Jenn & Mark

Little by little we are putting together the baby nursery. It's been fun so far. We love to read so we are especially excited about our "rocking corner". It's next to the bookshelf, and we are slowing creating a library. We have a local independent (and amazing!) bookstore in our town. They have a great kids section so when we visit, we try to purchase a book for the nursery. We cannot wait to share books and read to our little one in the future! 

The past few weeks of 2021 have definitely not been easy between the pandemic and everything that has happened in Washington, D.C. So we wanted to take this weekend and reinvigorate ourselves for a new week! We used to run a lot more often (doing charity 5ks and running for fun), but somewhere along the way we stopped - mostly because we got busy with work, and my body was not "feelin' it" during our fertility treatments. We canceled our gym membership last March due to the pandemic so have been doing at-home workouts and getting outside when we can ever since. We both did a 20-min run via the Peloton app - Mark ran to classic rock while I ran to Beyoncé. It was fun and a great way to get back into running. First run of 2021 - done and dusted!

2020 was certainly a challenging year. We are looking forward to a brighter 2021 for everyone! We are staying positive and continuing to have hope!

Every year, we go to the beach with Mark's family - mother, father, brother and our nephews. We have dinner together every night - we each take turns cooking. It's fun to end the day with a good dinner and lots of laughs. We cannot wait until we're able to take our child with us and show them all of our favorite places and fun things to do. And we can't wait to find out what their interests at the beach are. (Our nephews are too old to build sandcastles so we're looking forward to being able to do this again!) We also have Christmas day dinner (or brunch) at our house every year. Jenn's dad comes down and spends Christmas week with us. Mark's parents join us along with Mark's brother. We are excited for the time when we can have our child be a part of such a great day and start new traditions during the holidays. We are really looking forward to baking cookies with our child and watching holiday movies - and most importantly, showing them that Christmas isn't just about presents. It's about family and celebrating the season. We just started a new tradition of going on a hike on New Year's so that will also be a fun way to start the year - on a family hike. And we can't wait to introduce baseball to our child. Opening Day will be more fun. (Of course, if they are interested in another sport or none at all, that's OK! We will start our own little traditions.) We also think it would be fun to start a family movie night and also a fun family food night - like Pizza Fridays!

We really enjoy hiking and being outdoors. We have gone camping and hiked several trails in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee (Great Smoky Mountains). In December 2018, we went to Arizona. We spent several days hiking in Sedona and visited the Grand Canyon. (We really want to visit more of the National Parks. The next places we'd love to see are Zion National Park and Arches National Park in Utah.) We also enjoy going to the beach - boating, kayaking, and walking. We went to Chatham in Cape Cod for our anniversary in September 2017 and went sailing with a guide and saw harbor seals. (After we spent a few days at the beach, we drove to Boston to see our favorite baseball teams play two games. We had a blast just walking around the city and taking in all the sights and places to see.) Every year, we take a family trip to the beach with Mark's family. Back in December 2016, we went on a larger sailing trip with a group of friends. We sailed around the British Virgin Islands for a week. It was beyond amazing. We snorkeled for the first time - it was so fun to see all of the different kinds of fish and aquatic plant life. The sailing views were breathtaking. We enjoyed spending time with our friends, swimming, reading and taking some time to just relax. When we can, we enjoy visiting NYC and Boston. They are two of our favorite cities. Someday, we hope to be able to explore other cities around the country. We've traveled outside the US twice - Dominican Republic and Mexico. We really enjoy learning about other cultures and trying new foods. We hope to be able to travel to Europe (England, France, Germany, and Italy) and other places in the future. We have a very big bucket list! When we are at home, we enjoy cooking and trying new recipes on the weekends. We also try to get outside as much as possible - whether it's doing yardwork, gardening, walking around our neighborhood, or just sitting on the porch enjoying the day (or evening). We also listen to music after dinner - one of our favorite artists is Amos Lee. So sometimes instead of watching something silly on TV or watching our favorite baseball team lose, we'll turn on one of his albums and be content.

Deep down, we always knew we wanted a family. We've been together so long that we always said, "When the time is right, it will happen." We just didn't really know how that would happen or the journey that we would be taking. We tried to start our family but endured fertility obstacles along the way. After a year or so of fertility treatments, the roller coaster of emotions that comes along with failed procedures, we decided that however parenthood would come to us, it would be a miracle. And that is how we feel about adoption. We know this is the right choice for us. We firmly believe that there is a higher reason we were led down this path, and to us, that is a true blessing. This is an exciting time for us, and we could not imagine it happening any other way.