Sky and Jen

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mother,

We want you to know that we love you (if Expectant Father is reading this, we love you, too!). We understand that this is a difficult decision you are making and we admire and respect you for it. Making this decision takes a type of courage that few possess and because of that, we think of you as a hero. We cannot truly understand all of the intense emotions you are experiencing, but we can promise you that your baby will be so, so loved.

Our wish is that visiting our profile will give you a glimpse into our life and the life we hope to provide for your child. We want you to know who we are, what is important to us, and about the loving and supportive home we will provide to your child.

We have been married for 10 years and we want to have a large family. Jen and her brother are adopted, so adoption has always been an option for us even before we found out we had fertility issues.  We tried for three years and went through many doctors, lots of surgeries and hospital stays, special diets, and more supplements than we can count. We were about to submit our adoption paperwork when we found out Jen was pregnant with our oldest son, Jefferson. Then, when Jefferson was two, Jen had a miscarriage. A year later, we had our youngest son, Harrison. Now we want to grow our family again. Our desire to be parents is something we feel deep in our souls. It’s so much a part of who we are, who we were created to be.

We met a little over 13 years ago through a mutual friend and got married on the third anniversary of the day we met. We live in a cul-de-sac in a beautiful white house with a black door and white pillars on our front porch. The streets are peppered with trees of every kind that turn the most beautiful shades of red and orange in the fall and we have a large backyard that’s perfect for playing catch in the spring, picking pears in the summer, or having snowball fights in the winter.

Our days as a family are spent dancing, building forts, playing, and learning together. We love trips to the theater, art galleries, museums, zoos, aquariums, and football games. At home, Jen plays different musical instruments and Sky likes to sing. Sky’s family has season tickets to our college football games, so football season is an exciting time of year for us. We also enjoy traveling. We take a few vacations a year; a few small ones nearby and sometimes a bigger trip further away. Sometimes we stay at hotels or in homes of friends or family, and sometimes we go camping. We’ve loved experiencing different places with each other and we were excited to finally get to share them with our kids.

We firmly believe that God has led us to this place, to be here now, in this moment, with you. We feel very lucky and blessed and we know that the child that finds their way into our lives will have every opportunity to thrive in a loving and supportive environment.

Thank you for considering us and we pray that you find peace with whatever path you take.

Love,
Sky & Jen

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Adoption in Our Lives

Jen: I grew up in a small city, small enough to know a lot of people but big enough to always make new friends. My parents weren’t able to conceive so they adopted my brother. Then, four years later, they decided they wanted a little girl, so they adopted me. My parents did everything they could to encourage our imaginations. The best way I can describe it is to have you picture a “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip. That was us!

We get together with our families as often as we can and when we travel, we try to visit the many aunts, uncles, and cousins we have across the country. We haven’t met all of Jen’s siblings yet, but we’re looking forward to it.

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About Jen, by Sky

Jen is tender, kind-hearted, fiercely loyal, and the most genuine person I have ever met. She displays a deep beauty that is rare in our broken world and she frequently goes out of her way to comfort both friends and strangers. My wife sees the world as it could be, not as it currently is, consistently placing others ahead of herself in order to right an injustice. It is her amazing trait to order extra food when we eat at a restaurant so that she can provide a meal to someone less fortunate than us. Then, it goes beyond just providing a meal. She gives her time, her ears, and her heart as she invests time in talking with these souls, offering herself as a friend to someone who might otherwise be friendless.

For her friends and family, Jen is a model of passion and truly unconditional love. She wears her heart on her sleeve and gives everything for those she loves, and she loves all who are closest to her.

As my wife, she is many things: friend, confidant, and life partner. The most influential role is as a soapstone, she sharpens me into the man that God desires me to be. Jen challenges me in ways that others do not and focuses my mind to strive toward the truly important things in life: faith, family, and friends.

