be three, but she thinks she can read chapter books already! 

We are only about a 5 hour drive away from the bench, so sometimes, we like to be spontaneous and go on an adventure. 

Francesca is not a big fan of the beach and the ocean just yet! 

Grandma is always excited to babysit! 

Catherine homeschools Isabella and Anastasia. They are very hard workers! They also go to a two day a week school on Tuesday and Thursday. 

The girls had a great idea to have a lemonade stand. They donated all of their money to help orphans! Behind them, you can see the common area in our neighborhood. 

The kids are always building amazing creations.

Grandma has taught the kids a lot about gardening. We usually have a garden of tomatoes, cucumbers and of course, watermelon. This is a peach tree we planted. 

We always have fun at the zoo! We only live about twenty minutes away from downtown. 

We believe in doing lots of extra physical therapy and speech therapy at home. The three youngest kids are working at sticking toothpicks into the colander holes. They were very serious about their work!

Painting!

More reading! 

We like to take hikes and go bike riding. Victoria can't quite reach the pedals yet, but she is trying!

We celebrate everyone's accomplishments, little and big! Yea for the potty! 

The girls also enjoy gymnastics. 

Another thing we like to do together is cook. Even the little ones enjoy helping out. 

One our favorites: fudge! 

We like cooking, but we also don't mind having a picnic of McDonald's every once in a while too! 

Please read on to find out more about each of us! 

Welcome to our Family: An Introduction to us!

Hi! Welcome to our family! Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know us. We can only imagine what an important decision this is for you. We would like to help you in any way we can. We would be happy to have whatever type of contact that you may want with the baby in the future. Your child will always be a blessing and joy for our family and we will love him/her forever and always be proud to have him/her. We have tried to include lots of pictures of our everyday lives, so you can get to know us better. If you have any other questions about us, please feel free to call or 

e-mail us at any time. We would like to know more about you too! We are praying for you! 

We are the Ferrone-Smith family. Catherine and Travis have been married for 19 years. We met through an acquaintance and we have been best friends ever since. Our son, Elliot, made us a family in 1994. We are a fun loving family who likes to do things together. Here we are at the Down Syndrome Buddy walk in downtown Atlanta. The kids liked the cotton candy the best!

So, why do we want to adopt a baby with Down Syndrome? We have several close friends with children with have Down Syndrome, and we have always felt a special love for them, but it wasn't until we went to the Ukraine, that we really felt called. There were so many children with Down Syndrome at the orphanage. One baby in particular, stole our hearts. Here is a picture of her. She was never held by any of the caretakers, yet she had so much joy. We wanted so much to bring her home, but we were not approved for another child. Then, a miracle occurred. We told our friends about her and they adopted her! So now, we get to watch her grow up! Also, since two of our other children have syndromes, we feel like we are pretty experienced and prepared for whatever needs your child might have. We will treasure your child always. 

This picture was from last Christmas. We celebrated over at Catherine's mom's house. She and our grandma (who we call "Great") only live a mile away.

Travis has been fortunate to have the same job for 19 years. he is able to come home by 3:00 everyday, so we are all able to spend time together. 

Our children are the light of our lives. They are so much fun. They each have their own unique personalities. 

We were pretty proud that we actually got everyone into coordinating outfits for the 4th of July. The little ones learn so much from the bigger kids. 

This is the front of our house. Every year, we take a picture in the same spot. 

The girls often tell us they are so happy to have each other. Someone asked my biological daughter what she thought of having sisters who are adopted. She looked at them sternly and said, "They are my sisters,  it doesn't matter where they were born."

Victoria has come such a long way from when she was living in an orphanage in Ukraine only 18 months ago. 

This is "Great". She is Catherine's grandma. She is 94 years old. We are so glad to be able to live so close to her. Her favorite thing is to have everyone come over to visit. 

This is Catherine's mom, Cookie. She also lives a mile away. She is a very hands on Grandma and loves to spend time with her grandchildren. 

We've had some tough times, but always stick together and work through things. Here, Francesca is about to go into surgery to separate her fingers. Thankfully, she won't need any other surgeries for many years. 

Victoria had surgery to have her hips relocated back into their joint. She was born with them out of joint. Her spirit and determination constantly amaze us. Even in these casts, she still found ways to scoot around. 

Sometimes we are very silly! 

This picture is from Easter. Some of us were getting a little bit grumpy! 

Please read on and we will tell you more about us!