We have a 5 year old daughter who was adopted at birth. She is a very energetic, caring, and funny kid who is very excited at the possibility of being a big sister.

She has already mapped out where in our house the new sibling or siblings would sleep and keeps telling us about how she will help us care for the new baby or babies. She continues to ask us a lot of questions about how to care for a baby so that she can help us.

She loves to go hiking, go on adventures, and go on vacation. She also loves all things art: coloring, building, and projects. She told us recently that she wants to be an artist, but is also leaning strongly towards being a dentist (she loves going to the dentist). 

Education is very important to us, and we hope to instill that importance in a child. Sarah has a Bachelor's degree in Education, and Eric earned a Ph.D. and teaches college courses. We look forward to teaching a child about the world, other cultures, and to value knowledge. We will provide the support and avenue for our child to achieve their desired goals, giving them the opportunities they need to succeed.

However, we know that education can be very different for everybody; we will encourage learning in all forms, and will support our child in every endeavor. We will love and support our child in any educational direction they choose, be it a trade skill, Bachelor's, or any advanced degree. We both loved school as kids because it allowed us to learn new things about the world and make new friends. In this regard, we both loved our public school education, and will enroll our children in the highly ranked public schools in our district. We hope to enroll our child/children in the various second language immersion programs in our school district so that they can become bilingual at an early age. 

Our favorite vacation spot is actually more than one. During the summer, we spend a lot of time on the shores of Lake Michigan swimming, sunning, and looking for lucky stones (Sarah has a gift for this).

In the fall, we visit Mackninac Island every year, a wonderful island where they only allow bicycles and horses. On our bigger trips, we usually do not visit the same place twice, but do have some favorite spots we have been to. We both love Edinburgh, Scotland, and would move there in an instant. Sarah loves Paris, and looks forward to taking Eric and our child/children there in the future. We have friends who have moved throughout the country, and we like to visit them as often as we can, typically planning a trip that includes not only a friend visit, but drive to somewhere new.

We also really enjoyed trips to Disney World, and look forward to going back. While we have some favorites and spend a lot of time at Lake Michigan, we really enjoy seeing new places.

Our family is very important to us. We are fortunate to have many of our family within driving distance; Sarah's entire immediate and extended family live within 1 hour of our home. Eric's mom lives 45 minutes from us and his sister and family live about 3 hours away. Eric has many extended family members in the greater Chicago area and throughout the US.

We get together every summer with Eric's extended family, seeing many generations including 2nd and 3rd cousins. We spend time on the beautiful Lake Michigan beach; the kids love to build sand castles, swim in the lake and we all try to watch the sunset each evening. With Sarah's family living close, we get together on many weekends and enjoy grilling out or going to restaurants together.

Holidays with family are very important to us. We love our holiday traditions like baking cookies for Santa, hunting for Easter eggs, and long dinners around the table.

Our family is very supportive of our adoption journey. Our adopted daughter is surrounded with love, joy and lots of hugs. Our extended and immediate families are ecstatic for us to add to our family.

We live in a wonderful community in Southwest Michigan. The town is filled with many parks, playgrounds, restaurants, museums and hiking trails. We love that our town is very diverse, with many cultures, races and different perspectives. The school district is rated one of the top 10 in the state.

We live in a 2-story home with 4 bedrooms and a playroom in the basement. Our house is on a cul-de-sac and nearly every house in our neighborhood has children. There is a great playground with swings and a slide. We love to ride our bikes or scooters to the park and play with the other kids. Our daughter loves to play dress-up, make art, and to set up ninja courses in the basement to time herself to see how fast she can get through.

During the summer, we enjoy going to music in the park. It's a family-friendly event with kids of all ages. Our favorite thing is to have a pizza picnic in the grass and listen to the songs. Kids dance around and there is often a bubble machine and someone making balloon animals. Lake Michigan is a close drive from our house, and we spend as much time as possible at the beach. It is a great lake to swim in and the beaches are ideal for making sand castles.

Thank you for looking at our profile, and considering us for the honor of your child placement.

We knew very quickly that we would marry, and spoke candidly during our dating time about raising a family. When we moved into our house in 2012, we began trying to conceive a child. We spent the next 7 years trying to conceive through both Western and Eastern fertility medicine treatments. The losses suffered and continuing disappointment of fertility treatments actually brought us closer together and taught us to appreciate the joys in life. While it was difficult for us to see friends succeed at fertility treatments, through this process we learned that joy is stronger than pain, and love is more powerful than disappointment.

The hard times also cemented the desire in us to be parents; we decided that we had waited long enough and were fortunate to adopt our daughter in 2019. We have always felt that our family would not be complete without multiple children. Adoption is love from both sides. Hopefully you have seen in our profile that we are loving people who look forward to sharing that love with another child. We know that placing a child is an act of love, and we want that child to know this from the very beginning.

We cannot know the roller coaster of emotion you must be feeling right now, but we can say that we are committed to an open adoption. You will see in our letters and pictures that the child is loved and thriving with us, and your choice really was an act of love. An open adoption probably has some aspects that are exciting, confusing, and maybe downright scary, and we promise to work with you over the years through this process. The child will continue to know that you love them, and made your choice because of that love. They will know the special place that you have in their being on both the planet and with us.

We also promise to help the child navigate any confusion or emotions they may have by connecting them with other adopted children (including our daughter) and family members. We hope to literally share the world with our children through travels around the globe/country. You always hear that it takes a village to raise a child, and this child will be part of a large community of friends and family. Friends are family to us, and since most of our friends have children, the child/children can look forward to a life of fun with those "cousins". As you may have read in our profile, our life goals are to be kind and happy. While other things may take priority from time to time, we will always bring our family life back to being kind and happy.

We will raise a child who is both kind and happy, and it will be done with love and laughter. Hopefully in our video you can feel the love we have for one another and the love we have for fun/adventure. Your gift of a placement will allow us to finally become a full family, something we have dreamed of since 2012. It is only through your love that our family can become complete, and we cherish that you would even consider us for the honor of a child.

Sincerely,

Eric & Sarah