How do we convey in a letter everything about us, our lives, who we are as people and who we will be as parents. Let's start at the beginning for each of us.

[His name] is the youngest of 13 children. He was in the army, he was stationed in Berlin, Germany. He got to live a part of history as he was there when the wall came down. He followed his lifelong dream of living in Alaska, only moving back to his home state when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. His name lived with her and took care of her until she was cancer free. He purchased a small hobby farm where he lived when he met [Her name].

[Her name] is the oldest of 3 children. She has worked at the same company for 23 years. She has held many leadership positions in the company. She was married and got divorced, starting her life over. That is when she met [His name].

We have been married almost 18 years. It was love at first sight for both of us. When we met for the first time, we both knew that we were meant to be together. This was even more evident the first time we went driving around where we grew up. We are 5 years apart in age and never knew each other as children even though we lived less than 10 miles apart. We were driving and talking about who lived in this house and who lives in that house. As we passed a farm with a long driveway, [His name] said, “I don’t know who lives there but I remember this little girl that would get off the bus there occasionally I always worried about her walking up that driveway by herself. I looked at him and said no there wasn’t, that it is my grandparents’ house and there were no children living there at that time. As we drove and talked, I realized he was talking about me. When I was in 2nd grade my mom went back to school and I rode the bus to my grandparents on Tuesdays for a year. Even before we knew each other he was looking out for me.

We both wanted children right away, we had one miscarriage early in our marriage. After 5 years of trying and not getting pregnant again we started fertility treatment. We did 2 rounds of IUI that did not take. Due to money restraints and our age, we let go of the idea of having children. Instead, we focused our parental attention on our nieces and nephews.

We love all the holidays and tend to go over the top sometimes. The house is decorated for every holiday. One tradition we started when we got married was cutting down our own Christmas tree. We love it so much, even when things don’t go right like the time, we didn't tie it down tight, and it bounced out of the back of the truck. Or my favorite time, we were sitting on the couch and heard the high-pitched squeaking coming from the tree, and then we were dive bombed by a bat that had been hibernating in the tree and woke up when it got warm. We host Easter at our house, we play games, have an egg hunt, make a huge meal and enjoy time with our family.

I have 3 nieces on my side whose mother left them when they were young. We do a lot with them and try to make sure they have positive role models. We host girl’s weekends; [His name] is there but stays mostly out of sight. We did a Halloween themed weekend, a Harry Poter weekend and are planning a Disney Princess weekend per their request.

[His name] has more nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews and are just starting to have great great nieces and nephews. With the family being so large it is hard to get them all together. They have 2 big family functions a year. The Christmas party is a day of laughing, storytelling and food! It's a huge potluck. Everyone brings a few dishes and oh my goodness for sweets. Instead of a gift exchange we do a raffle. Everyone brings a gift basket or two or three and then we buy tickets and put the tickets in the drawing for whichever gift basket you would like to win. All the money we make from the raffle goes to pay for family camping. We rent a group camp at a state park for 5 days. Every sibling takes a meal, we are doing the Saturday night meal this year with 2 of the nieces. Our theme is Harry Potter, we are going to decorate the dining hall and make food from the movies. Plus, a Honeydukes sweet cart, with all kinds of candies, and treats.

About 2 years ago the company I work for changed its coverage of fertility treatments and the money was no longer a concern. We started down the path to children again. I had a bunch of testing and was told I didn't have any eggs. The doctor was great and talked to us about other options like fostering, adoption, egg donation, and embryo adoption. She was, however, very concerned with my weight and the number of medications I took for high blood pressure. As you can see from our pictures, we both have weight issues. When the company I work for changed its fertility coverage it also changed its coverage for weight loss surgery. We both had gastric bypasses and have lost a combined weight of over 300 pounds. It has changed our lives, and neither of us takes any medications for high blood pressure or any other health issues.

We got licensed as foster parents and started looking into adoption. We are older than most people looking to become parents. We have been told no by multiple adoption agencies and doctors because of our age. We really were starting to lose faith that we were ever going to have children and then we got our first foster child. She was 10 months and had been neglected. It took about two seconds for her to steal our hearts. Her mother had lost rights, and we really hoped we would get to keep her permanently, but her grandparents came forward to take custody. It almost killed us to lose her. It did confirm that fact that we need to have children in our lives. We currently have another foster child; she is 2 1/2. She is so much fun to work with and to teach and guide. She is behind in her speech. Every day we work on pronunciation and letter sounds and read a book every night. She has come a long way while she has been with us and hopefully will continue to grow and develop when she gets to go back to mom.

After almost 18 years together and trying to have children for 15 years, we are so excited to have gotten to this point. We cannot wait to have children of our own, having littles around makes us better people. We can wait to guide and model them into wonderful people.