Buddy and Heather

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mom,

We were introduced by mutual friends at a Halloween party when Buddy was in town on a work trip. We had an instant connection and ended up dancing and talking the entire evening and having an amazing time. Buddy returned home to Oregon the next day, but we stayed in contact and after dating long-distance for a year, we knew we wanted to be together, so Heather moved from Los Angeles to Oregon, plus it is also a better place to raise a family. We were engaged two years later and got married in September of 2017. It was important to us that our families could be at our wedding, so we got married in a small ceremony in Buddy’s parents’ backyard in California. Now September is our favorite month because it’s both our birthdays and our wedding anniversary!

I, Heather, grew up with two older brothers and had a picturesque childhood. I always knew my brother Matt was adopted because my parents talked openly with us about it. Adoption was just another way to grow a family. My brothers did every sport they could while I enjoyed dance, tennis, and swimming lessons. We had a pool in our backyard, so we were always swimming. I have lots of fond memories growing up, like on Monday nights my mom would let us each pick a friend to have over for dinner and she often fed my brothers’ entire football team. My hair was always green from the chlorine in the pool…I didn’t care because I loved swimming. Sometimes my mom would take us out of school for the day occasionally to get ice cream, just for fun. My dad was fun and would take us to fly kites and on picnics. We even had “Daddy/daughter’ dates and he would take me to the local fun zone to ride the Ferris wheel, haunted house and arcade. I long to be a mom and can’t wait to make special memories with your child.

I, Buddy, also have a wonderful childhood to look back on. My parents loved and cared for my sister and I deeply. They were at every one of our soccer and baseball games. They always made sure we had dinner together as a family at least six nights a week with home-cooked meals. Every summer my dad would take my sister and I on a 2-3 week camping trip across the western United States. We would visit all of the National Parks and hike to beautiful locations. These are the kind of memorials I can’t wait to share with your child. We were always close to my mother’s family. We spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house swimming in their pool on the weekends and having family dinners with the entire family once a month. If my parents went out of town, we often stayed with my grandparents, and it was always a treat. My grandmother would always make us the most elaborate costumes for Halloween, and I still hold those memories as some of my favorites from childhood. I am looking forward to family camping trips, river rafting in the summers, & skiing trips in the winters. I have always wanted to be a dad and share my love and passions with your child.

We want to thank you and tell you how grateful we are that you are reading our letter. We know this is one of the most important decisions you will make, and we don’t take that for granted. We truly believe that the most important thing that you can give a child is love and we will always strive to give your child all our love. We value trust, communication, kindness, and compassion and will always uphold these values in our home to create a healthy and safe place for them to learn and grow. We will provide your child with the happiest life imaginable and always encourage them to follow their dreams.

We are looking forward to meeting you soon and we are so happy you found us!

Love,
Buddy and Heather

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

Our hearts’ desire is to be parents and adoption is something we talked about even before we were married. Heather’s oldest brother is adopted, and we decided early on that we would pursue adoption whether we had biological children or not. We’ve been married for a while now and have not been blessed to have a biological child so it might just be that adoption was always our path to becoming parents. Either way, we can’t wait to see what the future holds for us, and we hope it is a future with your child.

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About Heather, by Buddy

Heather is funny, happy, artistic, and easily connects with others and I love her sense of humor and her adventurous spirit. She has always loved children & began babysitting and volunteering in her church’s nursery at a young age. Her dad even helped her make babysitting business cards. Heather knows how to connect and relate to kids in a way that is very calming, and she understands their need for play and expressing their own inner creativity, which is something Heather herself is very accomplished at. Her deep love of children has always been a part of who she is and her desire to become a mother is her greatest dream. She can’t wait to welcome your child into our home and is designing the nursery of her dreams to welcome your baby.

Heather’s Top 10

1. Buddy, enough said.
2. Our dogs, Minnie and Lily
3. Cooking. We started cooking a lot more at home during the pandemic, and never stopped! We love food and having healthy, delicious meals has become a huge part of our lives.
4. Traveling
5. Music. I love making playlists for myself and the people I love. I made the playlist for our wedding which Buddy and I both still listen to.
6. Gardening and indoor plants. I grow vegetables for salads every spring and summer.
7. Design: Clothing, art, home design, all of it!
8. Movie nights at home
9. Sunshine
10. Pickles and cheese, it’s a tie!

