We both have grown up with family members who were adopted. Silvio was practically raised by a family friend who he saw as a father figure and had a tremendous amount of influence in his life. Jenny has cousins who were adopted and there were never any "lines" between her cousins and the rest of the family. Adoption was always a normal and accepted topic in our family.

Our family is pretty low maintenance - well, as much as you can be when you have a toddler running around! We enjoy spending free time with our family and close friends and love to cook out or host dinner every month or two. We cook, ride our bikes, go to the playground, swim, and spend weekends at the zoo. We go to church on weekends and work on projects around the house. When we travel it's generally to visit family, though we have gone on a few vacations with our son and have found him to be a great traveler!

Family comes first for us so that's always top of mind whenever we're planning our activities. Our relationships with our family and close friends are something we value dearly and couldn't ask for better influences in our lives. We have a good mix of an active lifestyle while still leaving time for rest and relaxation. Life is meant to be enjoyed and not something to stress and worry about!

We are a mixed culture family and that's something we love to celebrate! We feel incredibly fortunate to have two primary languages spoken in our home: Spanish and English. Silvio is originally from Nicaragua and Spanish is his first language. Jenny was born and raised in the Midwest in small town America. While there wasn't a tremendous amount of diversity in her town, she embraced the Spanish language and ended up studying it for 8 years. And should you have another language, we would love nothing more than embrace it and introduce it to Lincoln and the rest of our family! We feel it is extremely important to honor your background and heritage and celebrate our family's uniqueness.

We just bought a home in March 2016 and it's great to have a place to call our own and grow old in. The community, similar to our previous community, is extremely diverse and that's important to us. The makeup of our community is young families and new empty nesters. Our town hosts festivals throughout the year and the parks district has lots of activities we participate in - including swimming at the community pool and checking out all the new parks being built!

The community is also culturally diverse; Latinos, Caucasians, Asians, Middle Eastern and Eastern Europeans live side by side and share meals together. The school district is fantastic and the local grade school is within walking distance of our home. We walk to the park and say hello to all the neighbors with their small children and others with their dogs (our son loves dogs!). Our home has plenty of room to entertain guests and have family visit for extended periods of time, as well as room to support our growing family.

Family is a big part of our lives and we are very close to each of our families, despite being geographically separated. Jenny's family lives the closest to us, and we often visit her mom and family in her hometown. Typically a weekend in her hometown consists of meeting up with various relatives and family friends. We tend to keep it pretty low key; cooking dinner or going out to eat at our favorite pizza place, checking off Jenny's mom's "honey do list", and playing dominoes or card games with our friends. Our son LOVES to go to Mormor's house! (Mormor is Swedish for mother's mother.) It is often a getaway weekend full of rest and relaxation - and only 3 hours away!

Silvio's family lives a bit farther away; his sister and her family live in Florida. Silvio is very close to his sister as he helped her raise her children from infancy until they were in grade school. He's in contact with her daily which helps us stay in touch. We visit them every 4 months or so. Silvio's parents still live in Nicaragua, but he speaks with them several times a week and we are able to visit every year.

Both our families are thrilled with our decision to adopt another child and cannot wait to meet the new addition to our family! Our son is especially excited to have a little brother or sister to play trains and puzzles, and to read all his books!

After ten years of marriage and one adoption later we are looking to grow our family further. Our son is the best thing that has ever happened to us (seriously!) and we can't wait for him to have a sibling (or two) to grow up with. Adoption, from the beginning of our relationship, has been the way that we have wanted to grow our family. It’s not in God’s plan for us to have babies of our own – others have been blessed with that gift. We cannot wait to welcome a new little one into our home!

Lincoln is ready to be the best big brother ever! He talks about reading to his little brother or sister, about helping to feed them and he's even volunteered to help with diaper duty! He has a list of things he's ready to teach the baby how to do, we just need to remind him that the babies can't learn all of it at once! At school, he's always the first one in his class to greet the new and younger students, show them where things are, and help them when they're stuck. He’s a great friend and would be an even better big brother someday.

Lincoln’s grandmas, aunts and uncles can’t wait to meet your little one too! A new baby will be loved and cared for by our entire family; all of the cousins are excited to share their toys and to “dress up” the baby someday. They are always asking when God will find us another baby – we tell them that we are praying for a baby and we have to remain patient for the right match to happen.

We have a great relationship with Lincoln's birth mom and grandma - we share pictures and updates frequently and are able to FaceTime with them too! We are so blessed that they chose us to be his parents, and we know we’ve been able to answer their prayers for a loving family to love and raise Lincoln. They are excited that we are pursuing another adoption and for Lincoln to have a sibling to grow up with.

Finally, we want you to know that we are praying for our future child even before we meet him or her; we hope you would consider us as part of your adoption plan for your baby. We’re thinking of you often, even though we haven’t met yet. We’re sure you have a lot of emotions, feelings, and decisions that are all balled up and sitting inside you right now, and certainly can’t imagine what is going through your heart and head every day. We just hope and pray that you are healthy and safe. Please know that you are loved by us.

We would love to meet you and explore this relationship further. If we end up as part of your adoption plan, we would send all the pictures and updates we could so you'd know your child is loved and well cared for. We wish you well and hope that you find peace in the decision you make for your child. Thank you so much for taking the time to read our story.

Silvio & Jenny