Hello!

We are Andrew, Brianna, Jessica and Adalynn and we love adoption! Our lives were first blessed by adoption in 2010 when our oldest daughter’s birth mom, Melinda, placed Jessica in our arms. We were again blessed in 2017 when Adalynn was born and her birth mom choose our family. Adoption is an incredibly brave choice and one we don't take lightly in our home. We love our daughters’ birth moms and are so grateful for them! Our family has grown because of adoption and we consider our daughters’ birth families a part of our family and love them! Having them in our family has been a blessing for all of us. We hope to have an open adoption again because we have seen how incredible it truly is!

We aren’t sure what emotions you may be feeling right now but thank you for considering adoption. We want you to know that whatever the details of your situation and whatever decision you make you have our love and support. We hope you have others around you who are helping and supporting you.

Our favorite way to get to know people is to spend time with them, because we firmly believe that to know someone is to love them. Ideally, we’d invite you over for a dinner of homemade pizza and sit down to talk or play a game, so you could get to know us better. Since that isn’t an option right now, we will do our best to help you get to know us here.

We were married in 2005, after dating for just a few months. Andrew proposed (over the phone…he’ll tell that story sometime if you want) and a few months later, we were married! We both feel so blessed to be happily married to our best friend. We’ve lived in Colorado, Nebraska, Alaska, and now live in Utah.

We love being a family and doing fun things together! We make it a priority to go on family vacations, whether it is a week-long trip to Seaside, Oregon or a weekend road trip. We love being outside whether we are sledding on the sled Andrew built or jumping on the trampoline in the backyard. The girls love when we have dance parties and they are fun: we turn out the lights, turn the music up, and hang our disco light ball from the ceiling.

Friday nights are family nights which either means playing games or watching a movie, eating popcorn (pop pop to Adalynn). Our overflowing game closet proves that we love games; our current favorites are Sequence, Life, Spot It, and Sardines. Jessica and Andrew like playing Monopoly too, but Brianna never joins in because of too many bad experiences with that game.

We love open adoption and when we do adopt again, we are hoping to have another open relationship. We are flexible and easygoing. We want you to be comfortable and we’re comfortable with visits, calls, texts, facetime, email and more. We think one of the most important things in any relationship is having good communication. We have seen this with our girls’ birth families and we know it will be important to have communication and openness with you as well. We promise to always be honest with you and keep the promises we make. We look forward to getting to know you and building a friendship.

That’s us in a nutshell! For more info on each of us, keep reading the posts below. How about you? We’d love to get to know you and find out some fun, random facts about you as well.

Andrew, Brianna, Jessica and Adalynn    

Andrew

Andrew is a great people person. He loves to make people laugh, get to know them, and is great at making others feel comfortable. Jessica asked on our last vacation, “Why does Dad talk to everyone?” He also likes working with tools, being outdoors, going fishing, and singing (he’s a baritone). He now works with generous individuals and families who donate to humanitarian aid and other programs. 

He’s a great dad and you can often find Adalynn up on his shoulders or Jessica trying to wrestle him. He and Jessica often do daddy-daughter dates together and have fun going out to eat, fishing, or getting donuts at Krispy Kreme. 

He grew up in Utah in a family of seven kids, where he was the middle child. We live near his parents and some of his family now, and they still have fun getting together for dinners and laughing about childhood memories. Random facts about Andrew: he has a webbed toe and a hitchhiker’s thumb.

Brianna

While Andrew likes to talk, an ideal day for Brianna would be curling up with a good book and some ice cream, and not leaving home. She still enjoys visiting and being social, but she also loves being at home and taking it easy. Some of her favorite things are making delicious food and trying out new recipes, growing a garden, and finding good deals. 

Brianna is an amazing mom and is able to stay at home with the girls and helps out at Jessica's school a bit too. She likes making crafts with Jessica, which often involve accessories for her dolls, reading books with both girls, and having dance parties, especially if they involve glow sticks. 