Jen is a fantastic mother. Her dedication to our sons’ well-being and development is remarkable. Jen is loving, playful, and incredibly thoughtful of the boys’ needs. She researches and talks to other parents to come up with a plan that is best for our sons and our family well before it needs to be implemented. It is heart-warming and life-giving to watch her and the boys dance, laugh, play, and be silly together. Add our dog, Mya, into the mix and it’s the happiest sight I can imagine.

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About Sky, by Jen

When I first met Sky, I thought he was cute but I had no idea that in less than two weeks he would steal my heart. On our second date, we went to a football party at a friend’s house. The food the host provided was sauerkraut and brats, and I hate sauerkraut. Sky asked if he could take me somewhere to get a cheeseburger. I was shocked. This guy I just met offered to leave his best friend’s party while the game was on to take me somewhere to get a cheeseburger just because I was a picky eater. Who does that?! No guy I had ever met!

He’s wonderfully weird and his smile is the happiest thing I think I’ve ever seen, second only to my boys’ smiles. He’s also a very hard worker and always does his best to provide for our family. Sky has really opened up my world and given me a life I only dreamed of. He’s introduced me to new foods, new destinations, and new experiences. He’s been supportive of me pursuing my passions and creativity. I am living a life with him I never thought possible.

My favorite thing about Sky is how great he is with children. He always gets down on their level and plays with them, whatever game they want to play: ball, tag, hide and seek, peek-a-boo… he’s up for anything. Any time we’re around kids they flock to him. He loves them and they know it. Seeing him with children made me excited for our future children. Now that we have our own kids, he is such a wonderful father. Watching them together or listening to them talk to each other over the baby monitor makes my heart sing. I always knew he was going to be a good father. Seeing him now with Jefferson and Harrison makes me believe that more children will turn him into an even greater father.

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Jefferson & Harrison, Our Sons

Jefferson is five years old. He is incredibly precocious and friendly with everyone. We don’t think he’s ever met someone he didn’t want to sit and talk with. He’s a bit of a snuggle bug and quite the mama hen. If anyone is crying or needs help, he is the first one by their side offering a hug or asking what he can do. When we ask him if he would like more siblings he always says he wants 11 brothers and 11 sisters.

Harrison is 18 months old. He gets so excited over the smallest things, it’s infectious. He is a bit on the dramatic side and it’s all we can do to keep from cracking up. He was born blind in one eye but you’d never know if we hadn’t told you. He is such a little daredevil and even at this age, we’re pretty sure he’s going to love soccer.

Jen: Being a mom was something I’ve always wanted. I imagined it would be hard but wonderful. I was right, it is hard. But it’s far more wonderful than I ever thought it could be. I’ve heard so many parents say they wish their child would stay small or stop growing. Not me! Watching the boys’ personalities develop and watching them learn new things makes me feel so much joy and pride. I can only imagine what it will be like when we have more children.

Sky: Fatherhood has changed my life so much for the better. Before Jefferson was born I was almost always too focused on the future, planning for things that may or may not happen. As I write this I smile at thoughts of Jefferson smiling, laughing, playing, being silly, and learning new things every day. His sense of wonder is a precious gift that reminds me of what is most important and helps me focus on the here and now. Being a father is teaching me to be to view our world with more kindness, love, and thoughtfulness.

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Lifestyle

There’s always something to do. We enjoy playing with our dog, Mya, and taking her for family walks. She and our boys are best buddies and they love to snuggle and they stand together at the front door and look out over the neighborhood. We dance together, play games, build forts, and play with blocks together. We love to travel to new places and try new foods. We attend the theater several times a year for concerts, ballets, musicals, plays, and everything in between. We enjoy going to art galleries and museums, zoos, and aquariums. Jen plays several instruments and Sky has a beautiful voice, although Jefferson doesn’t always agree. Sky’s family has season tickets to our college football games, so football season is an exciting time of year for us. While Jen is the dancer, Sky has started learning some ballroom and we’ve been able to go dancing together. It’s been fun watching him learn and get better and better at leading Jen around the floor.

