Kody and Dana

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From Us to You

When we imagine a child joining our family, we picture sharing the things we already enjoy with the addition of a lot of playtime. We envision baking and making a mess together, reading bedtime stories, snuggling cats and each other, traveling, having dance parties in the living room, and playing outdoors as much as possible in the sun or snow. We are at a point in our lives where we feel very prepared and excited to welcome a child to our family.

Our story began almost 7 years ago when we met at a concert in Las Vegas. A mutual friend of ours had a plan to introduce us and, though both of us are somewhat introverted, the plan worked! We’ve been married for over 4 years now. We consider ourselves to be a kind, easy-going and funny couple. We laugh a lot and can definitely make the best of any situation. We encourage and support each other completely and feel very grateful for the love we share. We’ve talked about starting a family since our early dating days and we are ready to share our lives and love with a child.

Our home will provide a loving, safe, and creative space for your child. We’ve spent the past 2 years remodeling our home to make it just how we want it. We have a fenced-in backyard with a nice new lawn and a space for a big sandbox (or maybe a small swimming pool!). We’ll be converting one of our guest rooms to a bedroom for your child.  Dana is a designer, so she already has a lot of décor ideas and a layout planned. We’d love to incorporate your style or something you’d like to share in your baby’s room so they’ll have a part of you in their space.

Music is a huge part of our lives; it’s been Kody’s career since he was a teenager!  Our home is often filled with the sounds of records spinning, Kody creating new music in his studio… or even the more annoying sounds of us singing made-up songs to our cats.  Each year, Kody has multiple opportunities to tour and play shows all over the world with his bands. We’re very close with the other band members and their families & we’ve traveled together all over Europe and Japan.  We hope to show your baby an appreciation for other cultures and other valuable lessons to be learned from traveling abroad.

We have so many traditions we can’t wait to share with your baby.  They will be so loved by our close, big family and large group of friends who we also consider family.  We value time spent with the people we love so we are always hosting or attending dinners, celebrations, barbeques, and holidays.  We can’t wait to see your child play with all of the other children at these gatherings and start creating life-long friendships of their own.

We have immense admiration and respect for you.  We won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but we do know that what you are doing is extremely selfless, strong, and brave.  Please know that open adoption is an option for us, but that decision is ultimately up to you.  Whatever you choose, we will ensure that your child knows how brave you are and that you put their needs ahead of yours.  They will know that they have been loved from the very beginning of their lives.  Thank you so much for considering us to be the adoptive parents of your child. Your courage will literally make our family’s dream come true.

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Why We're Choosing to Adopt

We have a very loving relationship and we’d like to share our love and guidance with another human being. Starting a family has been something we’ve both desired and talked about since our early dating days. Unfortunately, we were faced with fertility challenges. We discussed adoption regularly while we underwent testing with a fertility specialist. Ultimately, we couldn’t rationalize pursuing fertility treatments. We have close friends and family who have beautiful, loving families as a result of adoption and we decided that adoption would be our path to grow our family.

We feel very prepared to provide a stable, supportive, and loving home for your son or daughter.  We’ve longed to become parents and have never felt more ready to welcome a new family member and start making precious memories together.

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About Dana, by Kody

Dana is the greatest person I’ve ever known. She’s very considerate of others and is selflessly devoted to her friends. She’s not afraid to speak her mind or have tough conversations and that’s something her friends and I really appreciate about her. She has a witty sense of humor and we share a lot of laughs together. She’s close with her extended family and is great around her nieces and her cousin’s kids; you can tell they love her and look up to her. Dana is very close with her mom, who she makes a point to spend a lot of time with.

Dana works as a Designer for an architecture firm where she designs things like donor displays, history displays, and signs. She’s a very talented person with a great eye for detail. She’s also an excellent cook and is health conscious when preparing meals. Her mother is a Dietitian so she was raised to care about health and nutrition. In the spring and summer, she spends a lot of her time outdoors. She loves working in her garden, paddle boarding at a nearby lake on the weekends, and taking our cats outside to explore when she’s done working for the day.

Dana is very loving, honest, and sincere. I feel lucky to have her in my life and I’m looking forward to raising a child with her and seeing her become the nurturing mother I know she will be.

