We have a son, Miles, who we adopted through American Adoptions in 2020. He was born in Texas and we traveled there for his birth. We were there when he was delivered and Margo was the first person to hold him. We will forever be grateful and thankful to his birth mother for allowing us that privilege, and for sharing his life with us. Every day with Miles has been a joy. Parenting is not easy and we would never pretend that it is, but the smile on his little face every day makes us so, so happy. He wakes up in the morning and we sing our Good Morning song and his face instantly lights up. He loves music and singing, and dancing. One of his favorite activities is bath time -- he loves his boats and splashing in the water. He also loves reading and playing outside -- the slide is his favorite activity.

We would love to add a brother or sister to our family and to give Miles the experience of having a sibling. We also believe that having a sibling will help bring Miles a deeper sense of belonging. We have a great network of family and friends to help us as we grow our family and make sure that both Miles and our new child's needs are met.

Some of our favorite vacation places include New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, Paris, Japan, and Vienna. We've also been bike camping in Missouri and Minnesota. We love going to visit Scott's family in Michigan. They live in a small town on Lake Huron, and the large extended family gets together for the Fourth of July at a small cottage near the beach. There are tons of cousins and kids and fun things to do.

Margo loves aquariums, and we've been to several around the country. We also love visiting art museums, historical monuments, and trying out local restaurants and new foods wherever we go.

We can't wait to show our children the world. We have hiked and snorkeled in Hawaii, Puerto Rico in the rainforest, and several national parks. Our next overseas adventures will include Denmark and Japan. Scott's family hosted a foreign exchange student, Hans, from Denmark, when he was a kid, and they have stayed close over the years. Hans recently had a baby boy and we are excited to be able to continue our generations together.

Since we adopted our son, Miles, holidays have taken on a whole new meaning. Seeing the world through his eyes and watching him light up when he sees the decorations Margo sets out the night before Valentine's Day or the tree's sparkling lights at Christmas has been magical. Miles has a set of book ledges in his bedroom and Margo decorates it for all the different seasons and holidays. He loves looking at the books and pulling them off the shelf and reading them. We hope we can continue these traditions as he grows and that they will evolve as he gets older. One of our established traditions is to celebrate holidays like St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years Day with special foods. We have been making corned beef and cooked cabbage for St. Pat's Day, ham and our special crescent rolls for Easter, and a yummy charcuterie board for New Years Day every year since we were married. This feels very like a very authentic way to celebrate for us -- we love cooking and it's something that we grew up doing as well. Family dinners are also very important to us -- we sit down every evening for dinner at our table with our son, and we share food and spend time discussing the day together. We both grew up eating with our family at night and feel it is important to continue that tradition.

Margo is very close to her dad. He frequently helps out with our son, Miles, and we spend many Sunday evenings having supper together and catching up. She also has several cousins on her dad's side and we see them occasionally. Margo grew up close to both sets of her grandparents and spent many spring breaks in Florida, and Easters with her grandma in southeastern Iowa. It is very important to both of us that our son has that same bond with his grandparents. Margo's mother is deceased. Music has always been an important element in Margo's family. Margo's dad plays piano, guitar, and both her parents performed in a band when Margo was a kid. Her dad has a group of close friends that have become her extended family. Scott's parents live together in Illinois, and he has one brother who lives in San Diego. He has a large extended family, with several living aunts, uncles, cousins and kids. His dad is from a small town in Michigan where his grandmother and several relatives still live. We love to spend the Fourth of July in Michigan with his family. They have a family reunion picnic each year. Christmas is always celebrated together with both our families -- we make the meal together and it's tradition that we make potato crescent rolls -- our family has a special recipe and we make it every year. The other half of Scott's family is located in the Dallas area.

We live in a newer four-bedroom house with a fenced-in backyard and a vegetable garden. We love to walk our dog and ride our bikes on a great trail system throughout the area. There are other families with adopted kids we know just down the street. Our school district has some of the best schools in the state and country. The students and our neighbors come from diverse cultural backgrounds. We have two great playgrounds in our neighborhood within walking distance that we take our son, Miles, to swing or go down the slide. The best part of our community hands down though is the supportiveness. Everyone cares about everyone else.

We have a tradition of sharing holiday treats with several of our neighbors. Miles has several neighborhood friends and we see them nearly every day.

Our city is a fast-growing suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that is ethnically diverse and thriving economically. We have big-city amenities -- Science Center, Zoo, Art Museum, Sculpture Park, State Fairgrounds, a large reservoir for boating, state parks for hiking, family friendly cultural festivals downtown -- with the livability and ease of a mid-size city of about 600,000 people. Nothing is more than 20 minutes away.

We always thought we would have children and discussed it while we were still dating. When we found out we couldn’t conceive and build our family in the traditional way it was devastating initially. A change in occupation and location for us shifted our priorities at the time and helped us both work through the emotions of life not working out like we initially thought it would, and also allowed us time to figure out what we really wanted in life. Experience has given us the lens to be able to see all the options of what we can do with our life, and we chose to expand our family in 2020 with the adoption of our son, Miles.We both just want to share our life and all we have to give, and to experience the wonders of all the things we love through our children.

Though Margo was an only child, she was very close to the neighbor boys who lived next door to her. They played almost every single day together, riding bikes, climbing trees, going to the little league park and buying candy with allowance money, swimming in the summer in Margo’s pool, and so it was in a sense like she almost had brothers for part of her childhood. Margo still keeps in touch with the oldest and they both work for the same company. Margo also went to a church camp every summer, and when she was a teenager she was a counselor at the camp. Margo walked to school from the time she was in kindergarten to sixth grade every day and grew up with the same kids throughout most of her grade-school days. The holidays were always a magical time for Margo growing up. Her mom always made sure that they decorated together and her family always put up lights outside and baked together. Margo tries to continue those traditions with our son Miles and decorates for each holiday and tries to create magical celebrations for him. Margo and her dad have a tradition of baking Swedish-style cookies together during the holidays and packaging them up and delivering them to all their friends and neighbors. Margo and her dad are very close. He instilled in her both an artistic sense and for home design.

Scott and his family always skied together when he was a child, and now too as an adult, so he’d love to teach his own children to ski someday, as well as bicycling, mountain biking, hiking and camping. Scott had many holiday traditions growing up as well, making homemade cutout cookies with his mom and homemade decorations for their tree when he was young. Both our sets of parents were ecstatic about us growing our family and love their grandchild, Miles, dearly. The hardest thing for them is not to spoil him too much!

We have a very strong network of friends, some with children and some without. We know we can count on all of them for their love and support of our child as much as our family. We camp together with our friends several times a year, and have taken several trips to Minnesota and around Iowa together. We would love to show our children the world someday by taking them to other countries, all around the United States and anywhere they want to go. Scott and Margo both love adventures together and have hiked and snorkeled in Hawaii, Puerto Rico in the rainforest, and several national parks. We’ve traveled to Vienna, Austria, together, and our next overseas adventures will include Denmark and Japan.

We believe the most important thing is that a child is loved. We know that if children feel safe and secure and confident they will thrive. Creating environments of structure are equally important and these are things we want for our children. We want to make sure they can always trust us and that we create an environment where they feel like they can be the best version of themselves. We think it truly takes a village to raise a child, and we are ready to be the cornerstone of that village. Whether you are considering adoption or still not sure, we want you to make the decision that feels most right to you. We are open to sending both letters and photographs, and are open to visits and periodic ongoing contact, in the form of phone calls, video chats, or emails.

Scott & Margo