POULSBO — Grace, Danny, Brett, and Emily are no different than the other children playing in a playground on a sunny spring afternoon under the watchful eyes of their parents — or so it would seem.

They laugh, they run, they call for their parents when they stumble and fall, but that embrace provides a glimpse of the loving relationship that reaches beyond differences of skin color, ethnicity, culture and language.

These four children have been adopted by local families.

Each family has a story about the difficulty of the adoption quest and the unceasing joy it has brought to their lives that is accented a little more on days like Mother’s Day.

These are the stories of three families and four children who have become the epitome of unconditional love and caring:

Poulsbo resident Jennifer Miller understands the joys and challenges of adoption better than most because of her own personal experiences.

“I was adopted as a child,” Miller said as she watched her son, Danny, play at Raab Park.

Growing up, Miller said she knew she was adopted but didn’t know much about her biological family until she was in high school.

Because of that experience, Miller said she and her husband opted for a semi-open adoption, which allows communication between both families.

“My biggest wish is that his birth mother gets to be a part of his life,” she said. “It’s really important to make sure that he knows there’s another family that’s a part of his life, too.”

Unlike other families who have searched overseas to find children, Miller and her husband, who are white, instead reached across racial lines and adopted their son, who is black, when he was just an infant.

“He’s inquisitive and his little wheels in his mind are turning all the time,” she said. “We really don’t notice that he’s black.”

Miller’s parents, who also live in Poulsbo, have been extremely supportive and treat her son like any of their other grandchildren, she said.

“They say, ‘This is our grandchild,’ and everyone just knows him as Danny,” Miller said.

While Miller chose to adopt a children from the United States, Bainbridge Island resident Kathy Dudgeon and her husband adopted their daughter, Grace, who is Korean, and later adopted son, Brett, also from Korea.

Dudgeon said they looked at adopting a child from Ethiopia, China and Korea before finally making their decision.

“What it came down to was that we really wanted to be parents and at that time we made the decision to adopt,” she said.

Unlike Miller, Dudgeon has a closed adoption but is sending pictures of the children and letters to the adoption agency in case their biological mothers decide to look for them.

“What they’ve brought to my life has enriched it so much,” she said.

Grace and Brett are every bit of normal siblings as they do all the things brothers and sisters do, she said.

The children have adapted well to life on Bainbridge Island and Dudgeon said she has learned to cook Korean food and found ways to celebrate her children’s Korean heritage.

Grace is now old enough to attend a culture camp sponsored by the adoption agency, where she has met other children that share similar family settings, Dudgeon said, noting that it has been a positive experience for both Grace and the family as well.

With two children, Dudgeon said she and her husband have no plans for another, but they are glad they made the decision to adopt.

“I can’t imagine not having them in my life,” Dudgeon said.

For Jason and Angie Monroe, their adoption journey took them to China, where they found their daughter, Emily.

After almost 20 years in the Navy serving on submarines, Jason said the time was finally right for them to adopt as he is nearing the end of his military career.

“It’s been a great time and I was finally to take on the responsibility of being a parent,” Jason said.

Being a parent has been an awesome experience as he and wife have watched their daughter grow and learn and begin asking questions about where she’s from, he said.

“She knows she’s from China and as she gets older the questions are going to be asked in more detail,” he said.

Because the experience has been so positive, Jason said when Emily is 7 or 8 years old the family will return to China to adopt another child.

“She’ll definitely come with us and see what people are like and the place she came from,” he said.

Above all else, having Emily in their lives has been more than worth the wait, he said.

“Your children not only learn so much from you, but you learn so much from them,” Jason said.