She grew up in Washington, and was the well adjusted middle child of nine kids. They grew up on a small farm, where they had fun playing and working hard, and where she learned to love animals and especially dogs. Random fact about Brianna: she went skydiving once, but it was a surprise for her, and not a good surprise. Never again!

Jessica

Jessica is a fun girl who loves to snuggle, read, do crafts, and play. She is now in third grade, and loves being with friends, but she is also ready to come home and play as soon as school is done. You can often find her with her nose stuck in a book...and sometimes it feels like her ears are in that book too because when she reads, she is in another world! Jessica loves to play games; Twister and The Game of Life are some of her favorites. 

She is a great big sister most of the time, and wants to teach Adalynn everything from colors to how to play the piano. Adalynn loves when she gets home from school for the day and runs up to her for a big hug when she gets back. 

We have an open adoption with Jessica's birth family and love to be able to stay in touch with them and visit them. We are blessed to have so many who love her and our family. 

Random fact about Jessica: she likes collecting all kinds of things and often has bags of these collections throughout the house. One time, she collected an extra set of car keys that we found months later, after we sold the car.

Adalynn

Adalynn is almost two and it amazes us how much she seems to learn each day. She loves animals, cars, babies, and books. She is a busy girl who doesn't like sitting still, in a shopping cart, stroller, or car seat. Even the high chair is getting tricky these days. If she had her way, she would run everywhere!

She likes to talk, although most words sound the same or are made up words for now. She loves to dance and pretend to sing. Her facial expressions are fun and we love watching her have fun.

Adalynn is mostly nice to Jessica, except for the occasional pinch and trying to learn how to share. She is good at giving hugs and wants to be just like her big sister. She is often a mama's girl, but she might pick our family dog, Lady, as her best friend.

Random fact about Adalynn: she hated baby food as a baby and when her doctor said to try giving her medicine in applesauce, we fed it to her in some chili instead. She loved it. 

Oh what do you do in the summertime?

What a summer! We played and played and had so much fun! Andrew got more vacation time at work after hitting 10 years, so we took advantage of it and have taken more fun trips and had lots of fun the last few months.

Oregon in April, visiting Brianna's family. Hillary, Andrew's sister, got married in April as well! Then, in June we went to Colorado to visit Jessica's birth families and oh, how we love them! It was a great visit and we are so glad we were able to go. Later that month we had a family reunion with Brianna's extended family in Ephraim. And then the big one...Seaside beach in Oregon!

We had a lot of normal summer days too...heading to the water park, playing mini golf, or hanging out at home in our pajamas until lunch time. Jessica and I have perfected that last one! Add in a few fishing trips with dad, a backyard campout, trip to the zoo, and a belly flop contest (that was Andrew...he even got an Elvis wig for it!) and we had a fabulous summer! Now, it is back to school and a real schedule, which is nice, but I'm already missing our care free days and my little buddy (who is already in first grade!)

Now that you got a brief summary, here are the pictures. Hooray for pictures!

Hillary and Claudio's wedding with all of Andrew's immediate family.

Colorado trip...Garden of the Gods. It was SO amazing!

Family Reunion's with Brianna's extended family always involve mud, Ephraim mountains, and four wheelers.

Feeding Grandma's goats with cousins

Seaside Candyman! Look at all that taffy! 

Tillamook factory...Jessica wanted a picture with the cow, Tilly, and just sat down and pretended to milk her. Ha!

My brother's family joined us for a few hours one day and we got to feed the seals at the aquarium. So fun!

One night we built a campfire on the beach to roast hot dogs and smores. Why have we never done this before?

Fun at the zoo with cousins!

Fishing with dad

Andrew's belly flop contest outfit for the All Together Playground...his name was The King Salmon. It turned out more like a Knee Flop but oh well, I'm glad he was brave enough to do it!

Best Dad Ever!

This post is dedicated to Andrew because he is the best dad ever! I was looking at our pictures tonight and I'm hardly in any of them...probably because these two have so much fun together (and also because I am sometimes taking the pictures). Here are a few of their fun times:

Daddy daughter dates are the best! We all love them around here.