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About Buddy, by Heather

Buddy is the most fitting nickname for my husband. His birth name is Aaron, but the story goes that when he was just days old, his Dad started to call him his little “Buddy” and it stuck. When you meet Buddy you truly will believe there is a reason for that. Buddy is the friendliest person you could hope to meet. He is the guy who will offer to pick you up from the airport or volunteer himself to help you with your home project. Buddy is thoughtful and giving and has a big heart. When he does something, he always gives 100% and that’s why he will be a fantastic father. He has a big bright smile that radiates and a booming friendly voice you can hear down the block. Family is very important to Buddy. He is very close with his parents and his sister. They talk every day, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s amazing to witness the strong family bond between them. His love of the outdoors is immense, and I credit that to his father, who took him and his sister on camping trips across the United States every summer. Buddy now plans our road trips and camping adventures, and he can’t wait to share those adventures with your child.

Buddy’s Top 10

1. Family – Family first. I love my family; my wife Heather, my parents, and my sister. I speak to my parents almost daily and with my sister two to three times a week. I love being connected and sharing our lives’ many ups and downs.
2. Cooking with Heather – We cook six out of seven dinners a week at home. It’s something we do well together and enjoy immensely. We usually get to chit chat and reconnect after a day apart while making, then enjoying, our meal.
3. Staying in touch with – My friendships are very important to me. I like to stay in touch with the people that have made an impact on my life.
4. Playing with our pugs – Minnie and Lily are both little sweethearts!
5. Backcountry snowboarding – My top hobby, by far! It has allowed me to explore the mountains and wilderness in the winter, with the added bonus of snowboarding.
6. Hiking and Backpacking – I love backpacking. Heather calls my hikes “death marches” because I like to hike 20 miles in a day. Sleeping outside under the stars reminds me of how simple life can be.
7. Surfing – I started surfing in high school. For ten years, I would go every weekend. We live further from the ocean now but try to surf occasionally.
8. Pretending to know how to work on cars – I know a lot about how cars work, instead of following sports as a kid I read about muscle cars. Theoretically, I could build a hot rod if I wanted to, big emphasis on IF 🙂
9. Going on long bike rides – I started riding in a bike marathon in high school. I don’t generally ride that long anymore, now I like to cruise around with our pugs in a trailer.
10. 70’s Ford pick-up trucks – My first car was a 1975 Ford F100. I loved that truck so much and still have dreams that I am driving it.

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Lifestyle

We both work in the entertainment industry as Freelancers. This means between projects we have a fair amount of free time for fun. We cherish this free time and do our best to make the most out of it. When we have time off, we often go camping or a road trip (or both). When we were dating, road trips became an essential part of seeing each other. We both had dogs and couldn’t always fly between Oregon and California, so we drove A LOT. We drove to see each other and then once we lived together, we drove to visit our families. It is something that we found out we both really love and something that we will continue doing when your child arrives so they get to visit family and spend as much time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Traveling has been a big part of our relationship from day one. We have seen so many beautiful places in the United States as well as internationally. We spent our honeymoon in Jamaica with a group of close friends and visited the Bob Marley Museum. Then went on to Grenada (just the two of us) and stayed at a cool hotel where we befriended the owner and Buddy swam with him in the bay every morning. It was gorgeous and the people were so friendly. We once took a road trip to Canada to visit two pugs we fostered, and we also went on a weeklong trip to Iceland. We can’t wait to travel with your child and show them how beautiful and diverse our world is.

Heather is a freelance fashion stylist for advertising, which is a fun, creative job that she loves. In between her projects, she works on styling and staging homes. She has also spent years working as an aide at an elementary school on and off because she loves working with kids. For the first few years of your child’s life, Heather plans to be a stay-at-home mom and eventually ease back into her career when the time is right. Our plans are for Heather to enjoy as much time with your child until they go to school and then integrate back into a good career and family balance.

