Adoption gave us the first best gift of our lives, our son.

Adoption has long been a part of Brent's life as his cousin was adopted. Adoption in our family circle is normal; it's just a way to add another member to the family.

We chose to grow our family through adoption as we'd always talked about it as something we wanted to consider when the time was right. Right after we got married, at a routine appointment, Valerie was told her pregnancies could be high risk; we knew that was a sign that adoption was the right first option. Adoption is not our back-up plan, or our plan B— it's our plan A.

We adopted our son Soren in 2016, and it was a fantastic experience. We love Soren's birthparents and enjoy our open adoption, keeping them updated as often as they want. We grew our family to include them and their extended family when we adopted, something unexpected but wonderful.

We have learned a lot about adoption not only through our experience, but through a community of adoptive families that we connect with. We have many friends and co-workers who have grown their families through adoption.

It's wonderful to have a community of children who have gone through a similar life experience for Soren, and this is another reason having a sibling would be so special for our family, and such a gift to us and Soren.

Valerie About Brent: Brent is such a great Dad. He is super involved in everything with our son and is his favorite playmate. They love reading together, playing with the dogs, being outside and even going on evening bike rides to the garden together. He is very loving and patient.

He is the opposite of me in many ways and those are the qualities I love, admire and respect about Brent; he can fully live in the moment, while I'm always thinking of what's next and how to make it happen. He is the calm, patient one in our house. Our relationship has a great balance.

People instantly like him and he is so easy to talk to. He can figure out how to fix anything and is an amazing problem solver.

Brent About Valerie: Valerie has a huge well of available love and care, it seems to be infinite and she is an amazing Mom. Everything about being a mother seems enjoyable for her, even our son's middle of the night cries.

Intelligence, compassion, and thoughtfulness are the qualities I respect, admire and love about Valerie that come immediately to mind. She is caring to a fault, and she's the type who would rather give 100 gifts than receive one. She is very smart, and would still prefer to be the dumbest in the room. She is organized, a great cook, nurturing and has a plan for making sure we are secure in the future. I even admire a weakness of hers that she so caring, sometimes at the expense of herself, putting others needs in front of her own.

We love the traditions that we have, and can't wait to make more. We have silly traditions, like how we always eat fried rice on Valentine's Day, or cut down our own Christmas tree. We go apple picking with family every fall and visit our favorite small town in Minnesota every summer. We love our yearly road trip to visit Valerie's family on the East Coast, and our tradition is to break tradition and find new routes to drive.

Christmas is big and full of traditions; from making Chex Mix, to hosting a pretzel decorating party for friends to spending the day on the frozen lake with family on Christmas day. We started a new tradition of matching Christmas pajamas on our son's first Christmas and can't wait to keep this going.

Soren and Valerie's birthdays are 5 days apart so another new tradition is a joint birthday party... a Nacho Party!

We consider our friends family, and a big tradition Valerie has is making birthday cakes for all of our close-friend's children.

We live in a cute three-bedroom house in a fantastic suburb in Minnesota. Our neighborhood is full of young families, walking their dogs and pushing strollers to one of the three nearby parks. We live across the street from a beautiful community garden and have a coffee shop a few blocks away that even has a kids section.

Our neighborhood is very family friendly and hosts tons of events a year, like movies in the park, summer ice-cream socials, a 5K fun run and, our favorite, hayrides and hot cocoa in the winter. We love it here; there are great schools and a lot of diversity and we know it is a great place to raise our children. There even are a number of families on our street who have adopted!

Our favorite place in our house is our kitchen, which is bright and clean. We also love our backyard where we have a great patio, lots of green grass and a garden. We love to have family and friends over when the weather is nice, and let our kids play together while our dogs run around.

Brent has a huge, close-knit extended family and two siblings. His sister and our niece and nephews live 15 minutes away and we get to see them all the time. His parents live three hours away and are in town very frequently visiting. As a family we love to play board games, play on their swing set and in their pool and go up north in the summer to play on the lake and ride on the pontoons and boats, which all the kids love! Every Christmas, the whole family meets to swap presents and play games on the frozen lake.

Valerie comes from a small, close-knit family all located near one another on the East Coast. Her mom and dad live close to her sister and nephew, and we love visiting them as often as possible for weeks at a time. Growing up they spent every Sunday at her grandparents and still keep this tradition. When we're with her family, we love cooking and shopping together and love to go to the park and pool all summer long. We are also BIG on birthdays and enjoy having fun celebrations.

Our families are so happy to have another member join and are supportive of our adoption plan. Both families are excited to have another child as a grandchild/cousin!

Hi,

We are Brent and Valerie. Thank you for taking the time to read our letter and for considering us to be parents to your child. Creating an adoption plan is a very loving and courageous decision. If you choose to take this beautiful and selfless journey, we hope you will find that we are a family that truly eases your mind.

We are a young, active couple that became parents through adoption in 2016. Becoming parents to our son, Soren has been the best experience of our lives. Our hearts doubled in size when we watched him come in to this world while we held his mother's hand. We can't wait for Soren to become the best big brother out there, and to go through this journey again.

We love to have fun and spend time with the people we love. We have both worked hard to become financially stable in jobs we enjoy. We live in a house and community in Minnesota where we have always dreamed of raising a family. There are three parks in our neighborhood, lots of children to play with and fantastic public schools. Education is important to us, and we will create an environment where a child will thrive and we will help her or him reach their full potential no matter what.

We are surrounded by family and friends that love us unconditionally and that are 100% behind us on this journey to adopt another a child. Family and friends are the most important things in our lives. We both grew up in loving families and have siblings that we are close to. There are lots of little nieces, nephews and cousins from both sides of the family just waiting to help welcome this child into our lives ?" but we think the Grandparents are the most excited!

Daily life will be full of hugs and kisses (from us, Soren and probably our two dogs!), unconditional love, making healthy meals together and being tucked in every night (after a marathon storytime from the 'library' of books we are building). We will play outside, have kitchen dance parties, take lots of walks around the neighborhood, pick tomatoes from our gardens in the summer, go sledding in the winter, travel lots (road trips here we come!) and laugh until we cry.

We will teach this child where they came from the start. We will tell them that they grew in our heart, but we are only able to be their mom and dad because of you. We will share photos, e-mails and letters with you and keep you as updated as you would like, just as we do with Soren's birthparents. Most importantly we will be forever grateful to you for giving us the gift of parenthood. We will thank you during the hardest moments and during the best moments that we wouldn't have known without you.

Please know our biggest wish for a child is that he or she is happy, healthy and grows up to be who they are meant to be. We promise to raise your child in a loving home and to know respect, compassion, and kindness.

You are very brave and no matter what decision you make, we wish you happiness and peace for the future.

Brent & Valerie