We generally lead active but well-balanced and comfortable lives. We both work 9-5 jobs during the week, where we each frequently work from home.

Fitness is important for us as we believe this is critical for overall health. During the week, we start each day early by either going to the gym or working out at home. We keep active on weekends as well, often going outdoors to hike or climb.

We love to travel and will do five or six small trips around the country every year, with one or two international trips. We often visit friends when we travel and plan our trips around both food and sightseeing; we always want to try new cuisines and explore the cool sites in the places we visit.

Food is a very important part of our lives and we're both quite adept at cooking and baking - most meals we eat are homemade. We always like to try learning or creating new recipes, taking inspiration from restaurant dishes we like or cooking shows we watch.

Our friends are a huge part of our lives, and for the many activities above, we frequently do them with friends. We frequently host parties where we make giant feasts and play board games with our friends; the one rule for our home is that no one is allowed to leave hungry.

We find great security, safety, and comfort in each other. We consistently support each other and always work together towards building a life that is fulfilling, fun, and fabulous for both of us. This quality of our relationship has made our lives wonderful, even when faced with overwhelming circumstances.

Nathan admires BeiBei's strength and courage. This was clear shortly after we met, when Nathan invited BeiBei to do Tough Mudder, new to both of us, she said yes without hesitation - we started dating shortly after. When BeiBei was diagnosed with cancer, it was overwhelmingly disheartening for us, but BeiBei did not hesitate to figure out what she needed to do and proceeded with all of her surgeries and chemo without any second thoughts - this further solidified how amazing BeiBei is in Nathan's eyes. Despite how tough she is, BeiBei remains extremely kind and loving to others. Nathan can't wait to see BeiBei bring her strength and love to raising our child.

BeiBei loves how kind and compassionate Nathan is. When BeiBei was going through cancer treatment, he cared for her day in and day out without complaint. Nathan cares deeply for his family - he calls his mom a few times a week to make sure she is doing alright and has someone to talk to. He goes out of his way at work to provide mentorship for his colleagues. Nathan is someone that BeiBei can always count on to be there for her without fail.

We have always considered adoption as a possible way of bringing children into our family - to us, children are equal in the family whether they are biological or not. Our original plan was to have our first child naturally and our second child through adoption. After we bought our house and settled in, we started to try for our first child, but shortly after BeiBei was diagnosed with breast cancer.

We had a decision to face - to improve BeiBei's long-term health, more substantial treatments needed to be performed that would make it impossible for us to conceive a child. This was actually not a difficult decision for us because we had already decided that we are both happy with adoption as a means to extend our family - we moved forward with these treatments and are happy to report that BeiBei's prognosis is very positive and she is expected to live a normal life.

Since BeiBei is through her treatments and her health is looking fantastic, we are again ready to expand our family and we are extremely excited to one day meet our first child through the opportunity provided by American Adoptions!

We moved from a very large city in California to a smaller city in New Mexico so that we could afford a house and lifestyle that would give us plenty of room to raise a family. We bought our first and current house in 2020 with this plan in mind and absolutely love our lifestyle here. We have a 4 bedroom house, nice open kitchen, plenty of space, and a large backyard where we can play with the dogs and kids.

Our house is located in a suburban area in one of the best school districts in our town. We are walking distance to the middle and high school, and a short drive away from elementary school and a few preschools and daycares that we are interested in. Our neighborhood is very safe and we feel comfortable walking our dog around the area at any time of day. There is not a lot of traffic, so children can play safely on the streets.

There are several parks that are a short distance from our house; we frequently go to these to walk the dog, picnic, or play sports, and look forward to taking our child to the playgrounds once they are old enough. We are also a short drive from our dentists, doctors, gyms, and groceries, and generally the whole city can be accessed with about a 20 minute drive from where we're at, so we're not far from any activity.

We have a small, tightly-knit, extended family who live short flights away from us. This includes Nathan's sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Brett, their children, Nathan's mother, Marion, and BeiBei's mother and father, Dong and Stephen.

We see Vanessa and Brett at least once a year. They have two children, Ada (2 years) and Leo (6 months) who we absolutely adore. We enjoy going on hikes, playing in the yard or with toys with the kiddos, and playing board games. We see Marion frequently - she recently came out to celebrate Nathan finishing a special work training program; we had a lot of fun on her trip. We frequently keep in touch with Nathan's family digitally, either video chatting with everyone on FaceTime or playing games a few times a month. We always spend Thanksgiving with Nathan's family, alternating between everyone's homes.

Over the last year, Dong and Stephen came to live with us to help support us while BeiBei was going through chemo. Their help was invaluable and our bonds with them deepened substantially during this time. We taught them rock climbing while they were here and took them on many adventures throughout New Mexico. Every winter break, we do a family trip with Dong, Stephen, and Marion, and have visited places such as Japan, Hawaii, Thailand, and Yellowstone. They are considering relocating to our city once we have our first child so they can be close to their grandchild.

We can't even begin to imagine the difficult and extremely heavy decision you are facing, but we wanted to let you know that you are our hero. We have been certain that we've wanted children almost as soon as we started dating 8 years ago. We moved 2 years ago to somewhere where we'd have plenty of room to raise a family, got married, bought a house, settled in, and started to try to have children. It was around the same time that we learned that BeiBei had breast cancer and part of her treatment would make it impossible for us to give birth naturally; we always considered adoption as a route to having children so it was an easy decision for BeiBei to get the treatments she needed and we're extremely happy to say her prognosis is fantastic and she is in wonderful health. This brings us back to you - without the amazing gift you are considering for our family, it would not be possible for us to become parents. You are, without any shadow of a doubt, our biggest hero. While we know that this decision is hard for you, we want you to know that we want you to remain involved in the child's life as much as you would like, ranging from letters and pictures to visits. We think this is important for the child to understand who they are and will help them to understand their heritage and where they come from. We will ensure that our child understands that the decision you made was a selfless decision made out of love and we want them to see you as their hero too.

We want to give you some idea of the lifestyles we live and the kinds of life we envision for our children so you can be sure they will live a full and happy life. We generally lead very active lives, during the week we work out or play sports every day and frequently go outdoors to hike or climb on weekends - we will make sure our children also live active and healthy lifestyles. Nathan is especially looking forward to teaching the children to play all sorts of sports and helping them to further explore the ones that they find most interesting.

We will do our best to make sure that our children understand the potential impact a good education can have on their future. As we both have advanced degrees (PhD and MBA), we have the knowledge and experience to help them to pursue a bright educational future, though we have both decided never to push our children to pursue some path they are not interested in. BeiBei is especially looking forward to supporting the children in whatever extracurricular activities or academic endeavors they choose to pursue.

We both love to cook and bake, and in addition to making many delicious and healthy meals for our children, hope to share this love with them as well. We will have the children start helping out in the kitchen as soon as they're old enough to, this way they will always have healthy and delicious food available at the tips of their fingers.

We have always been fond of travel and will take our children on family trips as much as possible. Every winter break, we travel with our parents to some location; this has included places such as Japan, Hawaii, Yellowstone, and Thailand. We're looking forward to bringing the children on these journeys and in addition will take them on trips with just our family to see the country and the world; we think this is important to give them perspective on what the world as a whole is like.

We also believe balance is important in life and find plenty of time to decompress by watching TV shows (our current favorite show is Beat Bobby Flay) or playing games together. Our biggest dream is for our kids to be happy, safe, and healthy and will always work our hardest to make sure this is true.

Love,

Nate & BeiBei