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About Kody, by Dana

Kody is a lighthearted, funny, and extremely kind man. He makes friends everywhere he goes and maintains so many solid friendships. Our nieces, other children in our family, and our friends’ kids are all drawn to Kody. They know they can always count on him to play and give them his full attention. Kody is driven, exceptionally creative, and talented. He’s written and recorded dozens of albums, toured every continent (aside from Antarctica) and yet, he is the most humble person I know.

When we first met, he’d describe himself as an “indoorsman” but he’s grown to appreciate all our beautiful state has to offer and now enjoys hiking, playing disc golf, and taking daily walks. He still enjoys his indoor hobbies like reading and playing board games. I used to think board games were nerdy (maybe they are) but his enthusiasm for them has rubbed off on me and now we host game nights with our friends.

Kody and I love spending time together doing anything from watching movies to tackling major home remodel projects. We’re truly the best of friends and I’m fortunate to share my life with him. Kody makes me feel supported and loved in a way I will never take for granted. I couldn’t imagine a better partner and I am beyond excited to parent your child alongside him.

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Lifestyle

Our lifestyle is pretty laid back. Dana is an Experiential Graphic Designer for an architecture firm & has transitioned to working from home (which she loves). Kody is a musician and is fortunate in that he and his band get to choose the dates of their live performances. Other band members have children ranging from 5 months old to 16 years old, so it’s understood that family is the priority. Thankfully, our jobs allow for a lot of flexibility with our schedules.

At home, Kody handles the majority of household chores (like grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry). Kody has a recording studio in our basement where he spends a fair amount of time writing, playing, and arranging music. Dana has an ever-expanding plant collection that she meticulously cares for in our sunroom. The sunroom also doubles as our cats’ playroom (thankfully they don’t mess with the plants too much).

A typical weeknight for us includes taking a long walk around the park in our neighborhood, cooking dinner together, and either watching a show or playing a game. We both love music and usually have something playing in the background when we’re home. A typical weekend definitely includes time spent with family and/or friends. We enjoy going out to see live music, hosting (or attending) dinners, and heading up to the mountains for a hike, paddle boarding, or just to explore someplace new to us.

We try to plan a few trips each year to experience another state or country. We have a trip to Italy planned this year which we are very excited about! We’re also planning to visit our friends in New York City and Los Angeles in the next few months.

In everything we do, we imagine what our lives will be like when we’ve added the missing piece to our family. We hope our evening walk around the park will soon include a long visit to the playground and maybe a picnic for dinner. We hope we’ll soon see your child playing with our friend’s children at our get togethers. Nothing would fill our hearts more than taking your child with us on our adventures near and far.

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Udi & Angus, Our Cats

Our furry family members, Udi and Angus, are a big part of our lives. They’re both rescue kitties. Dana rescued Udi when he was 1 and now he’s 17 years old. He is the sweetest boy who loves snuggles, soft blankets, fudgesicles, and rolling around in the dirt. We rescued Angus when he was 5 months old and now he’s almost 3. Angus is very chatty with humans and with the squirrels and birds he watches from the sunroom. He loves to play; ribbons and balls are his favorites (he plays fetch!). We often take the cats outside for supervised backyard explorations, which they love. We are very lucky to have such sweet, playful and well-behaved kitty boys. They add so much joy to our home and we happily spoil them.

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Home & Neighborhood

We’ve owned our home for two and a half years now and we’ve enjoyed putting in the work to make it ours.  We designed and completely remodeled the kitchen, dining, and living room within our first year at the house. Our house has all the room we need for our family, including a bedroom, a playroom, and a separate bathroom for your child. This past year, we focused on updating our home’s exterior including making our backyard the perfect, safe play space for a child.

We live on the very north end of a city; 10 minutes from downtown and about 25 minutes from the mountains. We’re located at the top of a drive and have a large open space behind our house. We have a lovely park within walking distance that was just updated with 2 brand new play areas. Our neighborhood is quiet, safe, and diverse. We love our neighbors and enjoy chatting with them and sharing our garden goods in the summer months.  We look forward to the day we can introduce your little one to all the other children in the neighborhood.  It’s also worth mentioning that we are super lucky to have several amazing Mexican restaurants nearby!