Buddy is a construction coordinator in the film/tv union that builds film and tv sets. He also works as a project manager for a company that builds sets for live events. Buddy is able to work from home a lot. Being freelance affords us a lot of freedom and will allow us to share equally in parenting. When Buddy is not on a project, he will be doing Dad duty. We are both excited to become parents and we want to be as involved with raising your child as we can.

If the break between our jobs is short, we enjoy taking long walks in our neighborhood with our dogs. There are so many parks in every direction, we often talk about how we can’t wait to take a child to explore and play in the parks nearby. In spring and autumn, we admire the beautiful trees as they start to bloom or lose their leaves. We talk about how fun it will be to raise a child in a place with changing seasons since we were both raised in warm sunny California where you didn’t see it much. We ride bikes to our friends’ houses in the summertime and we even bought a child seat attachment from our neighbors who know about our adoption journey and offered it to us for our future child.

One of our favorite things is cooking meals together and having friends over to our house for dinner. Good food is something that we love, and mealtime is a big bonding time for us. Growing up Buddy’s parents always made sure the family had dinner together at least six nights a week and we plan on family meals together with your child. We believe eating together as a family helps give children a sense of structure and stability which is very important.

Sometimes, if we are feeling tired from work or a bit lazy, we order tacos from our favorite taco spot nearby. Or maybe walk down to our favorite neighborhood pizza place for a yummy pie. Sharing our love of food and cooking with your child will make it that much more fulfilling and we are both looking forward to that. Other times, we just want to kick back and snuggle on the couch with the dogs and some popcorn. This quiet family time at home will be only that much more special with a new baby.

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Our Pups, Minnie & Lily

We adopted our two pugs, Minnie and Lily, through a pug rescue. We are both BIG animal lovers.

Minnie is quiet and more reserved but overall more athletic. We think Lily has had a few litters of puppies. She has a bit of a waddle when she walks, but she gets around just fine! They both really love snuggling and laying on the couch with us watching movies. They come with us whenever we can bring them along so they love road trips and camping too. We are trying to get them into swimming, but for now, they just wear life jackets and sit on our paddleboards in the water. Pugs are great with children and these two would definitely make great companions for a child someday.

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Home & Neighborhood

Our city is a great city for families. There are numerous parks, tons of bike trails, outdoor movies (kid-friendly of course), and concerts all summer long. We live near a school so there are often children playing outside, riding bikes and having fun. When we moved into our home Heather organized a block party, it was really fun for the families to meet and to get to know each other better. A close community is something that has always been important to us and we definitely feel like we have created that here. We are so excited to share it all with a child.

Our home is a 1920’s bungalow with lots of big windows which makes it light and bright and great for all of our plants. Heather absolutely loves plants and gardening which is a big reason we loved our home so much. Heather is super excited to show a child how to plant a garden in spring and watch it grow with them. Then they can harvest it together and eat the plants and cook with them. We have two big trees, one pine and one flowering Hawthorn that blooms beautiful (edible) white flowers every spring/summer. Minnie loves to snack on them. We hung a big hammock between the two big trees and we love to pile into it with the dogs and lounge or read. But truthfully, we got the extra-large hammock so we could someday share it with a child, that would be the best. We also live near a golf course with a walking trail that we often walk Minnie and Lily too. Sometimes we ride our bikes down to the golf course restaurant and have french fries and sit outside among the trees and relax and watch the golfers. There are lots of restaurants within walking distance from our home and we have a movie theater right across the street!

Heather’s design background and her passion for interior design have turned our house into a beautiful, warm, and welcoming home. When our friends visit, they tell us how much they love hanging out at our place because of how cozy and inviting it is. During the summers we sit out front on the porch swing, eating popsicles and chatting with the neighbors. Heather loves making homemade healthy fruit popsicles and the neighbors kids always come by asking for them. She can’t wait to make those popsicles for a child. In the winter we spend more time indoors snuggling with each other by the fireplace. Our house is old so it has a lot of character and a wood-burning fireplace which makes it super cozy in the cold months.

