We have a 10-year-old daughter named Emily. Emily loves to swim and do handstands and flips in the pool! She plays basketball on a team part of the year, but we play in the driveway all year. She also does gymnastics most of the year. She loves rollerblading, riding her bike, and riding her scooter. She loves playing with all the neighborhood kids, but it bothers her that she is the only one that doesn't have siblings. Emily has been waiting to be a big sister for years, so she is very excited about this child!

We love being parents and have always envisioned our lives with more than one child. We had our daughter Emily in 2012 and started trying to have another child in 2014. By 2017, when we had already had one miscarriage but no second child, we began working with a fertility clinic. We tried various medical procedures, but unfortunately they did not work. We now know that it is impossible for us to have any more biological children.

However, we also know that becoming parents to a second child was something we were called to do. When we started researching everything about growing our family through adoption, it just felt right. It wasn't even a question for us. We are excited about the opportunity to grow our family through adoption and to provide the love and support that we know we have available to give another child.

One of our favorite things to do as a family is traveling. We generally go on one or two more significant trips yearly and maybe one or two smaller ones. It is fun to see new places and have new experiences as a family, and we look forward to creating many memorable vacation memories with this child. In just the last few years, we have visited San Diego, California, Riviera Maya, Mexico, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Disney World in Florida, but our favorite in the last few years was Maui, Hawaii! It was unlike any place we have ever been, and it is hard to believe it is even a part of the United States.

Some of our shorter vacations the last few years have been Sheboygan, Wisconsin, French Lick, Indiana, Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Neither of our families traveled much when we were children, so one of the things that is very important to us is to make sure any children we raise travel extensively. When we travel, we usually go someplace with a beach and ocean. The exception to that has been Disney World. Even though there is no beach in Orlando, it was a lot of fun and someplace we plan to revisit several times.

Adoption has affected us personally because our brother-in-law and his sister were adopted as children. We are very close to our sister and brother-in-law, so we have seen his relationship with his adoptive and birth parents. He is an adult, yet his adoptive and birth parents are both in his life. They all come to family functions and holidays and visit with our nieces and nephews as their grandparents. This is how things have always been for them, so they don't think there is anything unusual about the arrangement, and it just means they have even more grandparents!

It has helped our brother-in-law have a stronger sense of identity. He knows why he has certain facial features, why he is tall, and even his birth family's medical history. It has also helped his children to have that same sense of identity. They all know where their dad came from and how all of his parents fit into the picture. The whole thing is what you would hold up as an example of how adoption can work out very well for everyone involved.

We live in a town of roughly 20,000 people in Illinois. The location is excellent because we are within two hours of St. Louis to the west and Indianapolis to the east, and we are less than three hours from Chicago. It gives us many options for day trips to different city zoos, children's museums, outstanding parks, and other fun city activities. We are close enough that, when we are done, we drive home to our friendly, quiet town.

We live in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house at the end of a peaceful and safe cul-de-sac. It is perfect for us to play basketball in the driveway, ride bikes, or skate because there is no traffic. Our daughter Emily loves playing with the many neighborhood children. They range in age from middle school to newborns. With so many young families in the neighborhood, the number of kids will probably keep growing! It is a highly family friendly town and neighborhood.

One of our favorite activities is going swimming at the pool. There are always kids to play with, and having the lifeguard that is always there gives us additional peace of mind.

There are many great parks and playgrounds, including a brand new one with a zipline by the lake.

Our daughter attends a private, Christian K-8 school, and we love the level of education and attention they provide with such small class sizes.

We are both close with our families. Katie has a younger sister, and Rob has an older sister and two younger brothers. We live within two hours of every member of both of our families, so we see everyone pretty often. We have five nieces and nephews combined and a ten-year-old daughter named Emily, who can't want to be a big sister. We go to Katie's Aunt and Uncle's house every year for their Fourth of July barbecue. We all love it because all our cousins, nephews, nieces, and friends come together to celebrate simultaneously. We play in the pool and hot tub, play bags and other yard games, and eat way too much food! The house is so close to the city's fireworks display that we always end the celebration by sitting in the front yard in lawn chairs and blankets, watching the fireworks.

This past Fourth of July, we got to share with our families that we plan to adopt a child. They all know that we have been trying to have a second child for about eight years but were unable to biologically, so they were all thrilled for us to grow our family another way. We can't wait to add this child to our holiday and other family traditions and watch our family and friends love and embrace the child you have blessed us with.

These letters are probably all starting to sound the same, huh? "We are so grateful to you for giving our family this gift." "We can't imagine how hard this must be for you." Those things are true, and the people writing them are well-intentioned, but we doubt it is helping you very much. Everyone writing those letters wants the same thing. They want you to choose them to parent your child. You probably want to know that you are choosing the best possible family for your child, and it is hard to tell if one family will be better than another. We don't know if this letter will make your decision any easier, but we will try to help as much as possible. If you have questions you want to ask us, we are happy to answer anything. We promise we won't lie to you, and we won't make any promises we can't keep.

We have been married for almost 11 years, but we dated for 6 years before that, so we have been together for 17 years altogether. We feel old just typing that, but we started dating in our early twenties. We both grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, but we moved to a middle-sized college town about 7 years ago. It doesn't have as many restaurants and shopping options as living in a bigger city, but it is a great place to raise kids. We live in one of those neighborhoods with kids of every age just running around everywhere playing. It is like going back in time 30 years, when kids actually played outside. In the summer, they will come into our backyard and catch lightning bugs after they are done riding bikes or playing tag or whatever. We weren't sure how we would feel about living someplace like this at first, but now we love it! If we need more shopping or restaurant choices, it is only about a 35-minute drive to a city with all those things.

We have a 10-year-old daughter named Emily that just started 5th grade. She loves playing basketball, which is awesome because we love basketball, so it gives us an easy way to be interested in something she is interested in. She can't wait to be a big sister. We are not exaggerating when we tell you that she asks us how this is going every single day. She is very excited.

When we are not outside, we like to watch movies. Our daughter is still pretty young, so it is usually Disney movies and those kinds of things. When it is just the two of us, we like comedies mostly. We know everyone loves the Marvel superhero movies right now, but we have just never gotten into them.

As far as how we would communicate with you in the future, we would really like to leave that up to whatever you are comfortable with. We have a brother-in-law who was adopted and has regular contact with his biological family, so we have seen that it can work well for some people, but we don't want to tell you what should work for you. Of course, we are happy to send letters and pictures at a minimum, but we are also open to calls, texts, e-mails, Facetime, visits, etc. You don't have to decide on those things now; we know what works for you could change over time. Please know that we are ready to talk about it when you are, and we are willing to be flexible.

We can't promise you that every moment of your child's life will be happy if you choose us. No one can promise that. We promise to do everything we can to make as many of their moments as happy as possible. We promise that every conversation we ever have with your child about adoption will use positive language, and we will try to make them understand that they are loved by you and by us.

Rob & Katie