Paul and Christine

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From Us to You

Hello!

Thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We are Paul and Christine, and we are grateful that you are taking the time to get to know us.

We are so happy that you are considering adoption. While we will never understand what you are going through, we are in awe of you. This gives us an incredible opportunity to expand our family. We would love to build a long-lasting relationship with you and already consider you part of our family too.

Our journey began 16 years ago when Paul asked Christine out on a date and, as they say, the rest is history! Throughout the journey of our relationship, we have had many ups including getting married, welcoming nephews and nieces into our family, and traveling together. The biggest thing we have been through is not being able to conceive a child. Family is very important to us and we always felt like our family was incomplete. So, after many conversations and prayers, we have decided to adopt.

We already love your child so much and would give them the best life possible. We both grew up with wonderful traditions and memories that we cannot wait to share and pass down. We are so excited to share our favorite things with your child, like going to Disneyworld, camping, enjoying sporting events, and spending time with our family and friends. Our families are very excited for us to expand our family; the grandmas are already arguing over who will get to watch them while we are at work 🙂 .

We live in a quiet and safe neighborhood where your child would have a great opportunity to run and play. We would love for your child to be involved in many activities. We both love music and have many musical instruments in the house. Paul was in band from 5th grade through high school and Christine was in choir from middle school until high school. We would encourage your child to play different sports and learn about what it means to be part of a team. Christine was in softball for 12 years. She also was involved in dance, Girl Scouts and church groups. Paul played baseball, basketball and roller hockey. We bowl in a league together and are both in separate golf leagues.

Our home life is very important to us as well. Teaching right from wrong and all the basics of raising a great person are things that are very important to us, and we have a solid foundation for raising a child in a loving home. Family values have been instilled in both of us from an early age.

Thank you again for taking time to read about us. We will keep you in our thoughts as you continue with the adoption process.

Paul and Christine

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Why We're Choosing to Adopt

We have tried for over 10 years to conceive a child and it’s been a hard road. Since we have not been able to have a child, we have decided to adopt because we want nothing more than to welcome a child into our family. We want to be able to give them the best life that we can give them. We want to give a child a life full of love and support. We both had wonderful childhoods and have great memories that we want to share with a child. We want to create our own amazing memories with our own child. We feel in our hearts that we are missing a huge piece in our family and we know that the missing piece is a child for us to love.

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About Christine, by Paul

Christine is the love of my life! We have so much fun together. She is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. Christine is a great person, with a big heart. She loves spending time with family, whether playing with the nephews in the pool in the summer or gathering together with everyone for the holidays. We both share very similar values.

After all Christine’s hard work in obtaining her degree in Education and going back to school to get her Early Childhood Endorsement, she was able to land her “dream” job at her church in her hometown. She loves her kids and I love hearing about her day when she gets home from work and shares her stories of the children. I believe that the love she brings to her students will only prepare her to love and grow every day with a child of her own. She is a loving and caring person. From traveling to just sitting around playing games, there is no one else I would rather spend my life with.

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About Paul, by Christine

Paul is one of the best men I have ever met. He is truly my best friend and my rock. One of the best things about him is how laid back he is. We laugh so hard and always have fun. He takes everything in stride and is very level-headed. Paul works very hard at his family’s business to provide for our family. He is happy to help our parents, family, and friends without hesitation. Paul will make a wonderful dad. He loves to have nerf wars with our nephews that end in giggles. The only thing that bothers me about Paul is that our cat, Peyton, has chosen him as his human over me 🙂

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Our Home

We live in Iowa on a quiet, cul-de-sac street and have a very good relationships with our neighbors. Our house is 3 stories, with 2 bedrooms on the main level and 3 bedrooms on the 3rd level. One of the bedrooms on the 3rd level will be the nursery, with the theme being Disney. We have owned our house since 2007 and have done many updates to it, such as updating both bathrooms and the kitchen and painting throughout. We like to spend a lot of time out on our deck with our friends and family. We have a fenced-in yard with plenty of room to run around. We also live close to Paul’s parents where we like to hang out in their pool and hot tub. We are within walking distance to a local park.

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Our Sweet Kitty

We have a tuxedo cat name Peyton. He is 10 years old and rules the house. 🙂 He loves to be with whoever is in the house. You will often find him curled up with Paul. Peyton’s favorite things are to watch the birds from his tower, lie in front of the heater, play with toys, and go camping with us. When he is camping, he loves his to have his harness on and sit outside to watch the world go by. He is very good with our nephews. He is a very chatty cat and loves to tell you how it is.

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Our Families

Christine’s father has a smaller family and she has 3 cousins on his side. Her mom comes from a family of 8 children so she has many cousins on that side. Christine’s parents are divorced and she very close with her mom. She is also very close with her cousin, Anthony, and his family and we consider his children to be our niece and nephew. They live very close to us and we see them quite often; especially during the summer when we go camping together.

Paul’s parents are still married, and he also has a brother who is married and has 3 children. We spend a lot of time with the nephews and Paul’s parents. Our nephews are 13, 12, and 10, and they love to come spend time at our house. Each nephew gets a special night at our house where we do things like fishing, camping, building Legos, and baking.

We have a close group of friends. With our friends we like to golf, go camping, play cards, travel, and go to sporting events together.