Jessica wanted to try out some craft googly eyes for her own eyes, and it looked so fun Andrew tried it too. They both love making faces!

See that sled? Andrew built it out of skis, wood, and rope. He built it so he and Jessica could go sledding together. Good thing it snowed a lot this winter...it got a lot of use!

This was an unofficial take your daughter to work day and Andrew loved having her there, and even let her play with some flarp (okay, I sent it with her). All went well, until...

...oops, flarp and hair don't mix well. He did his best to get it out, but fortunately, I was able to get her right away and get that stuff out with a bath.

 

 Park day daddy daughter date!

Another sledding trip...another funny face!

A few of our favorite things...

Today is a day of Facebook and Instagram, and not much blogging, so I feel as though our blog is rarely written on anymore. We've decided we should start posting some of our favorite things every week. We will see how many weeks that lasts, but for now, here are some of our weekly favorites:

Andrew

Favorite things: 

- Having Monday off work.

- Pulling Jessica on a sled (tied to a fifty foot rope) through some slushy snow in the park.

Favorite meal: lasagna soup

Brianna

Favorite things:

- Hosting a lunch with friends.

- Jessica telling Andrew she needed to whisper something in his earball!

- Watching Andrew and Jessica dance last night. (I can't figure out how to post it from the iPad, so for now, watch it here.)

Favorite meal: lasagna soup

Jessica

Favorite things:

- Watching the Peanuts movie at the movie theater (Jessica has been having a hard time sleeping all night long, so we made a chart and after ten nights of staying in bed, we all got to go to a movie! Woohoo!)

- Running to the track with mom and running away from the cracking ice in Alaska. It was tricky.

Favorite meal: pizza or barbeque pork sandwiches. She said both were good.

Hello!

We are Andrew, Brianna, and Jessica. Thank you for taking the time to look at our blog and for considering adoption; it has already blessed our lives and is very special to us. We can't comprehend the challenges and decisions you are facing right now, but we want you to know we are thinking of you and praying for you. We know that prayers are answered and that God will bless you with the decisions you are making. We know that adoption is an incredibly brave choice, but it is also incredibly difficult. We hope you can feel our love for you and that you will feel peace and strength, no matter what choice you make.

We love being a family and we love adoption! We adopted Jessica as an infant in 2010 and we are so grateful for her birth mom, Melinda, and our relationship with her. We've been able to visit with her, her family, and Jessica's birth father's family, and have loved getting to know all of them and having them in our lives. At times, we have lived close, which was so nice to be able to visit often, but even when we have all moved, we are grateful to stay in touch in other ways when we can't visit as often. We see Melinda as a part of our family and we love her so much! We hope to have an open adoption again (maybe even with you) because we have seen how incredible it truly is!

We want you to be able to get to know us a little, but it is hard to describe your family in a letter without making it a mile long. Well, maybe some people can do it, but we can be long winded, so it is hard for us. Either way, we decided to instead share 10 random facts about our family to help you get to know us.

1. Andrew considers our first date together as the one where his roommate asked me out and Andrew was with another girl. While canoeing, he said he realized he had the wrong girl in his canoe. We still like to go canoeing, but now, we are in the same canoe.

2. Brianna has been skydiving, which is pretty surprising because she is no daredevil and pretty cautious. Side note from Brianna: I didn't jump, but the instructor strapped to me did and he was big enough to pull me out of the plane with him. Never again!

3. We like to celebrate half birthdays in our family. All of our family celebrations are pretty close: our anniversary in April, Andrew's birthday in May, Brianna's in June, and Jessica's in July. This way, we can celebrate all year! We don't do much...half a cake or a fun treat, decorate with our Happy 1/2 Birthday sign and some balloons and streamers (Jessica always wants to decorate with balloons and streams), and of course, we sing "Happy 1/2 birthday to you..."

