We enjoy going to the beach! In fact, our family has an annual trip to the beach. Some of our favorite memories surround being at the beach with family. We enjoy playing in the sand, making sandcastles, jumping in the waves, collecting seashells, sightseeing, hiking the coastline, and finding sea treasures. We enjoy taking our nieces and nephews to different tide pools and teaching them about the different creatures that live in the ocean, such as sea anemones, starfish, crabs, etc. We also sometimes visit nearby aquariums and lighthouses.

We enjoy finding local bakeries, candy shops, coffee shops, and ice cream! There's nothing like a good fresh ice cream cone at the beach. We also like to find a local clam chowder spot and get some fresh seafood. During downtime on vacation, we pull out the board games. Our family really enjoys a friendly competition of Uno or Marbles! We also enjoy just throwing the football or frisbee around on the beach. We just absolutely love our memories made at the coast and are so excited to make more memories there with our children.

To become parents would be fulfilling one of our life-long dreams. To us, being a parent means showering unconditional love to a child through all aspects of life. We look forward to supporting our children through whatever they set their life passions to be. We want to be our child's biggest cheerleaders in life and to help them succeed at whatever they set their mind towards. We want to share our time and attention to their needs.

We hope to teach them life skills that help them to be a light in this world and to bring good into this world. We can't wait to share the love God has for us with our future children. We know that being a parent is hard work and we are so thankful that we get to parent our future children with the encouragement of each other. Jared is so gentle and has sound wisdom to share. Kelli is down-to-earth and has a great listening ear. Between the two of us, we can't wait to share our gifts God has given us to parent.

We are very blessed to live in a community of cultural diversity. Our friends are made up of a variety of different races and cultural backgrounds and we welcome diversity in our family. Whatever cultural background our child has, we would be honored to celebrate their culture and make it a part of our everyday lives, whether that be surrounding ourselves with our friends who share the same race or cultural background, incorporating decorations in our home that represent their specific culture, or cooking different cultural meals. We look forward to embracing our child and their heritage. We also enjoy traveling and plan to always teach our children to appreciate the different cultures in the world.

Kelli also has experience from teaching English and providing medical care in other countries. She has served in Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Dominican Republic, Native American Reservations, and worked with Somalian refugees. Between her training and experiences and the training we have taken together on diverse families, we are willing to learn and grow as a family to help our child's heritage be known and well understood by them and that our family includes this culture in our everyday lives.

We are blessed to have the majority of our extended family in town, which means we get together several times a month for family meals, game nights, movie nights, and just to hang out and catch up. Our families also plan annual beach trips and camping getaways with each other. Everyone is always looking for an excuse to get together and celebrate life's events. We also are blessed to have eight nieces and nephews, whom we love spending time with. Sometimes, our nieces and nephews come over for sleepovers. We spend the time playing in the yard, playing with toys, building forts, playing with our dog Hazel, watching a movie, making fun meals, and whatever other adventures arise when they come over to our house.

We value having our families so close to us and are thankful to share so many of life's precious moments with them. We were both raised valuing having dinner as a family no matter how busy a day ever got. This is a tradition that still holds true today for us, and we commit to always having dinner together with our future family. Our families are so excited for us to adopt and grow our family even more. In fact, both of our parents are jumping with joy to hear that we are going to give them more grandchildren to love! Our families will be a strong presence in our children's lives and we can't wait to share the crazy love our family has to give!

We live in a very family-friendly suburban neighborhood. Our house is a two-story four-bedroom home. We enjoy spending the majority of our time in our kitchen and our living room as it is a very open space where family and friends gather. We also have a music room in our house where we enjoy playing music together and writing/preparing music for worship on Sundays. Our favorite space to be would definitely be our backyard! We have a large fenced-in yard, including a waterfall, fire pit area, garden, lots of patio space that wraps around the house, a hot tub, lots of grass to run and play around in, and an upstairs balcony that has views of the mountains nearby. We very much so enjoy hosting family and friends with barbecues, playing yard games, and having bonfires with s'mores of course! Our yard is very peaceful, relaxing, and gets very colorful in the summer when all the different flowers bloom. We enjoy many evening sunsets from our backyard and balcony and morning coffees out on the patio. Many of our neighbors have young children. When it's warm outside, you hear the joyful sounds of children playing and laughing. Our neighbors are very excited for us to grow our family as they are looking forward to our children getting together and playing. Our neighborhood also has great walking/biking paths that connect everywhere and nearby elementary and middle schools within walking distance, which of course includes playgrounds!

We are so honored and humbled to be writing you this letter. First off, we want to thank you for considering the most precious gift anyone could ever give another human being, the gift of a child. Becoming a parent means the world to us and we have so much love waiting to overflow into a family.

We know this may have been one of the most difficult decisions for you and are praying for you every step of the way throughout this journey. We want to encourage you in the life you have set for your future and to give you peace knowing that we will cherish, love, and protect your child with all our hearts for the rest of our lives. We commit to always placing our child at the forefront of our lives. We want to create a childhood that is filled with fun, warm memories that leads to a responsible young adult someday.

We are strong, devout Christians and believe in the power of prayer and want you to know that we have been praying for our child for years, are praying for them as we write this letter, and will be praying for them every day here forward. We pray for God to protect them, for them to feel loved, for them to find their strengths and to pour into these gifts, for them to know grace and forgiveness, for them to be an example of good in this world, and to make a positive difference in whatever they set their mind to in this world. We want them to know exactly who they are and where they came from. We plan to share whatever information we can with them so they will better know who you are.We hope to exchange letters and photos with you over the years to come as they grow older. We commit to always being honest and open with our child about their story.

We have been together for five years and married for about three years. We love each other so much and have been waiting for this day that we get to see each other become parents. We plan to be our child's biggest cheerleader in life and to encourage them in their greatest passions. We look forward to all the days ahead, including sleepless nights of feedings and diaper changes, teaching how to play with others, life milestones, playing in the yard, going on camping trips, helping with school work, practicing at sports, music, or dance, going to youth group, and all the difficult conversations that come along with growing up. We are excited to be there for it all!

Kelli is a registered nurse and works in pediatrics and the neonatal intensive care unit here locally, so your child will definitely be in safe hands! We absolutely love children and the energy they bring into our lives. We often have our nieces and nephews over for sleepovers and these moments have been a constant reminder of how we are very much so looking forward to having children of our own.

We hope and pray that you would choose us as the adoptive parents to your child. We can't thank you enough for making us parents and giving us the opportunity to share our love.

Sincerely,

Jared & Kelli