During the week, we spend a lot of our leisure time together at home. Ashley is a good cook and likes trying new recipes, and Jamie is easy to cook for because he appreciates yummy food. We enjoy listening to music together, and you can often find us dancing around the kitchen while we do the dishes after dinner. Ashley is a big bookworm, and she loves ending each day reading a novel in bed.

On the weekends, we enjoy hosting friends at our home for meals, a game night, or to watch sports. We are also very involved in our church, and we teach 4th – 6th grade Sunday School together on Sunday mornings. When the weather is nice, we enjoy getting outside and walking, running, or biking together. Ashley enjoys gardening, and Jamie likes to spend time working in the backyard and on house projects.

We love to travel to new places and Jamie has planned a ton of amazing trips for us around the world; so far, we've been to Italy, France, England, Spain, Portugal, Iceland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates together just the two of us.

It would be a joy to share any of these activities with a child, and we're also excited to see what they enjoy doing and to do that with them too.

Ashley About Jamie: Jamie is my best friend and I love spending time with him. Jamie is thoughtful and deeply interested in and curious about the world; he loves learning new things and he is always teaching me new things. He encourages me to be courageous when I am afraid, listens to me when I am working through a question, and gives good hugs. Jamie is also very fun, which is why kids love him. He doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's willing to be goofy, run around with kids, and play games with them. Jamie is honest about his feelings and his strengths and weaknesses, and he desires to be a good man and husband and to follow God faithfully. I am so blessed to have Jamie in my life, and I know he is going to be the best dad.

Jamie About Ashley: Ashley is loving, loyal, has deep integrity, and is devoted to her people. She is so supportive and my number one cheerleader, and I know she will be deeply devoted to our child. She is also my best friend and I love spending time with her. She listens to all my crazy ideas and happily tags along on all of my planned adventures. To me, the combination of a heart-of-gold and a best friend is more than anyone could ever ask for in a companion (and a mother).

Our faith is the most important thing in our lives and it shapes how we think, how we act, and how we spend our time. We believe that God loves us and sent Jesus to die for us, not because we did anything to deserve it, but because God loves us beyond imagine. We try to love one another unconditionally, forgiving one another, and thinking of the other as more important than ourselves. We try to love our neighbors and our community, try and serve other people, and we aim to enjoy the world that God has created, trying new foods and exploring the world. This will shape how we parent too. We will aim to love our child unconditionally and always put their needs before ourselves.

Our faith also shapes our time and our community. We are very involved in our church. Ashley is on our church's board, we teach 4th - 6th grade Sunday School together every week, and our Bible study group meets at our house every other week. We plan to raise this child in the Christian faith and pray that they will have a personal relationship with Jesus, but also acknowledge that this child must make decisions for themselves and choose what they believe. We do not want this child to blindly adopt the faith of their parents, but to think critically about what they believe and make their religion their own.

We live in a four-bedroom home in a beautiful, historic neighborhood in Washington, DC. We're right across the street from a park and a playground where there's always tons of kids playing and lots of fun activities happening, including a weekly farmers' market, Little League baseball, basketball, tennis, and pickleball.

We have a great community where we live, including lots of friends with young children. Our neighborhood is multicultural and international, and you can often hear multiple languages being spoken on the playground. We love that we know many of our neighbors and some of our closest friends live down the street from us. One of our favorite things to do is to host friends for dinner and to hang out by the firepit in the backyard.

Our neighborhood is very walkable, and it's a great place to stroll around at any time of year, which we do quite often. Ashley walks to work three days a week and our elementary school is within walking distance as well. We can also walk to great restaurants from our house, or we can hop on our bikes and get to great trails very easily. Being in a city means that we have access to a wide range of experiences including world-class museums, professional sports games, theater, and more. We love our city, and we're so excited to be able to share it with a child.

We are close to our family on both sides. Although we don't live in the same city as our family, we FaceTime weekly, and we visit each other multiple times a year. We have nine nieces and nephews, and we love being Aunt Ashley and Uncle Jamie.

On Ashley's side, we love watching sports together, especially college football. Ashley's family also likes to cook so we enjoy eating long meals together (including Ashley's mom's famous peach cobbler)! When it's nice outside, we enjoy spending time at the lake and going on walks.

On Jamie's side, our favorite thing is spending time together in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, including skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. Jamie's family is competitive, so we also enjoy a good board game night, especially Settlers of Catan.

Our parents are incredible grandparents. Jamie's dad is an amazing storyteller, and Jamie's mom enjoys gardening with her grandkids. Ashley's mom is always coming up with creative kid-friendly activities, and Ashley's dad likes to take the kids out for ice cream.

Our family and friends have been praying for us to become parents and they're excited to help us welcome a child into our home. This child will be very loved!

Thank you for reading about our family and for considering adoption. We believe that adoption is a beautiful thing and one of the greatest acts of love on earth. We would be beyond excited to welcome your child into our family and for you to become a part of our family's story too.

We began dating over ten years ago when we were in college. We were good friends who loved spending time together and we fell in love. We've been married now for six years, and it has been a huge blessing to be married and to do life with your best friend. We have a very happy and stable marriage.

We love children and have always dreamed of being parents. We have tried for more than three years to have children naturally but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Infertility has been hard and there has been much crying, but we believe that God loves us and has a good plan for us. We believe that there is a child out there that God wants to be a part of our family. Maybe it's your child? We believe that love is what makes a family, not blood, and we have so much love to give. Our goal is to love our child the way that God loves us ?" unconditionally. We love children's books, and one of Ashley's favorite children's books says, "How do I love you? Let me count the ways. I love you on your very best, and very worst of days." We want to be the kind of parents whose kid always knows how loved they are, no matter what. We won't be perfect parents by any means, but we will do our best to raise our child well, and we pray that they will come to know Jesus as their Savior one day.

We do believe that we will be good parents though and that we can provide a child with a stable, loving home. We have a happy, committed marriage: we have been together for ten years and love each other more now than ever. We are financially well-situated: we have stable jobs and have the resources to provide for all of a child's necessary needs (plus more!). We are also blessed with a wonderful community of family and friends who care for us, love us, and pray for us. Our parents and siblings are all happily married, we have 9 nieces and nephews, and our families love spending time together. Any child who becomes part of our family will really be so incredibly loved by so many people. We try to find balance in our lives: being fun, joyful, and adventurous, but still being people who can be serious and go deep and talk about the hard things in life. We hope to foster this type of home for our child. We hope to play and laugh together, to have dance parties in the kitchen, to celebrate our child’s successes, but also to cry together and to talk about hard things.

Although we haven't met you yet, if you choose us to be your child's parents, we know God is going to bring us together as part of this story too. We pray together every night for you and for our future child. We know you are facing a difficult decision, and we pray that you find strength, wisdom, and peace. Our desire is for our child to always know their story and to never hold any secrets from them. They will know that their birth parents loved them and chose the best life for them that they could, and they will also know that the day they joined our family was the happiest day of our lives. We also desire to care for you and to make sure we love you too. We are happy to send you updates through photos, letters, emails, or other forms of communication that work well for all of us. We're also open to in-person visits when the time is right.

Thank you again for reading this letter and considering us as potential parents for your child.

Jamie & Ashley