Drew was raised in a small farming town in northern Wisconsin by his mother and grandparents, who taught him the value of hard work, perseverance, and caring for the people around you. The whole community helped raise him, especially during hard times for his family. That early experience of being supported by a wider circle shaped his belief that open adoption can offer a child that same kind of extended, loving community. He also was the town babysitter, so has a lot of practice keeping small children out of mischief.

Jen grew up in San Diego with her parents and an older brother. She has spent much of her adult life exploring the world through study and research, whether it was studying language in Germany, doing public health research in India for over two years, or surveying farmers in Ethiopia. Those experiences taught her to approach every person and every story with curiosity, humility and empathy.

Together, we've also been shaped by supporting each other and our loved ones through hard times. We try to support in big and small ways, from delivering a casserole to someone recovering from surgery to long phone calls late at night. Those experiences taught us that love shows up through consistency and presence, not perfection. We carry all of this into how we hope to parent: with patience, humility, and a deep respect for every child's story.

Food is love in our house which is a lesson Drew's mother passed down to him. Every Thanksgiving, we open our home to anyone who doesn't have another place to go. Drew handles all the cooking (his pumpkin pie is a highlight), and Jen's job is keeping everyone out of the kitchen. At Christmas and Easter, family members who are in Denver have the traditional Barr family brunch including the family egg bake (a recipe Jen has finally mastered), coffee cake (including the traditional burning of it), and coffee. These gatherings are loud, warm, and full of good-natured chaos. For New Year’s Eve, we love to go to the Botanic Gardens for the lights. In the morning, we drive around town to find donuts, since Drew’s mom believed that eating donuts on the first day of the year would bring good luck. Besides holiday traditions, every summer, we get a share from a local farm. Jen loves to cook using the fresh vegetables, and Drew cans the fruit. In the fall, we take our niece to the farm festival and harvest vegetables. Drew and our niece also take advantage of the farm’s challenge to “load up a wagon” with squash and pumpkins, building a tower of squash we can take home. It’s lots of fun and really resonates with Drew’s farming background. More than any single event, our tradition is simply gathering people we love around a table, sharing our love, and making sure no one is left out.

To us, being parents means providing unconditional love and being a steady, loving presence in a child’s life, no matter what happens. We want to be present and patient parents.

We also want to bring some of what we value most to a child, like wonder and curiosity. Drew loves to teach concrete things, like how to pull an ear of corn from its stalk or how water moves in a stream. Jen is curious and imaginative and would love to tell the history of places and spin new stories.

What we look forward to most is sharing our lives with a child rather than just managing them by cooking together, exploring Colorado's mountains and trails, curling up with a good book, or teaching them to ride a bike on our quiet street. Drew can't wait to pass down his love of building and tinkering and Jen looks forward to answering 1000 questions about how the world works the way her own parents did. We also expect parenting to stretch us in ways we can't fully predict yet, and we're genuinely excited for that. We want our home to be full of laughter, hard conversations handled with honesty, and a deep, unwavering sense of belonging.

We both believe that family is about love and that you can choose who you want to be in your family. We were really lucky that when we moved to Denver, Jen’s family was here too. Her older brother, Steve, lives about twenty minutes away with his daughter Kayleigh (11 years old), wife Heather, and fluffy dog Phoenix. Steve works for a nonprofit, Heather is a special education teacher, and Kayleigh wants to be an astronaut/doctor when she grows up. We’re very close to them, and we love borrowing our niece and taking her out. They have already offered to babysit.

Jen’s parents, Chris and Cathy, live on the west side of Denver with two cats who are absolute terrors. Chris and Cathy have been married for almost 40 years and love photography, bird watching, and doting on their grandkid. Family meetups are common and often involve brunch, long noisy conversations, and spoiling Kayleigh. Drew’s grandparents—Wayne and Betty—are not related by blood at all, but they are still very much his grandparents. They helped raise him, and every time we go back to Wisconsin to visit, we stay with them (and Betty tries to feed us too much). Drew’s mother, who he was very close to, has passed away, but we try to honor her memory with love and good cooking. Drew has a bundle of aunts, uncles, and cousins in Wisconsin as well who we keep in touch with and visit as we can.

