Ashley & Matt

The holidays are upon us and we find ourselves happily occupied with events. We love having an excuse to get together with friends, and it's the perfect time of the year to gather and celebrate the holidays!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year and hope that you did as well! We traveled a couple of hours away to celebrate with Ashley's family for a gathering that was full of delicious food, happy family and friends, and tons of laughter. We felt so fortunate to see our big family for the holiday and know we will one day add our own baby to the festivities. There is no doubt that they will have plenty of doting aunts and uncles as well as cousins to play with!

Halloween is right around the corner, and we are getting in the spirit by putting out some fun yard decorations! One of our favorite things about our neighborhood is how kid-friendly it is, making it a true Trick-or-Treat destination. Armed with giant bags of candy from Costco, we will soon pass out sweets to little ones in costume who are going house to house with their parents. We truly can't wait to join in the Halloween fun with our own Trick-or-Treater!

September was quite the whirlwind in our household! Between working, attending professional conferences, visiting family, traveling with friends, organizing a book club among cousins, and Matt starting back to classes for his MBA, we stayed very busy last month! Even in the chaos of such a busy month, we cherished the good times with our people. We hope you are having a wonderful week and enjoying all that fall has to offer!

After a downpour last week brought much needed rain, we were thankful to enjoy bright, hot, sunny weather this weekend! Our friends came to visit for some fun in the sun. We have been so blessed to have these friends for well over a decade, and we enjoyed brunch and some splashing in the pool. Summer days are the best!

On our honeymoon in 2010, we decided we would visit Napa Valley for our 10th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, that anniversary coincided with the onset of a global pandemic and everything was shut down for COVID. So, two years later, we were very happy to travel to Napa to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. Better late than never! We had an exciting time together, exploring the area, and checking off another location on our bucket list. We were reminded of how grateful we are for our relationship, our years together, and the adventures to come! Cheers!

We recently celebrated Matt's birthday! Our family tradition is that you get your favorite dessert for your birthday, so Ashley made Matt's favorite cake, fresh lemon pound cake with berries. We also had a lovely evening at a new restaurant in our city. Here's to another amazing year! We hope you are staying happy and healthy in this hot summer!

Over the last year, we have enjoyed preparing a nursery to bring a child or children home to! Each item here was carefully selected or gifted with love, hope, and excitement. We have been delightfully overwhelmed by the graciousness of our friends, family, and even neighbors in helping to make this sweet little room across from our bedroom into a cozy and colorful nursery. Ashley's mom is even making a quilt for the baby! We hope to someday give our child the world, but we will start with a nursery stitched together by the love of our community.

Summer is flying by! Matt had a week off, so we traveled, hosted, and visited with our family and friends. We especially enjoyed spending time with our nephew and goddaughters! As we embraced many memorable moments, we were filled with excitement to bring our own child into the mix. We have such a happy, loving support group that will join us in welcoming our own little one!

We celebrated Ashley's birthday this June! We had a laid back day, appreciating some outdoors time together, having dinner at a new restaurant, and sorting through the baby items our generous neighbors gifted us. Macy was a big help with the sorting! We are so hopeful for the year that lies before us!

Just a quick update on our growing garden. Ashley has spent lots of time working on our garden to bring us plenty of healthy salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, black eye peas, strawberries, and much more! It will be so wonderful to someday have a cute little helper in the garden!

We traveled with some of our best friends to Florida this week for a vacation at Rosemary Beach. We had such a great time, enjoying the family-friendly amenities and imagining bringing our future child here for some fun in the sun with friends. Building sand castles on the beach with our future child will be a must! We hope you are enjoying the season as the weather gets warmer!

This weekend, we were lucky enough to get a visit from one of Ashley's cousins, her husband, and their sweet little baby boy. We had so much fun, catching up with our family and cuddling with the sweet, newest addition to our cousin crew! He will most definitely make a wonderful playmate for our future baby someday!

We have been enjoying the warm, windy weather lately, having cookouts with friends, working in the flower beds, and hanging out beside the pool with our dog Macy. It is such a beautiful time of the year and we are excited to see what the summer brings!

They say that your friends are the family you choose, and we are fortunate to have some amazing ones! Now that the weather is warming up a little bit, we have loved getting together with many wonderful friends and snuggling with some very special babies. We can't wait for our child to be part of this fun and loving group of people!

It's alllllmost spring here in Texas, and we have been working very hard on getting a series of gardening beds ready for planting. It may not look like much now, but soon, these and other beds will be filled with tomatoes, squash, spinach, onions, herbs, cucumbers, flowers and more! We are really looking forward to sharing our love of the outdoors (as well as our homegrown veggies!) with our future child!

Texas got a little winter weather this week, so we took a moment to play around in the snow with Macy! Though we prefer the warm weather, it was a nice change to appreciate the rare snow in our own yard. We hope you are staying warm and cozy this winter!

We celebrate each New Year with a feast filled with southern superstition, including black eyed peas, cabbage, cornbread, and ham! We began this tradition on our first New Years as a married couple and enjoy the meal each year while we discuss what we are looking forward to in the year to come. This year, we have SO many hopes for 2022, as we dream of becoming parents! May 2022 bring you peace, joy, love, and luck!

