Dear Friends,
We are much acquainted with the love that a family has for an expected child. You wouldn’t be looking at adoption if it weren’t for that deep love. As you make your adoption plan we would be honored to become better acquainted. We support you in your choice and hope that you find everything you are looking for.
Our Family
We love our family of four. Though we are not blood related, God managed to put together a masterpiece using such different personalities. We all have a role in the design of our family. We look forward to meeting the next artist who will add her touch to our lives.
We are a very content family in every stage of our life and feel it is important to enjoy the now. With first our marriage, the subsequent honeymoon years, and as each of our children join our family we live with joy and celebrate the blessings in our life. In this stage of our life our young children are our greatest focus; family is paramount to all other ambitions.
Abigail is four and a half years old. She is our New York baby. We love to tell Abigail her birth story: how we got on an airplane to New York, a bus to Grand Central Station, a train up the Hudson, and finally a taxi to the hospital. Our princess loves to make others laugh. She is very much a little girl and loves all the things little girls love. Imaginative play is her favorite – quoting and reenacting her favorite Barbie or princess movies. She also loves to be read to, drawing, painting and looks forward to starting Kindergarten this coming year. She lives as though the world were made for her. Abigail has a talent to make others love her, including her little brother Anakin.
Anakin means warrior; we did not know when we named him the passion he would bring our family. Life before Anakin was calm and tranquil. With his passion came amazing love and affection; laughter and energy. He loves sports, cars, and birds. Though just a year and a half years old he is as big as his sister. She is his teacher and example. As they play it is fun to see who tackles the other first. When one is sad the other offers love.
As a family we seldom have a dull moment; work and play are our constant companions. Abigail and Anakin enjoy swim lessons, pre-school lessons, Sunday School, and play time with friends. They also help with household chores like setting the table and washing dishes. We enjoy playing with our children, working out at the gym, and home improvements. Together we have regular family time: dinner, playing games, watching a movie, reading stories, and studying scriptures.
Perhaps our favorite thing to do as a family is road trips. We plan when and where to go, but we don’t plan everything that we will do. That allows us some spontaneity. We explored a copper mine in Tucson and saw the giant telescopes atop Kit Peak. Together we marveled at the giant Sequoias and splendor of Yosemite. We have touched the blueness of Bear Lake and braved the class five rapids of the Arkansas River. (The rapids occurred before kids.)
Wherever we go – far or near – we like to find places for our children to run and play freely; creating the perfect moments for our family. We frequently enjoy many treasures very close to home as well. Exploring the mountains of Oak Glen and playing in the tide pools of Laguna Beach are among many of our cherished memories.
Most our memories are created in our own home. Within our garden Abigail has planted her own flower bed. We cannot properly wash a car without a child playing in the suds. Home is where we learn to throw and catch a ball, apply color to paper, and mix the ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. In the whole world, home is our favorite place.
Aaron and Alice
We met during our teen years at a New Year’s Eve dance. It didn’t take us long to become great friends. 16 years later we are still best friends. Our friendship spills into everything we do. We love to spend time together and share everything with each other. There was some time early in our marriage that we were together 24/7 between home and work; we loved every minute of it.
We were raised in Southern California and though our travels, missions, adoptions, and work have taken us all over the world we are always happy to return back home to California. We both come from big families and our kids currently have a whopping 21 cousins. Alice takes several trips a year to visit siblings out of state so that we can keep a close relationship with them.
Aaron’s work occasionally takes him out of state and country on travel. We make it a priority to spend quality time together before and after his trip. We use internet phone/video to keep our family rituals and closeness while he is gone. It is an amazing blessing for Alice to be a stay-at-home Mom.
Why Adoption?
Since our courtship we knew that we would create our family through adoption. Alice has a medical condition that makes bearing children extremely dangerous. Through prayerful experiences we knew we would build our family through adoption.
When we married we essentially adopted each other; beginning our family. When we talk to our children about their adoptions we always begin the story with Mommy and Daddy adopting each other and how much we wanted and loved them. While each of their stories is unique there is the common thread that they were meant to be a part of our family.
We have been advocates of adoption since we began the adoption process for the first time in 2004. Now we take an active part in our local Families Supporting Adoption (FSA) group by sharing our stories and mentoring other adoptive couples and birth families. Our children will grow up as a part of our adoption community.
Openness
We are blessed to adopt at a time that open adoptions are more common. Although open adoptions are not ideal in every situation, our experiences with open adoption have been phenomenal. Our birth families have become a part of our family. We feel that a child can never have too many people to love them.
We have varying levels of contact with our children’s birth families ranging from letters, pictures, phone calls, visits, and open grand parenting. These relationships have grown naturally. We feel blessed that they have accepted our family with open arms. We hope for an open adoption with our next child’s birth family.
God has whispered to our hearts that there is yet another child coming to our family. We look forward with joy and anticipation at the prospect of another child with the same excitement as our first.
With Love,
Aaron & Alice
View our full profile at itsaboutlove.org