We cook most of our meals from scratch. We believe in eating fresh and natural foods as much as possible. We grow our own herbs and a large garden is in the works. Because of our love of cooking fresh foods, we’ve had the opportunity to try making different kinds of food at home. Our favorites are Indian, Asian, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern foods (not that we don’t enjoy a good bacon cheeseburger, because we sure do!).

We love attending our church. It’s big, but it’s the kind of place where anyone can walk in and feel welcomed. As we like to say, we have more tattoos than people. We have several friends there and they’ve been a great source of love, support, and wisdom. One of our dearest friends works with the Children’s Ministry where the boys learn about how much God loves them for who they are, not for who they should be.

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Education

We decided to homeschool long before Covid and started a wonderful curriculum last year when Jefferson was four. We study from home four days a week learning math, Latin, science, phonics, English, history, geography, music, art, and the Bible. On Fridays, we meet as a community with others who use the same curriculum and the kids get to have a classroom experience with an instructor and classmates. Jefferson loves science experiments and he enjoys history the most. One of Jen’s favorite things about this curriculum is that it uses music to help teach the lessons. Another favorite thing about homeschooling is that we get to see the lightbulb moments our kids have. To see when they make a connection between something we’re studying in history and something we’re studying in geography and how excited they get is something we will never get tired of. The flexibility it offers our family has been an amazing blessing as well. We’ve noticed things like how Jefferson learns better when he can move, so we tend to do a lot of our schoolwork during playtime or when we’re out for a walk.

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Interests & Hobbies

Jen: I was very involved in extra-curricular activities growing up. I was in dance, band, color guard, plays and musicals, show choir, one acts, speech and debate, Thespians, mock trial, volleyball, track, and a peer-education group where I had the opportunity to teach my peers about how to recognize and prevent relationship abuse and sexual assault.

During college, I studied art with an emphasis in graphic design. I was in the marching band with the flag corps and we traveled all over performing in some of the best stadiums in the country. A friend introduced me to Swing dancing, which led me to Ballroom dancing. I then joined our college’s Ballroom dance company where I was a principal dancer for my senior year.

In my free time, I like to design, decorate, crochet (I crochet baby hats for the Labor & Delivery department at the hospital where I had Jefferson and Harrison), paint, make music, read, juggle, play with makeup, and teach others how to dance, coach speech and debate, and how to put on makeup. The summer before I got pregnant, I got back into acting at our community theater where I was cast as Tumnus in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” I also ended up helping with costumes, hair, and makeup. I had a blast and met so many new people. Since having Jefferson and Harrison, I put my creativity to work making games and toys for them to play with. I made a ribbon pull box and a bigger ribbon box that we call the fortress. I also made an airplane out of cardboard boxes for them to sit in and “fly.” I’ve crocheted hats and stuffed toys, too.

Sky: All through school I was always a good student and when not in class I participated in theater, student council, academic quiz bowls, and I especially excelled in choir. Singing comes naturally to me and I was routinely selected to honor choirs across the state. In college, I was a founding member of a men’s acappella group that is now recognized nationwide. These days my vocal talent is used for karaoke with my wife and singing silly songs with our sons (Baby Shark! Doo, doo, doo)!

I like sports and spent a sizeable amount of time playing baseball, football, and running track. In college, I played rugby, flag football, and was introduced to rowing. My competitive sporting days are over, but I still like to row. I also enjoy long walks with my family.

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Home & Neighborhood

When we started looking for a house, we decided we wanted something that we could grow into and live in for a long time. Our house is almost 40 years old and has a lot of character. There are two fireplaces, one in the dining room and one in the living room. They are both a great place to rest and warm up after playing in the snow. It’s a large home with a huge backyard, so there’s lots of space to grow our family.

