Travis and Michael

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From Us to You

We want to start by simply thanking you for reading our profile and for considering us as the people lucky enough to raise your child. We are beyond excited to become parents and to provide a home for your child that is full of adventure, creativity, and unwavering love and support.

Travis is a political science professor who grew up in rural Minnesota. Michael is an electrical engineer (and artist at heart) who grew up in a Wisconsin river town. As kids, we loved playing the piano and trombone, earning Boy Scout merit badges, reading so many mystery and science fiction books (Travis) and playing video games with friends, getting our hands dirty in pottery, and riding our bikes as far as our bikes would go (Michael). We both look forward to guiding and supporting your child in whatever their interests and talents end up being. We… kind of hope that thing isn’t hockey? But even if it is, we will enthusiastically embrace our new lives as hockey dads! Part of the joy of parenthood for us is going to be learning from your child and opening ourselves to new ideas and experiences. Again: we can’t wait!

We met in 2016, got married in 2019, and are now very ready to move on to the next stage of our lives as a family together. As you’ll see in the rest of our profile, we love spending time with our friends and family while cooking, traveling, singing, hiking, gaming, and more. We can’t wait to do all these things with your child.

It is admittedly a little strange to be writing this letter to you when we don’t know anything about you yet. But we hope in the future to be able to find out more about your traditions and your passions and your quirks so that we tell your child all about them. We are open to whatever level of openness in this adoption that you prefer and be assured that your child will know about their mother and the important role that you play in their (and our) lives.

We know you have an enormous decision to make in selecting the people who will raise your child. If you choose us, we hope you do so because you see in us a life you envision for your child. We promise that we will bring your child a life of laughter, joy, opportunity, adventure, music, exploration, and more. We’ll love your kid with abundance. It’s as simple as that.

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

Family is important to us, and many of our most treasured memories are from time spent with our loved ones. We are choosing to adopt because we want a family that includes a child and we are unable to have biological children of our own.  Adoption will be a blessing that makes our lives complete.

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About Travis, by Michael

I met Travis through a mutual group of friends while playing pub trivia. I was attracted to his laugh and infectious personality. Travis is easy to talk to and get along with and he treats me and everyone we know with a lot of love and respect. I decided to marry him because we communicate so naturally together, we keep the other in each other’s plans, and we work through problems as a team. We make decisions together.

I am constantly amazed by Travis’ ease when talking to new people, his ability to organize and motivate people, and his comfort when talking in front of large groups. Travis will make a great dad because of his ability to listen to and motivate others. In Travis, your child will have the best cheerleader on earth: to offer a reassuring smile, a comforting hug, or just someone to sit there and listen.

You may think that because Travis is a professor, he might not be very cool, but let me assure you he is. If it wasn’t for Travis, I would be utterly lost when it comes to anything and everything pop culture. He has exposed me to a vast array of music, reality TV, celebrity gossip, and memes that I would never have been aware of otherwise. It’s actually very rare that he talks about anything related to his profession. Instead, he enjoys catching me up on the latest things happening on Twitter and TikTok.

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About Michael, by Travis

Michael’s going to be a great dad. Among the things that amaze me about him is that he is able to balance his organization and attention to detail (his engineering side) with his creativity and passion (his artistic side). The result is all of these fantastic projects that we get to work on together, then enjoy for ourselves or with friends and family. He built a huge tree structure for our cat Pete, for instance. It is always one of the first things people comment on when they visit our home. He conceptualized, designed, and built a backyard patio that is absolutely the best part of our house and where we spend much of our time during the summer. He used fruit from our backyard tree as the base for a cherry-themed Christmas gift that everyone assumed we had bought somewhere fancy and delightful. And he’s already created in his head the enormous mural of our favorite cartoon characters that he’s going to paint in our nursery.

Michael’s also great with kids. When he first met my family after we started dating, for instance, he won everyone over by dancing the polka with my nieces at an Oktoberfest celebration. The nieces loved him immediately. I know that your child is going to love him so very much as well, and I can’t wait to see and be a part of all of the amazing projects and adventures that they concoct together.