As we inch closer to Christmas and the New Year, we have been enjoying holiday celebrations with friends. This weekend, we relished the opportunity to spend time with our dear friends and their daughter, and we attended Matt's work Christmas party and our neighborhood's holiday party! We felt very fortunate to be told time and time again by friends that they are hoping and praying for the perfect adoption match in the new year to make our dreams come true. We know we are truly fortunate to have such a supportive group of close friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are ready to join us in loving a sweet little addition to our family!

We trimmed the tree and decked the halls while Macy provided invaluable support from the comfort of her cozy bed! There is an undeniable eagerness that fills the air when our holiday decorations go up, and we begin looking forward to traditions with family and friends and time spent together over the holidays. We hope you, too, have a delightful time this holiday season and feel a little extra magic in the air!

Last week, we were fortunate to travel to Hawaii for a vacation where we had our honeymoon many moons ago! We had a blast, appreciating the beautiful beaches and hiking trails, and we both agreed that it will be wonderful to enjoy these sites with our future child. It was a special way to begin the holiday season. We hope you have a joyful and happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Halloween weekend, traveling to our residency city to see many close friends! We loved catching up, playing games, eating great food, and meeting all of our friends' new babies. We are so excited to see our friends' little ones become our own child's playmates!

Ashley's parents came for a visit earlier this week, and we enjoyed plenty of quality time, laughter, and a game or two of Jenga. We are looking forward to adding another player to our family game nights!

In our household, we truly enjoy the holidays! With the arrival of October, we love putting out decorations for Halloween. We had a blast hanging up ghosts, putting out pumpkins, and stringing up a giant spider and web outside. We can't wait to carve pumpkins and Trick or Treat with a little one!

As we excitedly wait for an addition to our family, we have gathered a few baby "must haves" so that we are prepared for a little one. One evening this weekend, we put together a crib and acquired many essentials from friends. We can't wait to welcome a child into our home!

We are enjoying Labor Day weekend with family and friends in Austin! We love our people!

We recently celebrated our 11th anniversary with a lovely evening grilling, hanging out beside the pool, and reminiscing about the last 11 years of marriage! Here's to many, many more!

Since we moved to the new house, we have loved having visits from lots of family! We celebrated Matt's birthday with his parents, brother, and plenty of cake last weekend. Then we threw a pool party/baby shower for Ashley's cousins. Lots of family, fun, and sun! More pictures in the Family, Fun, and Sun photo album!

There are so many wonderful things I could say about Matt, but I will try to keep it short! Matt is a deeply intellectual, easy-going, analytical thinker who enjoys traveling, teaching, and spending time with our friends and family. He is constantly learning new things, whether that involves researching financial investments, scuba diving, or how a specific kind of jet engine works. He is kind and generous, which I see every day by how he treats me, how he cares for his patients, and how passionate he is in providing medical care in underserved places like Kenya and Ethiopia. Matt has many interests, which range from hobbies to major career choices. As a physician, he has a passion for medicine that extends beyond his own practice and both drives him to teach other doctors and to continue his work on medical missions around the world. Matt plays the guitar and appreciates a broad range of music. He also stays very physically active and enjoys golfing, biking, hiking, and working out. Matt loves his family immensely, playing for hours with our nephew, catching up with his brothers any chance he gets, and checking in on our families to make sure they are doing okay. He has always been patient, thoughtful, and loving to me and adores our sweet, spoiled dachshund, Macy, boundlessly. If his devotion to our nephew and Macy is any indication, I know Matt will be an amazing, invested, joyful, and excited parent to our child.

I affectionately refer to Ashley as my fiery, red-headed Texan. She is a strong, intelligent, independent woman who is passionately loyal to her friends and family. Even a global pandemic could not constrain her desire to stay connected with her friends, as she has become an avid "Zoomer" while she eagerly awaits the time that we can all gather again in person. Once we can travel again, you are most likely to find Ashley on a beach in a tropical location with her friends or family close by. We are both excited to have a new traveler join us for future adventures! Do not worry, Ashley is very health conscious and always packs extra sunscreen and hats. Ashley loves to garden, cook, practice hot yoga, and spend time catching up with friends. She has a passion for caring for the elderly as a Speech Pathologist and enjoys advocating for human rights along our southern border. She and her sister are both active in assisting migrants seeking refuge in our state. I have spent the last 12 years watching Ashley grow into the amazing woman she is today. We have known since we married 10 years ago that we would be seeking adoption. We both know that parenting is not an easy task but watching her persevere through 10 years of my medical training has proven to me that she is more than capable of being a loving, caring, supportive, and present parent to our future child(ren).

Macy is a playful long-hair dachshund, and we absolutely adore, dote on, and delight in her. She is 9 years old and is a DADDY'S girl! If Matt is home, Macy will always be found near him. Macy has a sweet personality and loves to "explore" in the yard. She loves snuggling in one of her many beds throughout the house if a warm lap or sunny spot is not available. She has been endless company to us both, but especially for Ashley when Matt was completing medical school, residency, and fellowship. Macy is a very big part of our family and we know our happy, playful, snuggly girl will one day be fiercely loyal to our child.

Our house is in a terrific neighborhood and city! We love this location, as the neighborhood is great for taking walks, often up to our local coffee shop, biking on nearby trails, and visiting with friends. Our home has plenty of room to grow our family and a yard in which our children and Macy can play! We especially love our proximity to many amazing things here, including restaurants, parks, and museums that we cannot wait to experience as a family. Here, we feel like our child will receive all of the amenities of a big city but with more of a small-town feel. We are excited for our children to join us in making memories with their playmates and our friends!