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Our Families & Friends

We feel very fortunate to live close to a lot of our family. Most of Dana’s family are located within an hour of our home. She grew up with and is still very close with several of her cousins. We are “Auntie & Uncle” to all the cousins’ children. We have nieces and nephews from our siblings as well; Dana’s brother & his wife have 2 young girls and Kody’s sisters have 4 grown girls and one grown boy between the 2 of them. We spend a lot of time with Dana’s mom and stepdad, who live within 15 minutes of us. They are both retired and love to spend time with their grandchildren. Our young nieces are always staying over at their place. Dana’s father and brother live an hour away from us and we see them about once a month.  One of Kody’s sisters lives in South Dakota. His other sister and his parents live a few hours from us in Wyoming. We’re always taking quick trips to visit family.  Everyone is beyond excited for us and ready to meet their newest family member!

We have a wonderful network of close friends in our area and around the country. Our friends feel like family to us and we would do anything for these amazing people. We celebrate together, we support each other and we have so much fun together! We want to see our future child grow up with our friend’s children because we think the world of those kids and their parents.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

We celebrate racial and cultural diversity in our lives with friends of different races and ethnicities. We love learning about their family traditions and experiencing their culture (including their foods!). Diversity and inclusion will be something we’ll discuss with your child, and we also plan to show them by traveling and allowing them to experience different locations and cultures firsthand. We’ll do everything we can to make sure your child feels accepted and understands their culture and background. It’s important to us to continue to learn about cultures that differ from ours because we feel it makes us better friends, neighbors, and (someday) parents.

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Family Traditions

Our families love to get together and celebrate holiday traditions. Halloween is our personal favorite and we celebrate through the whole month of October. We decorate the interior and exterior of the house and like to add a few new decorations each year. Dana hosts a Halloween craft day early in October, then a treat making party closer to Halloween. We throw a big costume party at our house for friends and their children. We make a lot of food to share, play board games, watch spooky movies…we have all the Halloween fun! Family costume ideas are swirling in our minds and we’re excited to make your child’s costume ideas come to life year after year.

We split Christmas and Thanksgiving between our families, either spending Thanksgiving or Christmas at Dana’s parents’ home or at Kody’s parents’ home in Wyoming. Dana’s father’s side of the family has a Christmas tradition where we spend the Saturday before Christmas with about 50 extended family members. There are a lot of children in our extended family so it gets loud and chaotic and it’s wonderful. Every December we visit the Botanic Garden’s Blossom of Lights with family and then head to a nice dinner in the city. We decorate our house and our Christmas tree and make Christmas goodies to share.

Each February we celebrate our sister-in-law’s and Kody’s birthday by spending a weekend in Estes Park, Colorado. We rent a cabin with Dana’s family and go sledding, soak in the hot tub, hang out by the fireplace and watch movies or play games.

Our summers are busy and we spend much of our time outside. There are a lot of summer birthdays in our family and circle of friends, so we are always celebrating someone at a barbecue or party. We love going to professional baseball games and try to get to at least 5 each summer. Fourth of July has become another holiday we’re known for hosting because our neighborhood puts on an impressive fireworks display we can enjoy from our front yard.

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Our Travel Adventures

We love to travel together and aim to venture somewhere outside of the country at least once a year.  We’ve been all over Europe, Japan & Mexico together. We hope to explore Iceland, Greece or Scandinavia in the near future. Our international travels have basically had 2 speeds.  We’re either relaxing on a beach or jumping in cabs and trains to visit as many sites and landmarks as possible.  Whatever the speed, it’s about experiencing different ways of living and appreciating other cultures, foods and natural environments.

We are still exploring our beautiful home states; Dana is a Colorado native and Kody is from Wyoming. Just a short drive to the north, west or south of our home can feel like we’ve traveled to another planet. Our favorite in-state adventure from the past two years was a camping trip at the Great Sand Dunes in Southern Colorado. We can’t wait to show our future child/children adventures to make for great family memories.

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Our Promise to You

We promise to provide your child with a loving, joyful, and safe home. Your child will be loved for who they are and will be fully supported to be whoever they want to be. We’ll provide experiences to spark interests and opportunities for them to pursue their dreams. We will lead by example and give them the guidance and tools to help them navigate stress and other tough feelings. We promise to do our part to raise a kind, open-minded, considerate human. Above all, your child will be loved unconditionally and will be very well taken care of. We promise to honor you at every stage of your child’s life. They will know how grateful we are for you and the chance you gave us to make our family’s dream come true.