We have always dreamed of having children. Little ones to carry, read stories with, giggles to hear, tears to wipe, and boo boos to kiss. Later years of school days, sports, clubs, or activities to watch and cheer them on.

After years of trying to conceive without success, our house feels quiet and is missing the presence of children. Since beginning the journey of adoption, we have felt hope and excitement for the future. Our story is being redeemed. We can't wait to see where this journey will take us.

We met while attending college at Stephen F. Austin State University during Sonja's freshman year and John's junior year in August. By October, we were a couple. We enjoyed the early days of dating by sharing meals at the campus cafeteria and attending campus events like football games, movies, and game nights. After 2 years of dating, John proposed, and Sonja eagerly said yes! We were married in Houston a year and a half later, the June after Sonja graduated.

We began our married lives together in North Texas, where John lived before those college years. We have grown in love and friendship over the last 11 years of marriage. We learned how to live together and create a home together. We bought our house 4 years into our marriage in 2018 with the plan to raise a family here.

We enjoy doing many things together, like cooking, outdoor walks, watching movies, and trying new restaurants. We spend a lot of time at home together playing with our pets, playing board games, doing yard work, gardening, and different home projects.

John is my best friend and a wonderful husband. He is passionate about health, which aligns with his career in the medical field and as a CrossFit coach. He makes exercise and good food a priority. John is caring and responsible. He takes care of me, our pets, and our home. He can smoke a delicious brisket, as pictured below. He also likes to make protein ice cream and pancakes. John enjoys a good activity - anything that he can do that is up, physical, and moving. If someone has an idea for an adventure, John is ready to join in. He will also initiate activities like going to the neighborhood pond to fish. John wants to learn new skills in building, cooking, and ways to improve our home. He is a good friend and intentional about making time for the people in his life. John has a knack for remembering dates and times. I frequently ask when things happened or will happen. John loves movies and remembers quotes and actors' names like no other. He keeps up with Star Wars and Marvel universes. He likes playing video games. He also likes building and collecting LEGO. He enjoys keeping up with scores for his Dallas teams - the Mavericks, Rangers, and Cowboys. John loves to joke and play with our friends' children, nieces, and nephews. I know he will be an amazing father.

Fun Facts about John:

• John has competed in the CrossFit Open for the last 10 years
• John has completed the Spartan Race Trifecta of Races
• John is afraid of spiders, but also likes to scare others with spiders
• John grooms our dogs, including haircuts and ear cleanings
• John likes to make up songs about our pets

Sonja is a caring, gentle, creative, and wonderful woman. She enjoys crafts, gardening, cooking, jazzercise, taking walks, and spending time with family. She is very passionate about her work as a speech therapist. She won speech therapist of the year for the first company she worked for in her first year as a speech therapist. She spends time creating therapy games and activities for kids at the school where she works. Her cooking is excellent, especially when she makes sourdough bread or other baked goods from sourdough starter. Sonja is very helpful in giving me ideas on home projects. This helps me create productive tasks. She is a wonderful wife and encourages me to grow closer to God. This has also helped me prioritize serving at our church. She is also an amazing aunt to our nieces and nephews, and will be an amazing mother one day.

Fun Facts about Sonja:

• Sonja likes to dance and Jazzercise
• Sonja likes to thrift shop for different books and games for students or family members
• Sonja loves being outside
• Sonja enjoys Christian fiction audiobooks
• Sonja made sourdough toaster pastries for fun for John's birthday

We purchased our home in the quickly growing North Texas suburbs in 2018. We enjoy staying home and have made our house our safe haven. We love spending time in our kitchen, back patio, garden, Sonja's craft room, and John's game room. We already have a playroom and nursery picked out for our little one. We have friendly neighbors with children who love to ride bikes on the sidewalks and play in their front yards. We have friends who live throughout the neighborhood. We can walk to each other's houses and join for fun at the neighborhood pool. Our neighborhood is very close to our church, community park, John's gym, and Sonja's work. We can see our town park's 4th of July fireworks show from our front yard. In the fall, we can hear the high school marching band practice and football games outside.

• John is the captain of the parking lot team at our church

• Sonja serves donuts on Sunday mornings at church

• We love the community park near our house with playgrounds, walking trails, volleyball courts, basketball courts, baseball and soccer fields, and a splash pad. Our niece and nephew enjoy the playground when they come to visit

Pumpkin, our orange cat, thinks he rules the house with his stuffed animal, Simba. He likes to wait at his treat station and watch over the kitchen from his high-top food table. Porter is the large Golden Doodle. He loves to play frisbee and toys, but doesn't like to let them go to be thrown again. Porter is always down for some good pets. Polly is a small Golden Doodle. She has tried to rule the house since she joined the family last year. She is a cuddle bug and likes to sleep right up against us each night. She loves playing fetch. All of our pets get very curious when kids come to visit. They want rubs, sniffs, and play time.

John's parents, aunt, and uncle live in our town. We enjoy getting together for meals, swimming, sports events, and going to movies together. John has many extended family members who live in Wisconsin, Missouri, and North Carolina. We love it when out-of-state relatives come to Texas to visit, and we enjoy traveling to visit them too.

Sonja is the youngest of 3. Her parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew live in Houston. Her older brother lives in Japan with his wife and daughter. Sonja calls, texts, and facetimes her family often. We travel between North Texas and Houston to visit each other multiple times each year, especially on holidays.

Sonja's extended family gathers together each summer for a week in New Hampshire with multiple generations of cousins.

We love Christmastime! Every year, we add a LEGO house to our winter village collection. We build them while watching classic Christmas movies. We enjoy attending and hosting holiday parties, including Karaoke.

Our church Community Group meets at our house each Sunday night. Pictured is our Christmas party game night featuring tissue paper party hats.

We have taken fun trips over the years, including Montego Bay, Jamaica; Disney World in Florida, Disneyland in California; Key West, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Boulder, Colorado. We also like to take road trips to nearby locations like Nacogdoches, Fort Worth, Galveston, Canyon Lake, and Arlington, Texas.

We promise to dedicate our lives to parenting our child with unconditional love, open communication, patience, and grace.

We promise to allow them to grow into the person they wish to be by showing interest in their ideas and passions as they grow.

We promise to share our child's adoption story with them-- sharing with them that their birth mother was brave in choosing us to be their parents.

We promise to teach our child about the redeeming love of God and Christ our Savior.

Love, John and Sonja