Our living room is where we spend most of our time. We have a play area set up in there but the boys mostly use that space to build forts. It’s where Sky and Jen like to relax at the end of the day, where Jen has her piano, and where Mya likes to play with most of her toys.

We spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and baking. We also make most of the boys’ food from scratch. We have a spacious kitchen that we just remodeled. It was very exciting for us to work with a designer who came up with brilliant ways of making space for everything children (aka future teenagers) will need.

We enjoyed getting the nursery ready for Harrison, but he’s getting big enough to move to a “big boy” room, so now we’ll get to get the nursery ready again for our next child. Since Sky is a pilot and Jen loves animals so much, it’s a mixed theme of jungle animals and airplanes. The walls are light grey, but the ceiling and the very top nine inches of the walls are sky blue and there’s white trim separating the two colors. Everything in the room is bright blue, orange, green, grey, or white. We have baskets filled with books we had when we were young to share with our children. Jen’s favorite is a book called “Socks for Supper,” and Sky loves to read “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”. Harrison’s favorite is “Hippos Go Berserk!” Jefferson is starting to read a little himself and we’ve been reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” together.

There are several families in the neighborhood with a great variety of ages and stages in life. There’s a lovely park just down the street and we’ve made so many friends while out on our walks. One of our backyard neighbors has chickens and we live near a creek, so we always have wildlife wandering about. We’ve seen foxes, owls, turkeys, and even deer wander through our yard or down by the creek.

Our community has a lot to offer a family. There are many things to see and do. We have several museums, galleries, and theaters. There’s a fantastic children’s zoo and a larger zoo and aquarium a short drive away. There are dance studios, club sports, music schools, golf courses, batting cages, trampoline parks, bike paths, and farmers markets. There are many lakes and state parks nearby, so we can go hiking, camping, fishing, and horseback riding.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

When it comes to diversity, we grew up having almost no experiences or exposure outside of our mostly white communities and families (Sky is part Lebanese, so he has had some exposure to Middle Eastern culture). We knew we were ignorant and we didn’t want our kids to be, so we have been purposeful over the past decade to educate ourselves (and our kids) about different races, cultures, and religions. Our church, the one with more tattoos than people, is ethnically diverse. The church is purposeful in choosing leadership team members with different backgrounds, ethnicities, and genders because we want our church to truly represent and understand our community. We can’t serve our community if we don’t understand them. We’re also fortunate that our city has a group for people who have adopted children of different ethnicities than them. We have friends who have adopted who are part of the group and they have found support and friendship within that community.

Jen’s best friend is part Mexican. She works at a non-profit that serves low-income families in our city. They have afterschool programs for kids of all ages and programs for adults, too. She’s also on the Asian Center Board of Directors. Being friends with her and helping her with all the different events has opened our world up to so many different cultures and issues never on our radar before. When Covid is a bit better, we’re planning on Jefferson joining the afterschool programs. Harrison will join when he’s older and it will be a great place for your baby to meet lifelong friends and mentors who look like them.

At home, we do our best to expose our kids to as many different cultures, religions, and issues as possible. The kids have over 1,000 books. We have them sorted by subject and we have a whole section on History and another on diversity, respect, and love. About half of the history books are about women and people of color. We’ve been teaching Jefferson more about racism lately but we do it gently. He gets very upset when people aren’t kind and fair to each other. It’s a hard topic and it makes him sad, but we know it’s important so we’ll keep having that conversation. We cook and order out a lot of different foods. Our family favorite is Middle Eastern. Our homeschool curriculum connects History and Geography as much as it can (meaning if we’re learning about the Muslim Empire in History one week, we’re also learning about the geography of the Muslim Empire) so we try to plan a meal that week to go along with our lesson.

