We are both creative people and value spending time working on projects, being close to family and friends, and traveling. John is the principal of an arts school and Logan is a designer. During the week, we enjoy spending our evenings cooking together, taking our dog Peanut on a walk around our neighborhood, and settling in for the night relaxing to our favorite TV shows or a movie. In the summer, we often spend the weekends at Logan's parents cottage on Lake Erie. There, we relax on the beach, go for boat rides, and spend the evenings with friends around a campfire. When we are not at the lake, we are either spending time with John's parents or working on projects around our house. Each year, we love to take a vacation or two. We often try to get away to somewhere warm in the winters and like to take a summer trip, if possible, too. Our trips often involve family, such as visiting Logan's twin sister in Arizona where we spend time with our nieces, or traveling to visit family in Florida.

We both value culture and diversity - from many different aspects!

John grew up in an urban area on a street with people of all races and religious beliefs. John has always had a diverse group of friends. His interest in learning about and experiencing cultures led John to take advantage of every opportunity possible to experience different cultures. In college, he was able to study abroad twice: he studied painting in Ireland and spent a summer volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in southern Africa in the country of Lesotho. Since then, John has lived in, volunteered, and traveled to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Peru, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Logan grew up in rural Ohio in a close-knit community. As he grew older he realized the importance of leaving what felt comfortable to explore what our country had to offer. He left his small Ohio town to attend college in Phoenix, Arizona. His time there allowed him to learn more about himself and to understand and accept that he was part of an under-represented community in our country. Following graduation, his desire to continue to learn about the diverse world around him led him to move to one of the most diverse cities in our country, San Francisco, where he lived for the next seven years. In San Francisco he encountered a vast and diverse group of individuals - many of whom he is still close friends with. His love for his family eventually led him to move back to Ohio. He is happy that he has found such a culturally diverse city to live in and grow his family, in Ohio, in close proximity to his parents.

Our favorite vacation spot includes sand, sun, and water!

We are fortunate to live near a lake where we can go on a mini vacation any weekend we want where Logan's parents live a few steps away from a beach.

We also enjoy taking an annual (or sometimes semi-annual) trip to somewhere sunny. We have traveled to Mexico several times and have also taken vacations to the islands of Aruba, Curacao, and St. Martin. The island trips have definitely been our favorites as they provide a great amount of relaxation, adventure, and exploration. We also love learning and experiencing new cultures. One of our favorite trips was when we rented an AirBnB in Curacao, rented a car, and spent a week traveling around the island exploring different beaches, cities, and attractions.

We look forward to sharing our future adventures with a child!

We live in a modern house in a college town that's exactly halfway between where each of our parents live.

Our house was built about twelve years ago and was designed by an architect who lives in our neighborhood. It has large open rooms and lots of windows looking out on the back yard where our dog plays and where we enjoy cook outs with family and friends. The kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one large open space which is great for hosting family events. In fact, we host John's family for Thanksgiving each year with over 30 people. There are three bedrooms and two bathrooms on the first floor and a large finished basement family room where our nieces and nephews like to play our Dolly Parton Pinball machine!

Our town is known for being a creative, diverse, and inclusive place and it houses a college that is world-renowned for the arts. Our neighborhood has a good mix of feeling worldly yet is small enough where people know each other. We have a great mix of young families with children as well as retirees. Its not uncommon for us to come home and find cut flowers from a neighbor's garden or baked goods on our porch.

We are proud that our small college town is incredibly accepting of all people - it even flies a pride flag in the town park. We moved here about three years ago because we thought it would be a great place to build our family.

We are both blessed to have loving and supportive families. There are actually a lot of similarities between our families. One similarity about our families is the number of twins in them!

Logan is a twin!

Logan's twin sister just had twin girls!

John's brother and sister are twins!

John's uncle has two sets of twin boys!

Another similarity is that we both have two siblings and all of our siblings have children, so this child will have lots of cousins!

We are also both lucky to have our parents nearby. Both of our sets of parents have been married for over 40 years.

Some things that are different about our families are that John's parents live in an urban city setting about 40 minutes from our house. Logan's family also lives about 40 minutes away, but in the opposite direction. While John's family lives in an urban city setting, Logan's parents retired to their lake cottage near the Lake Erie Islands. We see our parents regularly and they are all excited for us to adopt. They have been grandparents many times over and are excited for a new baby to be brought into the family.

In addition to our biological family, we also have a wonderfully supportive chosen family in our friends. We have a wonderfully diverse support system of friends that live near and far. We have close family and friends in San Francisco, Portland, OR and Portland, Maine, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington DC, Orlando, Miami, Toronto, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City just to name a few! We love visiting them and we love their visits.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our letter and for considering us as adoptive parents. We understand that the decision you are making is of great significance and we are thankful that you may be giving us the opportunity to be parents. As a same-sex couple, adoption has always been our preferred pathway to parenthood and it means the world to us that you may provide us this opportunity.

You may be wondering a little about who we are and how we came to write this letter to you.

We met in 2012 and on our first date we discovered that we had a lot of similarities! After having spent our 20's starting our careers (Logan as a designer and John as an educator) we both made some life choices that led us to meet on a dating site. After having spent 7 years in San Francisco, Logan decided to quit his job, pack up all of his belongings in his Volkswagen, and drive back to Ohio to start a business with his father. At the same time, John decided to quit his job for a new opportunity. While Logan was looking to meet people and start his new life back in Ohio, John created his first-ever online dating profile. Logan was the first person John wrote to and here we are 8 years later, so he had great success! We married this past year, as we were ready to take this leap into parenthood.

We met at the perfect time as we were in similar places in life and looking for similar things. Over our 8 years together, we have purchased 2 homes - 1 in the city and 1 in a small diverse college town about 40 minutes outside of the city. We have adopted the sweetest dog, Peanut (a Pomeranian, Shetland Sheepdog mix), and have the friendliest fluffiest three cats you'll ever meet (Tator, Tots, and Shrimp).

We both have 2 siblings, all with kids. Logan's older sister has a 12-year-old son and lives about an hour away from us. Logan's twin sister has three beautiful daughters, a 4-year-old and twin girls that just turned 22 months. They live in Phoenix, but we see each other multiple times a year for several weeks at a time. John's has a brother and a sister who are twins. His sister has a 16-year-old son and his brother has an 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. Both of John's siblings live nearby. We are also both fortunate to have all of our parents nearby and they are looking forward to welcoming a new grandchild/children into our families.

We are also grateful to have a chosen family in our friends, many of whom have young children. In fact, we have 5 friends that have all had babies within the past 2 years, so our adopted child will have plenty of cousins and friends to grow up with.

We know that this is a big decision for you and we want you to know that we look forward to an open adoption and we welcome any communication with you so that you can learn more about us and so that we can learn more about you. Should you select us, we look forward to sharing letters and photos as our child grows. As we are a same-sex couple and our child will have us as their dads, we are also looking forward to the special place you will have in their life as their only mother.

We are super excited to be parents and we are so thankful you took the time to review our profile. If you think we may be the adoptive parents you are looking for we are open to more communication so that you can get to know us better and feel confident you are making the right choice.

John & Logan