Buddy and Heather

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mom,

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!

We were introduced by friends at a Halloween party. We had an instant connection and ended up dancing and talking the entire evening. 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 our birthday month and our anniversary!

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 since 2017 and have not been blessed with a biological child. It might just be that adoption was always our path to becoming parents. Either way, we can’t wait for what the future holds for us, and we hope it is a future with an adopted 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 5

1.  Buddy, enough said.
2. Our dogs, Minnie and Lily
3.  Cooking together
4. Traveling
5. Music. I love making playlists for myself and the people I love. I made our wedding playlist & we both still listen to it!

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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 5

1. Family – Family first. I love my family; my wife Heather, my parents, and my sister. I speak to my parents daily and with my sister often.
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 get to chit-chat and reconnect after a day apart while making dinner.
3.  Staying in touch – My friendships are very important to me. I like to stay in touch with the people who 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

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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.

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 and took a trip to Iceland and recently to Mexico. We can’t wait to travel with your child and show them how beautiful and diverse our world is.

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. We often ride our bikes to our friends’ houses in the summertime for BBQ’s.

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.

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Our 9-5!

Heather is a freelance fashion stylist and a jack of all trades. In between her styling projects, she stages homes, and teaches pilates. She also spent a few years as an aide at a local elementary school working closely 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.

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. We recenlty bought a film trucking company to expand our business. Buddy is able to work from home a lot. When Buddy is not on a project, he will be doing Dad duty.

Being freelance affords us a lot of freedom and will allow us to share equally in parenting. We are both excited to become parents and we want to be as equally involved with parenting as we can!

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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’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.

Heather is currently dreaming up a nursery, inspired by our honeymoon in the Caribbean. We absolutely loved the beaches, palm trees, waterfalls, crocodiles, and vibes there.

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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

Heather’s parents and her two big brothers and their families live in California. Everyone visits her parents’ house during the holidays and we hang out together and cook and eat and open gifts together. Last year we all took a family cruise to Mexico and had such a fun trip!

Buddy’s parents recently moved to North Carolina along with his older sister. The phone calls and facetime chats are frequent and we visit for beach trips in the summertime. They are excited for us to start a family so their kids 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. 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

We celebrate both Christmas AND Hanukkah.

On Christmas Eve we always have a fire in the fireplace and open one present each. On Christmas morning we open our stockings and then our presents and we ordering Chinese takeout.

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.

Halloween is also a very important holiday to us because it’s the night we met. Every year we do a couples costume & we usually have a Halloween party. 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 a child!

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Our Relationship with You

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.