Becoming parents to Colin through adoption has been the single most incredible blessing in our lives. He has the biggest heart, is confident and independent, and goes non-stop from dawn until dusk. We love playing race cars and worker guys, doing cheers before every meal, being asked "are you watching?!" for every jump, dance move, and trick, reading just "one more" bedtime story, and the hundreds of other small moments we share every day with him.

One of the joys of open adoption is that Colin's story is his to know. We talk regularly and openly about adoption as part of how our family came to be. For Colin's current age, we use adoption-related children's books to help us keep adoption a regular and normalized topic in our family. Colin also loves to look at pictures so we have a digital folder with pictures his biological family sends us. We love to look through this album and others to talk about all the different people who make up our loving and boisterous family crew.

We went through years of pregnancy loss, wondering if parenthood was going to happen for us. We both strongly believe that becoming parents through adoption and after those losses has meant we don't ever take our parental roles for granted. It has changed our lives and this fun, crazy, amazing life we are building together as a family. We are beyond excited to have an opportunity to become parents again, and build more simple but life-changing moments with another child.

Regardless of the weather, you will undoubtedly find us outside for some part of the day. We all have found that a little fresh air and sunshine (when we can get it!) do wonders for our mindsets. So on any given day, you can find us going for a walk, playing on the swing set, doing lawn work, racing bikes, cars, scooters, or simply drawing with chalk or playing bubbles.

One joy of parenthood we are beginning to experience is sharing our individual hobbies and activities with our children. Colin is already an avid biker and skier, just like his dad. And he can't possibly go to bed without reading a book, just like his mom. He loves running with us and playing our favorite sports like tennis (Laura) and lacrosse (Peter). We are so excited to share our passions with our children and then expand our own interests and experiences to share what brings them joy.

Our family priorities can be summarized into two core values: to be present and to share love. Life can move so quickly and our world is filled with seemingly unlimited distractions. So one of our goals is to be present and make choices that help us live slowly in this phase of life. Though we both work, we have prioritized our time at home, ensuring one of us is with Colin and any future children the majority of the time. We view these precious years at home as core memories in the making and cherish them as such. During these days, we aim to be present rather than rushing around. Though we are starting to add in more school and activities, we value unstructured play time at parks, libraries, and around our home. Our other top priority is to love each other and to ensure everyone in our families feels loved. We seek out kindness, trying to emulate for Colin and our future children how to show love to each other even in the smallest actions. We always aim for our family to be a team, supporting and rooting for each other always.

Life in Pennsylvania has so much to offer! We love getting the most out of every season without worrying about any one staying too long. We moved a bit further out from the city, meaning we get to enjoy more home and space, but are close enough to benefit from the cultural diversity, beautiful architecture, and fun activities in our city.

Our current neighborhood is where Peter grew up! We love living in an area Peter knows so well and being so close to Peter's family and our long-time friends. We love swapping movie nights, pizza Fridays, book club and more since our community is so close-by. And while we love that the schools are incredible and the parks are expansive, most importantly we love that our neighbors are kind and welcoming.

Our house has so much room for a growing family, which is what we love about it. We have six bedrooms, making it a breeze to host even Laura's big family anytime they visit. But the space we love the most is our open living room and kitchen. We spend most of our time here enjoying the private views of our backyard spaces while we share a meal, watch a show, or enjoy a fire. We have also loved having the space to run wild in the yard, making good use of the swing set, patios, and hills. We also love living on a quiet cul-de-sac, making good use of our circle with baseball, hockey, and constant bike riding.

We feel beyond lucky to have big, close-knit families. And when we say big, we mean big! Laura is one of seven, and Peter is one of four. We already have 14 nieces and nephews, with the 15th on the way. We are godparents to three, a role we have felt so honored to share. As our siblings grow their families, it is such a joy to watch our children form close bonds as cousins. We are within an easy weekend drive to Laura's family and just up the road from Peter's parents and sister's family.

We have loved watching Colin hold his own with the girl gang, as we fondly call Laura's family (9 out of the 11 cousins are girls!) during pool time, zoo trips, or playing in the "basey." Peter's family loves cousin-on-cousin football and lots of pool time too. Plus, the cousins are together for a full week every July packed into one lake house. Lake week is full of water skiing, tubing, swimming, yard games, and lots of s'mores.

Sometimes, we can't believe we get to call our amazing parents, siblings, siblings-in-law, nieces and nephews our family. They are equally as excited as we are to welcome another child through adoption and have been so involved in helping us gather pictures and videos for our profile. We know that a child will have a wonderful, kind, and supportive set of extended families to love them.

How can we begin but by first saying thank you for getting to know us. We are Laura and Peter. We've been married for 9 years and have our amazing son, Colin, through adoption. Even though we adopted before, writing this letter in particular feels so hard. Are we sharing enough and giving an authentic view into who we are? And as we think these things, we can only imagine how hard it might feel to read these letters and wonder something similar. We have done our best here to share who we are and how we live our lives as a joyful, quirky, loving family, deeply committed to each other and so excited to share all this love again through adoption.

We discussed adoption early on in our relationship as we dreamed about marriage and building a family together. This has always been something we shared - a guiding priority to center family and parenthood in our lives. Adoption has been the most beautiful fulfillment of this goal, an incredible opportunity to grow families through love. And we are so excited to have an opportunity to grow our family again; a family we once wondered if we would ever have. We share our excitement here, knowing that what might be a hope-filled time for us, is an incredibly difficult time for you. We can only say that our goal as adoptive parents is to be builders, fostering life-long connections between our families brought together through adoption. We feel so grateful to live this out with Colin's biological family, and we hope to share a new, unique, but affirming relationship with any future child's family of origin as well. We look forward to sharing letters (Laura loves to write) and pictures (Peter is a natural at photography), but we also hope to fit in calls, FaceTime, and visits if you are open as well. While we know communication waxes and wanes through different seasons of life, we see communication as an amazing opportunity for our children to always know and love their family: adoptive, biological, and self-selected.

We would love to share two things specifically. One is our family philosophy. This philosophy is that our people are our purpose. While we both feel so fortunate to have careers we actually enjoy and hobbies that love to practice, these are firmly second in our world. People come first. We both feel strongly that we want our children growing up in their own home with their parents as primary caregivers. We both benefited from growing up in families with similar priorities. We also prioritize our family time and friendships. It has been one of life's sweetest joys to watch Colin build his own friendships with his cousins (he already has 14!). As we hope to grow our family through adoption, we are excited to see Colin build a new friendship with a sibling. It feels especially important that this sibling will also be adopted, an experience they will always share even as the particulars differ.

A second value in our lives is a curious mindset. We both enjoyed formal education and recognize that it opens so many doors, but learning means something more to us. We hope to teach our children to always have a genuine curiosity for the world around them. This reflects our own relationships with learning: Laura has read voraciously her entire life, and Peter masters a new subject regularly (right now it's car engines). One incredible part of parenthood has been witnessing our children learn this way. Colin loves to ask questions, explore nature, work on cars with daddy, and read lots of books with mommy. While we are grateful that our town has one of the top-ranked public school systems in the state, we want learning to be self-driven and enjoyable.

Thank you for taking the time to read our profile and learn about our family. Adoption really does have the most amazing way of bringing lives together in unexpected ways. Reading about our life here is just one small example of this. We are sending the most positive energy your way as you discern the right decision for you and your child. Thank you for considering us as parents; it's the best job we've ever had.

Peter & Laura