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Our Families

We both have large families. Sky has two sisters, who are both older and married. One sister lives in a nearby town with her family. She is married and has a son and daughter. Our niece just finished grad school and our nephew is in his senior year of college. They live on a farm and have lots of pets, a huge garden, and a small apple and pear grove. Sky’s oldest sister is married and lives six hours away in the same town as his mother. They run a small manufacturing company together. Sky’s mother (the boys call her “Nana”) has a large home with the biggest backyard you’ve ever seen. It’s perfect for a game of baseball or touch football. Nana is very involved with her grandchildren and makes several trips a year to this side of the state to visit and attend their various activities. She can’t wait for more grandkids to love on. Sky’s father was also a pilot and his favorite thing to do as a child was to spend time together at the airport working on his dad’s plane and flying with him. He would memorize airplane operating manuals so he could talk about the airplane and how it worked. In the summer, they would spend hours flying together, just the two of them, soaring above the world in their own little club.

Jen’s adopted parents both have large families. Her father is the oldest of five brothers and her mother is the youngest of three sisters and they have one younger brother. Each of them is married and has one to five children each. We all get together for holidays, sometimes both sides of the family at once. Now that most of her cousins have grown up and had children of their own, we have fifty to sixty people at family gatherings! Jen’s adopted brother lives just 10 minutes away. He has four children, ages 12 through 24. They have a few pets and a small swimming pool. Jen’s nieces and nephews are always playing games together and they are very close to one another. Her adopted parents (“Bapa” and “JuJu”) live about an hour and a half away. Her parents are also very involved with their grandchildren. They always have games or activities, like baking cookies, for the kids.

Jen’s birth mother lives in Florida with her husband. Her birth grandmother lives there, as well. Jen has a half-brother and step-brother (and his family) in New Mexico and a step-sister in Idaho. Her birth father also lives in Florida. Through him, she has a half-brother (and his family) about four hours away and two half-sisters, one in Florida and one in Ontario. Her favorite birth family members are her two uncles. One lives just outside of Boston and the other lives in Colorado.

We get together with our families as often as we can and when we travel, we try to visit the many aunts, uncles, and cousins we have across the country. We haven’t met all of Jen’s siblings yet, but we’re looking forward to it.

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Family Traditions

Christmas is our favorite time of year. It has always been Sky’s favorite holiday and he has fond memories of decorating the Christmas tree and house with his family. His dad’s family is Lebanese and his grandmother and mother would cook a huge meal of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, and all manner of Mediterranean delights.  We continue the Christmas tradition of decorating the entire house (we have three Christmas trees!) and spend days baking and cooking to get ready for our annual holiday party. We invite everyone we know! The adults talk and play games while the children run around and eat all the Christmas candies and chocolates we’ve made. Mya usually finds someone who can’t resist her adorable brown eyes and snags a treat or a belly rub here and there. We love having people in our home and sharing meals together. We have get-togethers all year round for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, sporting events, and sometimes for no reason at all. The week before Christmas we also bake plates of goodies to take around to all our neighbors. It’s been a great tradition and a wonderful way to meet new friends.

Halloween is probably our second favorite holiday. Jen always makes costumes for the whole family. Last year we went as the Tiger Family from Daniel Tiger. The year before that we were The Fox and the Hounds. One year Sky was “King of the North,” Jen was “Mother of Dragons,” and we dressed Jefferson and Mya up as dragons. This year we went as Mickey and the Roadster Racers.

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What We Will Share

Jen’s adopted parents always told her that she was a gift from God and that her birth mother loved her. Your child will know about you, that you are brave, and that you are fierce.  They will know where they come from and they will know about your sacrifice of love that brought them into our home. They will know that they are cause for joy and that you are the reason for that joy. We are followers of Christ and we are incredibly excited to love, cherish, lead, and guide a child and celebrate them for who they are.

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Our Promise to You

We will always celebrate your baby and all that they are, who they are, what they do, and who they want to be. We believe in giving our kids the freedom to explore themselves, their interests, and what they want out of life. For your baby, that means exploring their culture and where they come from. There is room for you, too. You will always be a part of our family.