We think that being a parent is showing unconditional love, teaching them how the world works, and supporting them through their choices and any problems that come along. Being teachers we feel that it is our job to teach them how to do everything with patience, gentle guidance and positive reinforcement. We have researched brain development as teachers for a while and are fascinated by how young people's brains work and grow. We look forward to helping develop a child to be a caring, emotionally intelligent person who also has some grit to be able to handle hard situations when they occur in life.

We look forward to sharing in their life milestones like first steps, first words, birthdays and graduations. We look forward to sharing with them our interests in things that fulfill our own life’s like our deep involvement with music.

Michael has two people he is close to in his life that have been adopted. Michael’s nephew, Silas was adopted by his sister, Mandy when he was still an infant. He was welcomed into a large family who accepted him as one of our own immediately. Through this Michael learned how amazing it can be to provide a home for children in need and gave him the confidence that he too could become a parent through adoption.

Another person who is close in our lives who was adopted is our friend, Luis. Michael and Luis met when they were 16 and have remained close ever since. Luis' parents thought they would not be able to conceive for medical reasons so they sought out adoption opportunities. Luis has one brother who was born as a surprise to his parents a few years after they adopted. It is a dream come true to help out a child the way our nephew and best friend were helped years ago.

In our leisure time we especially love spending time with friends, family and making connections with people in our community. One of our favorite activities is to host a weekly movie night with friends. We have a spreadsheet of all of our favorite movies that we’d like to share with our closest friends and we try and pick movies from that list, sometimes it feels like it's never ending since there are always movies being added!

While we do a lot of performing for work, we also love creating performances and concerts that give back to our community. We started programming concerts with our friends that collect proceeds for local charities that support LGBTQ youth, local humane societies, and immigrant support organizations. It’s really fun and rewarding to see our community grow through our performance and we can’t wait to share this work with a child.

Kevin and his dad spent a lot of time together in his childhood building Lego, Kenex, and doing other types of puzzles and he’s looking forward to sharing his love for those things with a child. Michael loved participating in theater growing up and can’t wait to share that part of his childhood with our child as well.

We both come from large families. Kevin has two sisters and many aunts and uncles. Michael has three sisters who each have children and grandchildren of their own. We spend all of the major holidays with one or both of our families.

Our biggest tradition is our travels at Christmas to South Carolina for the first part and Montana for the second part. With our flexible work schedules, we have been able to make this happen for going on nine years.

Christmas in South Carolina includes a baking day, multiple parties culminating in a Christmas Eve celebration that includes extended family for a gift swap and singing of carols.

In Montana, we enjoy Kevin's family Banada, an Italian tradition for Christmas dinner every year. We like to frequent the local art house cinema and travel around to see the beauty that is Montana. Last year we were able to combine both of our families as part of a 40 person Disney World trip, it was so special having both of our families in one place for Thanksgiving dinner in Belle's castle.

We live in Washington State on the north side of Seattle in the Bitter Lake area. Running an after school music program means that we are in contact with many Seattle families that live in our area and are friends with many of those families.

We live in a three bedroom 1.5 bath townhome that shares walls with one other unit. We have a one car garage and a patio where we can fit a few chairs and a grill. The townhomes are situated in three rows of homes creating a small little village. Our village does block parties where many of the children come together to play multiple times a year.

Our favorite part of our house is the main kitchen/living room floor that is large enough to host our annual Super Bowl party and also fit a string quartet so that we can have rehearsals at home.

There are also recently refurbished playground equipment, tennis courts, and a baseball field right down the hill from our house at the Bitter Lake Community Center. Also on our same block is a branch of the library and an elementary school.

We love Seattle but we enjoy being a little out of the hustle and bustle in an area of town that is safe and mostly residential.

We have both wanted to be parents for as long as we can remember and the joy and gratitude that we are feeling at this stage in our journey to adoption is incredible. We are so beaming at this opportunity and are so thankful that you are considering us to raise this child.

We met 13 years ago at the University of Denver where were both studying with the same cello professor. After being fast friends for a couple of months we went on our first date at a pizza place in Denver called Atomic Cowboy. We introduced each other to our families and extended friend groups and we were soon inseparable. After living in Denver, we moved to Michael's home state of South Carolina but struggled to find enough work in our field. We moved to Seattle in 2017 and fell in love with this amazing city and the community we've created here.

We've been married now for 7 years and even from our first dates, we talked about how we wanted to adopt a child in the future. We are both musicians who perform in local orchestras and as a part of a cello duo. For our duo we pick a charity close to our hearts for each concert to raise money for. We have raised thousands of dollars for local charities over the past few years. Currently we run a non-profit music school where we strive to make music education accessible to as many families as we can. One thing that drew us to each other was how much we loved each other’s large families and wanted to create the same thing for our future child.

We are passionate people whose main goal in life is to help other people along our life's journeys. As teachers and musicians who work in the same program and at every chance possible collaborators, we are together a lot. We work hard to support each other and help each other grow to be the best role models we can be for our students and our community. Our weeks are full of music, laughter and connection to so many young musicians. Our weekends are spent with family and friends exploring the great PNW, while trying to expose ourselves to the great diversity our country has to offer. We are confident that we are in a place now in our life where our careers, finances and relationships are stable and strong enough to welcome a child into our lives.

We do not take this on lightly and have reflected and planned for many years to make sure we can offer our best selves to this child. We can't wait to be the people who are constantly sharing pictures to whoever is even slightly interested and we promise to share their journey with you along the way. We strongly believe in having an open dialogue where they can keep in contact with you throughout their lives, if you’re willing. Along with the pictures we are happy to share letters updating you on milestones and activities.

Thank you for taking the time to read our letter and considering us.

With all our hearts,

Kevin & Michael