Hi! Our hearts are filled with love, respect, and compassion for you as we think about you reading this letter right now. We think about you and the challenges you are facing and pray that you will be blessed with all you need to make the decisions you will face in the coming months, whatever they may be. We wish we could tell you in words how much adoption has meant and continues to mean to us, but it has been such a huge blessing in our family's life that our feelings about it are impossible to express. We think about our children's future birth-parents a lot. We hope that as you consider making an  adoption plan for your baby, that you will feel peace in your heart.

     We have had so many incredible experiences in our lives because of adoption. Our whole family has been blessed by this miracle in a lot of different ways. Our brother-in-law Dave was adopted from Korea when he was 11 years old. Our nephew, Carlos, on the other side of the family, was adopted a few years ago from Guatemala. However, there have been three major adoption experiences that have touched us the most. These three experiences are our stories, and we hope that some day soon we'll be able to have the incredible blessing of experiencing our fourth adoption miracle.

Our Adoption Miracles

Miracle #1- We had been married 9 years when we got the amazing news that a young woman named Heather had picked us to be her baby's family.  We spent the next few months getting to know her and her family and finally being able to put all of our dreams of starting our family into action. We were attached to Heather right away and our love for her has only grown stronger over the years. Noah was born a few weeks early in December 2005. We thank God everyday for Heather's loving sacrifice to do what she felt was best for her son and give us the opportunity to be his parents. He is the light of our lives and gives us so much joy. We treasure Heather and the open relationship we have built with her. Noah is 3 years old now and Heather continues to be an important person in our lives.

Miracle #2 - They say that with adoption a baby grows in the adoptive parent's hearts at the same time that it is growing inside it's birthmother. We think that is so true! The spring of 2008 we felt strongly that our next baby and birthmom were going to find us soon. We thought about her, prayed for her, and felt so hopeful. Sure enough it wasn’t long before we got our first email from her wanting to get to know us better and it just felt right. Over the next few months we fell in love with her and spent a lot of time getting to know each other.  About a month before her little son was due we all lost him. There were some unknown complications and he was born having already returned to his Heavenly Father. Losing him has been one of the most heart-wrenching but also incredibly beautiful experiences of our lives.  We've grown so much and are grateful for the friendship we have with the amazing woman who picked us to be her son's earthly parents.

Miracle #3 - It has been our dream from even before Noah was born to adopt from China. Last summer we started the incredible amount of paperwork we would have to complete to get on China's waiting list to adopt. We are now officially on the waiting list, but China is so slow with their adoptions that we won't be able to bring our child (probably a daughter who will be about a year old at the time) home until sometime around 2013 or later. Yep. You read that right! It really takes that long. So we are officially "expecting" and we will be adding our baby from China to our family, eventually. Gee wiz, elephants think they have a long gestation!

     So now that you know a little about our adoption miracles, we should give you a better idea about who it is that you've been reading about! We are Chris and Laura, and of course wherever we are there is Noah too.  We want you to know everything you can about our family so you can know if we are the right family for you or not. We would love for you to explore this website to learn more about us and to also feel free to email us at chrisandlaura96@msn.com.

A Message From Chris 

     Hi, Chris here. We want to tell you as much as we can about ourselves in this letter, but it can't be too long, so I'll leave out all the embarrassing parts, like the time I had to try to apply my own clown makeup for my Halloween costume in first grade. Humiliating! Anyway, I come from a pretty close family of three brothers and one sister. My dad was in the military and we moved a lot (I went to 12 schools before I finished high school), which made us close. I am super-optimistic (not in a rah-rah cheerleader kind of way, but in a cooking up crazy ideas kind of way). My optimism leads me to concoct ideas and plans all the time, I don't actually follow through on all those plans; just enough of them to keep Laura on her toes and to make life more flavorful. I guess that's what I love so much about life; all the flavor. I like to see and do different things (but not try different foods, I'm scared of those). We love spending time talking about all the fun things we can do to show our children around this world of ours and help them learn everything they need to become their best selves.  My favorite idea is spending a year sailing around the world, although I think that one's been checked off the list since Laura got seasick on a
whale-watching trip. Even without those crazy plans of world travel, we cherish the idea of showing our children life's many flavors. From camping in the mountains, to playing in the ocean, we love this life and the little ones--present and future--that it is our distinct honor to spend it with.

A Message From Laura

     Hi! (Insert hug here.) My name is Laura. Chris and I have been married for almost 13 years, but in a lot of ways we still feel like newlyweds. Chris is an attorney who has a fabulously family-friendly job working for the State and I love my job as a stay-at-home-mom. I'm so glad that I get to teach, nurture, and play with Noah all day long.  Our family's favorite thing is to spend our time together and we have so many things we like to do. We love to make ordinary days special, and special days a celebration. Every now and then we like to make an ordinary day special by spontaneously taking the day off work and pretending that we are on vacation. We call them our "Ferris Bueller" days. We do whatever we want to all day long like going to a baseball game, driving in the mountains, or going somewhere unusual to eat. It's great. We like to make an event of our special times like birthdays and anniversaries. We feel like it's so important to enjoy life and to do it together. We also love, love, love to go on  vacation.

     I grew up in a family of all girls, besides my Dad. I have 4 sisters and they are still my closest friends. I see or talk to at least one of them every day, and they are pretty much who I spend my free time with. Noah also loves being with his cousins, so it's great for all of us. In my spare time I love to read (I'm just about always reading a book) and I like to sing embarrassingly badly and loudly to music (I love music).

About Our Little One

     Our "little one" is named Noah, but we frequently call him "Nobo". It's short for Noah boy. He is very independent, really affectionate, and has the biggest, craziest imagination ever! He spends every day dressed up in one of his many costumes, running around pretending to be some kind of pirate or super hero. He loves to talk and gives us a running commentary of everything he's seeing and has always been a noisy boy.  He's very social and craves the attention of others. Kids are so much fun to him. From the time that he was tiny he would get right in the middle of what his cousins were doing and "play" along.

    

     We appreciate you for taking the time to learn a little about us, and hope that you will feel guided and comforted as you explore this path for you and your child.

Love,
Chris, Laura, and Noah