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Vacations

We love to travel! Christine’s goal is to get to all 50 states, and she has been to 37 so far. Some of our favorite places are Jamaica, Disneyworld, and Nashville. We also love to go into Chicago for many different activities such as visiting friends who live there, seeing live Broadway shows, attending Cubs and Blackhawks game, and visiting museums and the aquarium. We cannot wait to enrich your baby’s life by taking them to museums, aquariums, and attractions in each city we visit.

Our leisure time is spent in many different ways. We love to attend Iowa Hawkeye football games and wrestling meets. We love to play golf together, go camping, watch our nephews play sports, play cards, sit on our deck with friends, bowl, support our local baseball team and attend other sporting events.

Paul loves to hunt and fish in his downtime. Christine loves to read, take pictures, and bake.

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Our Lifestyle

We are a hard-working couple. We both love our jobs and after a hard day at work like to come home and relax. We relax by spending time together sitting on our deck, working out, going to sporting events or watching TV. Paul is the cook in the family and his favorite thing to make is anything grilled. Christine is the baker and loves to make cupcakes. Christine attends church with her mother and plans to take your baby to church, where they will be baptized. Once he or she is old enough, they will participate in Sunday School and youth activities throughout the year.

We love to be outdoors as much as possible. Our favorite warm weather activity is camping. We have a 5th wheel that we bought in 2020, and our favorite place to go camping is about an hour from our house. It is on a beautiful lake and we cannot wait to take your baby camping with us. We try to camp as much as possible from April through October. During the summer is when we take the further away trips and during the school year, we stay at campgrounds closer to home. One of our favorite campground activities is when the local campground does Trick-or-Treating. We cannot wait to share these experiences with your baby.

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Family Traditions

We have many traditions in our families! Christine’s favorite tradition is on the 4th of July. We go to a small town nearby and watch fireworks with her extended family. It is her favorite tradition because, besides being her favorite holiday, her cousins were the ones to start the firework tradition in this town back in 1970’s. We spend other major holidays with both sides of our families. Another really fun tradition that we have with Paul’s family is going to Disneyworld, and we try to go there every other year. The opposite year we take a vacation with just us to someplace like Jamaica or Nashville. For Thanksgiving, with Christine’s mom’s side of the family, we go up to her aunt and uncle’s house in Wisconsin, where we spend the weekend riding horses, playing cards, and having a lot of laughs. Paul’s favorite tradition is every August when he and a group of friends head north to Minnesota for a weeklong fishing trip. We are looking forward to sharing all of these traditions with your baby.

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How We Met

When Christine was fresh out of college searching for teaching positions; she worked at a bank. This is the same bank where Paul’s family business banked. Our mutual friend wanted to introduce Christine to a nice guy and Christine told him that she was interested in Paul. At the same time Paul called the friend to say that he was interested in Christine. The friend told Paul to talk to Christine and get her number. Paul came to the bank and we chatted. We went out on a date a few days later and the rest is history :).

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Our Personalities

We love to have fun and it shows in our personalities. We are very playful with each other, family, and friends. We both have a great sense of humors. While we have serious moments in our lives; we are the happiest when we are able to laugh and joke around. Paul is more practical, and Christine more emotional (in a good way) 🙂 We are both caring of our  family, friends, each other, and pets. We are both very loyal to our loved ones.

Our Careers

Christine has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Education with an Early Childhood Endorsement and has been teaching preschool for 13 years. Before that she was an associate in a preschool classroom. She is currently the lead preschool teacher and program director for the local Lutheran preschool. The preschool is located in the church that she grew up in. She has wonderful aides, and they service 3- and 4-year olds. Christine is currently working on expanding the preschool which is a very exciting project. She has summers off to spend with your child, who will attend the school district that Christine works in, so she’ll never be too far away.

Paul has an Associate’s Degree in electronics. He is the office manager for his family’s business, and helps run the office by doing day to day items such payroll, billing and answering phones. He has worked at his family’s business for 20 years. Working for his family business gives him the flexibility to stay home with your child when necessary, stay home when they are ill, and be able to attend their activities during the day and at night.

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Our Relationship with You

We would love to get to know you. We want you to feel confident that we will provide for your baby. We will respect you in whatever type of openness you choose. If you allow, we will be with you every step of the way, but we will respect your decisions as well. If you choose an open or semi-open adoption, we will provide pictures and updates as often as we all agree on. We want you to feel our full support from the moment that you choose us and want you to feel like you are part of our family as well.

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What We will tell your Child about You

We will tell your child that you love them very much. Love them so much that you chose to place them with a loving family so that they could be in a better situation than you were able to provide at the time. We will tell your child anything they would like to know about you, including why you picked us. Hopefully by having a good relationship with you, we are able to answer your child’s questions. Mostly we want your child to know that we are so appreciative of you for choosing us to give us a chance to complete our family.

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Our Promise to You

We want you to know that we are truly grateful that you are choosing adoption. We promise to love your child unconditionally. We will give them every opportunity to reach their full potential. Bringing your child into our loving family will bring us so much happiness. We look forward to welcoming them and you into our family. Our jobs are accommodating so that we both will get to enjoy a lot of quality family time. When we are at work, your child will be loved on by grandmas and grandpas. They will always be so well cared for! Also, Christine works in an excellent school district and your child will get a wonderful education there. We will raise your baby in the Lutheran Church, and promise to love and cherish them and give them the best life possible.