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Lifestyle

We enjoy a lifestyle that involves lots of quality time with each other and with the people who are important to us. Often, this takes the form of cooking. Dinner parties with friends are regular occurrences, and family get-togethers always involve an abundance of food and food preparation. We are also board game people and enjoy everything from games of cribbage with just the two of us to day-long game marathons with groups of friends to impromptu games of charades with the nieces.

Traveling is another important part of our lives. We’ve had an amazing time snorkeling and visiting temples in Thailand, rappelling down waterfalls and getting suits made in Vietnam, and eating lots and lots of guacamole in Mexico. We’ve also done a road trip to the Smoky Mountains and a trip with friends to the Star Wars and Harry Potter parks in Orlando. We really can’t wait for the opportunity to bring your child on these sorts of adventures and to expose them to different cultures across the country and around the world.

What else? We love music and sing in both our church choir and a local community choir. If your child is musically inclined, piano lessons and youth choirs would certainly become a new part of our lifestyle! We also enjoy gardening and (within reason) canning our own food. And at the end of the day, we very much appreciate sitting on the couch, watching tv, and arguing over who should win Survivor or laughing about weird prescription drug commercials. That too is family bonding time.

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Home & Neighborhood

We live in our city’s historic downtown district, and love being within walking distance of parks, the farmer’s market, our church, and more. Community is important to us, and we can’t wait to introduce your child to the museums, parades, chili cookoffs, boat cruises, river walks, holiday concerts, and hiking trails that make our community special.

Our house is more than 100 years old, and we’ve done a lot of work to modernize it and make it our own. We did a major kitchen remodel, for instance, and we spend a lot of our time cooking (and eating) all sorts of things. Michael is one of those people who can cook without a recipe, and we both really enjoy everything from Korean barbeque to smoked mac and cheese. This is another part of our life that we can’t wait to share with a child.

Our most recent project was building an enormous backyard patio, and the backyard is now a peaceful place for us to sip our morning coffee, have an evening bonfire, grow tomatoes and peppers, chat with our neighbor Edna, pick fruit from our cherry and apricot trees, entertain friends and family, and more. It’s also going to be a great place for us to have all sorts of adventures with your child.

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

One of our great passions is exploring and appreciating cultural diversity. We do this in our cooking, our traveling, our reading, and more. Travis even studies and teaches about cultural diversity in his role as a political science professor. And even though we live in Iowa, we have friends with many different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. As adoptive parents, we know that it will be very important that we incorporate your cultural background and traditions into how we raise your child. This is something we will do enthusiastically.

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Our Pets

Our pets are an important part of our lives, and we can’t wait for your child to meet their furry best friends! We got our dog Roy when our nieces were visiting four years ago. We weren’t planning on getting a dog that day, but when we stopped by the Humane Society and saw how quickly he bonded with them and us, we knew that Roy had to be a part of our lives. We’ve since lost Roy to cancer, but we know that we will be getting another dog buddy soon. For now, though, our cat Pete gets all the extra attention (whether he likes it or not).

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Our Families & Friends

Our household family includes the two of us, our cat Pete, and a whole bunch of succulents and other plants. Sadly, we recently lost our beloved dog Roy, who was the ringbearer at our wedding, to cancer. When the time feels right, we will get another dog.

Your child will have two sets of grandparents within driving distance – eager to welcome a new grandchild in one case and a first grandchild in the other. Michael’s mother actually just published her first children’s book (about dancing dust bunnies) and would love nothing more than to spend time reading that and other books to her grandchild. Your child will also have an aunt, uncle, and cousins in Minnesota and an uncle and fire-fighting aunt in Idaho. Fortunately, our families get along really well, and we spend many holidays and lake cabin weekends together during the year.

Our concept of “family” is broad and also includes our church family and close groups of friends. Wednesday night is family night at church and a great opportunity for the kids of the church to sing, dance, play ukuleles, and socialize together. And with our friends, we like to camp together, celebrate Pajama Thanksgiving together, travel together, go hiking together, and more. Know that your child will have a large network of friends and family ready to love and support them.

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Our Promise to You

Our promise to you is that we will love your child with abundance. We will love and support them in all of their joys, triumphs, and sorrows. We will give them stability and the opportunity to explore their passions, whatever those passions end up being. We will provide a home that is full of laughter (and sometimes, a little bit of pet fur). We will give them our all, and we can’t wait to do it.