Tina and Adam Haeder don’t need a welcome mat at the front door of their modest home on Quail Drive in Bellevue. Everyone in the Quail Creek neighborhood knows the white, immaculate 1980s ranch-style house as the “Grand Central Station of fun.” Whether indoors or outside in the spacious backyard, family, friends, neighbors, classmates, and an occasional stranger will come over for all kinds of celebrations: birthdays, graduations, college football games, barbecues, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or even a “just because” party.
The three-car garage doesn’t house cars but holds about 50 folding chairs and a dozen folding tables, all neatly stacked. Three large refrigerators contain refreshments. A vintage Pac-Man arcade game stands off to the side. “Just one more piece of entertainment,” Tina said.
Why all the gatherings? The answer lies in where the Haeders are from and who they are as individuals: two farm kids from the tiny, tight-knit community of Rockwell City, Iowa, east of Sioux City. They met on the school bus as children, dated through high school and college, and married in 1996. Each has a big heart. Their generosity knows no limits, nor does the love for their four children—Arin, Ethan, Stanley, and Stefon.
“After Arin and Ethan were born and we found out we couldn’t have any more children, we looked into becoming foster parents,” Tina said, a decision that coincided with the passing of her sister in a car accident. “We helped raise my sister’s two sons until they went to live full time with my parents. We then started fostering.”
The Haeder twins, 17-year-olds Stanley and Stefon, began life as foster children but became a permanent blessing, growing up in the Haeder house, the only family they have ever known.
“We brought them home from the hospital when they were three weeks old,” Adam said. “We adopted them right before they turned 2, after lots of the required court stuff.”
The big, happy, diverse family moved into the Quail Drive home on March 3, 2007. The date still resonates with Ethan. “It was my fifth birthday,” he said with pride. Now 22, Ethan is married to his high school sweetheart, Bri.
Knowing this was her “forever” home, Tina started plotting all the renovations she wanted, configuring the house to fit the family. She determined the walls eventually had to go.
“When you walked into the house, you couldn’t even see the kitchen,” Tina said. “There was a wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, and another wall that separated the dining room from the living room. The dining room was like wasted space.”
The removal of those undesired walls finally got underway in 2022. The Haeders called their go-to contractor, Dan Detavernier, owner of DRD Home Services in Papillion. His earlier projects included rebuilding the back deck and putting a roof over it, virtually creating a second living room. He also remodeled the master bedroom and bath. The living room redesign, which included new flooring, was a little more complicated.
“Oh, it was very tricky,” Detavernier said. “We had to take down not just one load-bearing wall, but two of them. They were supporting the roof.” The project required heavy lifting.
“They were bringing beams in through our window!” Adam recounted with a touch of awe. “They had to bring in some serious beaming to lay above the ceiling and reinforce the roof to make sure the house didn’t fall in.” Detavernier says his crews are used to it. “Everybody wants a big, open floor plan these days.”
Openness suits the Haeder family perfectly, considering the time they spend with each other and with guests. No one feels isolated. When Arin, Ethan, and Bri come to visit, they can lounge in a comfortable chair or sofa in front of the living room’s fireplace and carry on animated, full-volume conversations with people perched at the new kitchen island with bar seating.
The dining room, no longer “wasted space,” features several white, floor-to-ceiling cabinets along the outer wall, and they’re all full. Stefon opened the doors of the “snack cabinet” to reveal rows upon rows of neatly stacked, packaged snacks of all varieties. It looks like a gigantic vending machine without plexiglass.
Whenever Stefon’s ice hockey buddies or Stanley’s Bellevue West High School football teammates come over, they grab something from the snack cabinet before heading downstairs to the finished basement, which doubles as the twins’ living space and an entertainment center. They can use the elliptical machine in the workout area, play video games, shoot pool, smash ping pong balls, or join guests for football parties in a large, theater-like room.
A projector brings the gridiron into clear view on a video screen that covers an entire wall, flanked by two smaller TV monitors for multiple game-watching. “We have theater seats that recline, enough for 16 people,” said Adam, who works as site manager at the Google Data Center in Council Bluffs.
Adam and Tina, both 50, have torn down walls and built up community throughout Quail Creek. They’ve created a home where people knock once and just walk in, no doorbell required. “We wanted to re-create that small town feeling for our children to grow up in,” Tina said. “We intentionally invited neighbors to our home so the kids could get comfortable with it, and the neighbors comfortable with it.”
Mission accomplished.
Form more information, visit drdhomeservices.com.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Omaha Home Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.