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!

We are a mixed culture family and that's something we love to celebrate! Silvio is originally from Nicaragua and Spanish is his first language. He grew up in a war-torn country so his upbringing was more difficult than the average American, but it's shaped him into who he is today - hard working, dedicated, resilient, and determined to make a better life for his family.

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 Hispanic language and ended up studying it for 8 years. She loves to learn about new cultures and still celebrate her own (Swedish, Scottish).

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!

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!

We are Silvio and Jenny and we are grateful for you to take the time to read our story. We know that by you making this decision, you only want what is best for you and your baby; though we don't know each other yet, that is one thing we already have in common. We understand this is the ultimate sacrifice you are making on behalf of your baby, and we have the utmost respect for your decision to find the right family to love and care for your baby. We would be most honored to be a part of your adoption plan for your child. We are excited to share our values that we would impart on our baby. Some of the things we hold important are to love others despite your differences, the value of education, hard work, and celebrating the simple things in life.

After eight years of marriage, and one adoption later we are looking to grow our family further. Both of us have family or grew up around people we care about that were adopted; everything happens for a reason and with our life experiences, we know that it is God's plan for us to adopt another baby. 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. Instead we’ve been given hearts that are wide open to caring for babies whose moms are just unable to fulfill that role at this point in their lives. And that’s okay. We believe that’s our role to play – to be able to provide that loving home and support system to those babies in need.

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. You know something? We have been praying for you for months. We don’t know you, but we’re praying for you. We’re sure you yourself 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. That you are loved. That you are safe. And that you know you are a treasure.

Silvio & Jenny