Heather is designing the nursery herself and it is inspired by our honeymoon in the Caribbean. We had an absolutely amazing experience. On a portion of the honeymoon in Jamaica, we rented a house and invited our close friends to join us. We absolutely loved the beaches, waterfalls, the crocodiles, and the people and vibe so much that she wanted to incorporate that feeling into the nursery.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

We both feel strongly that diversity is something to be celebrated. We have participated in several community marches and events and we donate regularly to the ACLU and SPLC. We also donate to support programs that help mothers of color and lift up minority communities. If your child is of a different race, we will do our best to show them a life that incorporates their heritage. We will learn and grow together as a family and educate ourselves as parents on how to be anti-racist and support equal rights for all. We hope that in these and in many other ways, we can be a good example for your child. We will be parents that are open-minded and unwaveringly supportive.

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Our Families & Friends

Our parents both live in California. Heather has two older brothers, Brandon and Matt. Buddy has an older sister, Renata, whom he is very close to and who lives in North Carolina with her husband, Alec, and their sons, Ronen and Ozzie. The phone calls and facetime chats are frequent and we often try to plan to be in California to visit our parents at the same time so we can see each other. They are excited for us to start a family as well so the boys will have cousins to play with.

In Oregon, we are lucky to have a group of close friends that all have children and can’t wait for us to have a family as well. We plan group trips with them; a cabin in the mountains or camping trips in the summer. In summer we ride bikes to each other’s houses for BBQs and backyard games. When it’s cold out, we love to host dinners at our homes and sit around the fireplace afterward and talk or play board games. We can’t wait for the kids to be able to play together and for them to form these close friendships as well. It will mean the world to us to expand our community and share these moments with a child.

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Family Traditions

A weekly tradition we have together is Pizza Fridays. We make deep-dish sourdough crust pizza at home. This will be so much fun to do with a child. Letting them pick out their favorite toppings for the pizza and putting them all on together. We think it’s important to have weekly traditions for your child to look forward to.

We celebrate both Christmas AND Hanukkah, which means even more holiday traditions and of course more presents! (Heather’s favorite) For Christmas every year we rent a potted Christmas tree. We love the idea that the tree will go on to live and grow long after we’ve enjoyed it for the holiday each year. We always have a fire in the fireplace on Christmas Eve and open one present each. On Christmas morning we open our stockings first and then our presents. With Heather’s family, we do a Secret Santa gift exchange for the adults and everyone buys gifts for the kids. We also have a tradition of ordering Chinese food for Christmas Day which is fun and delicious. For Hanukkah we facetime with Buddy’s parents every night for (8 nights) to light the candles and say the prayer. Each night of Hanukkah you open one present, after sunset. It is said, “When you can see three stars in the sky” you can begin. Heather always tries to cheat, but Buddy makes her point out three stars. We imagine a child pointing out those same stars and the joy of showing them these fun traditions and opening gifts with them.

Halloween is also a very important holiday to us because it’s the night we met. Every year we start thinking about our Halloween costumes early. We always do a couples costume & we usually have a Halloween party every year.  That is something we both did separately before we met so we wanted to continue it after we got married. It will be so much more fun for us to make our costumes into family costumes, we can’t wait to plan those ones! We go to a farm each year and pick out our pumpkins. The farm has a petting zoo, corn maze, games, caramel apples, and tons of yummy food. It will be so awesome to take a child there!

It feels really special to us that we have so many traditions already, and we want to add even more with your child!

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Our Relationship with You What We Will Share

We believe that it is important for a child to know where they come from to help them better understand who they are. We would love for your child to know you and be connected to you throughout their life. If you have traditions that you would like to pass on to your child, we would be honored to do so and to share as much about you with them as we can.

Heather’s brother Matt always knew he was adopted and that he had the option to find and meet his birth mother. He was happy to finally do this and to find out that he had several new brothers and sisters to meet as well. He now visits them regularly and they visit him too and he now has an even larger family. Heather’s connection to adoption through her brother helped her to realize how special open adoption truly is.

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Our Promise to You

We want you to know that you will always be a part of your child’s story. We plan to include you in their lives as much as you would like to be. We will always try our best and answer any questions they have for us as openly and honestly as possible. We want to show them how much they are loved and how special it is to be adopted. We are so thankful that you would consider offering us the privilege of raising your child as our own. Being able to become parents would mean the world to us and we promise to love your baby every moment of every day. We promise to love them unconditionally and to provide the most wonderful life for them we possibly can.