We live in Lakewood, Colorado, nestled between the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the city of Denver. We’re close enough to enjoy the best of both, beautiful mountain hikes and festivals (everything from Juneteenth jazz day to the Dragon Boat Festival). We particularly love the annual Festival of Lights at the Botanic Garden and the Harvest Farm Festival.

Our home has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large living room, and a big dining table around which we love to gather family and friends. Our favorite room is the family room, with its cozy fireplace and the wide couch where we snuggle up for movie nights and or silly game nights with our niece. A child would have their own bedroom looking out over a large backyard shaded by a maple tree, where we’re already picturing swing sets and lazy summer afternoons.

Our neighborhood is warm and connected. Several families with small children live nearby, and we’re especially friendly with the family just across the street who have three kids. In the evenings, kids are out on bikes and shooting hoops in driveways. When someone’s car gets stuck in the snow, neighbors come running.

Five parks with playgrounds and lakes are within walking distance giving plenty of room to run, explore, and grow up. We also have schools, pools, and other activities all within a short distance.

Thank you for looking at our profile! We are Jen and Drew. We have been married since November 5th, 2017, a date we love celebrating because it marked the beginning of our family. Writing this letter is one of the most important things we've done because it’s welcoming you into our family.

We both believe that family is built through love and choice. That belief is part of why adoption feels right to us. Drew knows firsthand what it means to be held by a wider circle of love. He was raised by a single mother in a small farming town in Wisconsin, and when times were hard, the whole community helped raise him. That experience shaped a belief in both of us that the more people who love a child, the better. We see adoption not as a separation, but as a joining of families, and we hope you feel that in this letter.

We live in Lakewood, Colorado, nestled between the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and the city of Denver. Our home has three bedrooms, a family room with a cozy fireplace, a large living room for movie nights, and a big backyard under a maple tree where we are already picturing swing sets and lazy afternoons. Our neighborhood is warm, neighbors stop to chat on evening walks, kids stay out on bikes until dark, and we help each other dig out from the snow. Five parks with playgrounds and lakes are within walking distance.

Drew is steady, loyal, and deeply caring. He has spent his career as an engineer helping get water to farmers and his personal time taking care of the people he loves by fixing things, making long drives to visit family, and always showing up. He is also funny in the goofiest way and will laugh until he can't breathe. Jen is curious and warm. She has done public health research in India, studied language in Germany, and worked with farmers in Ethiopia. She makes every person she meets feel seen and heard, hosts a weekly writing club, cooks her way through our summer farm share, and will answer every question a child could dream up.

Together, we love quiet adventures by hiking and camping in the mountains, traveling, reading, and working on our house on weekends. Saturdays might mean cooking together, reading on the couch, or heading into the mountains. We also value serving others. Every Thanksgiving, we open our home to anyone who doesn't have somewhere to go, and Drew handles all the cooking while Jen's job is keeping everyone out of the kitchen. We have two sweet cat sisters, Boo and Moo, who will absolutely love a child. Our extended family is close by in Denver. Jen's brother, his family, and her parents have already promised babysitting help. A child would also fall right into a relationship with our niece.

What grounds our partnership is how we handle hard things. We talk through our feelings honestly and communicate through large and small challenges. We hope to bring that same steadiness and honesty to parenting. We want you to know that your connection to your child matters deeply to us. We will raise a child knowing that their adoption is a story of love and that they can ask questions, feel any emotion about it, and always find us ready to listen without judgment. We are committed to sending you letters and photos regularly so you are always a part of your child's story. We are also warmly open to as much contact as feels right and healthy for the child, whether that means exchanging emails, talking on the phone, or visiting in person. We believe more love in a child's life is never a bad thing, and we would be honored to build that together with you. You are making an incredibly brave and loving decision, and we admire you deeply for it. We hope this letter gives you a real sense of who we are, not just what we do but how we love. We would be so grateful for the chance to grow our family with you.

With love and hope,

Drew & Jen