4. Jessica named her doll Froggy, because the doll has some pajamas with frogs on them. Good thinking, right? Froggy often has birthdays; she is eight now although she has only been around for four years.

5. Andrew hasn't had a cavity in over 25 years! Brianna has had multiple cavities in the last 25 years and as a result dislikes visiting the dentist.

6. In our first home after we were married, we experienced almost every possible disaster! First, we had a septic tank/plumbing catastrophe, a flameless kitchen fire that filled the house and all our possessions with smoke, and a gas leak in the neighborhood which caused us to evacuate. We also had our phone lines ripped off the house by a garbage truck, a flood in the basement, and gale force winds that were tearing the roof off an old shed (don't worry...Andrew climbed up there in those winds to secure the roof). Despite all this, we still loved the place. Check out the full scoop here.

7. Every Christmas, one of our favorite traditions is making and decorating gingerbread houses. We buy way, way too much candy and take hours! We all decorate our own and it so fun!

8. We have lived in all the "aska" states (Alaska and Nebraska). One of those was the most beautiful state in the country. Hint: It wasn't Nebraska!

9. If we could go anywhere on vacation, we would probably all pick Seaside, Oregon. We love the beach, and even though Oregon beaches are cold, it is so beautiful and has so many good memories for us! Jessica has only been once, when she was one, and even she can't wait to go back. We are planning a trip to go there this summer and we can't wait!

10. Andrew can do some pretty funny things with his face. He can move his eyebrows with precision and accuracy, he can make the biggest frown in the world, and he can make a crazy half-frown half-smile. You will have to see it sometime! Jessica loves making faces with him (or practicing staring contests) and he is teaching her how to move her eyebrows too.

That is us in a nutshell, but there is a whole lot more we would love to share with you. We would love to learn more about you as well!

We are excited to have our family grow through adoption! Thank you for giving us hope! We are so grateful for Jessica's birth mom, Melinda. We are amazed at the strength she had to place Jessica in our family. We love having an open adoption and relationship with her and we feel that it has blessed all of our lives! We think one of the most important things in a marriage is having good communication and have seen it strengthen our relationship. We have seen this with Jessica's birth families and we know it will be important to have communication and openness with you as well. We look forward to meeting you and building a friendship. You can get to know us more by texting or calling us at 801-477-6621 or emailing us at andrewbrianna21@gmail.com.

Thanks again for considering us. You are in our prayers,

Andrew, Brianna, and Jessica

Family Reunion = A few days on a Ranch in Idaho, staying up lateplaying Parcheesi with nieces and nephews, eating tons of food and asuper fast 200 foot water slide!

Well the title says it all! Who says you can't judge a book by its cover...I bet if this was a book and that title was on the cover you could probably judge that this would be an interesting read.

We recently attended an amazing family reunion with Brianna's side of the family. We all met at a neat little ranch in the middle of nowhere in Idaho, and it was so much fun! Besides some of the usual family gathering activities we did some fun and crazy stuff. One of the hits during our time there was the home made 200 foot water slide. I had a special method of racing down the slide to help me reach maximum speeds of up to 200 to 300 mph...so it seemed. There was a water pump that pumped irrigation water down the slide from the top of the hill, and it was so cold your first time down. I would sit there and let the water fill up behind me, then I would let the water go in front and I would race behind it. The slide is built on a good hill, so you get a bit of speed on the way down. The way you stop at the end could be a little scary, but it always worked out ok and I didn't get banged up too many times. There was a slightly wider section that was about five feet long with about two feet of standing water that you would splash into that served as the braking system. On one of my times down the slide, I found out that it was possible to hydroplane across the water if my feet were just right. That was really fun, until I skimmed over the top of the water pool that was suppose to slow me down and crashed into the end of the slide. It only takes one time of trying that out to realize that is not a good idea!

I am really proud of Jessica for going down the slide. It was a huge slide for a kid and the first day she went down from halfway up the hill, but the next day she was going down the whole thing. The other little nieces and nephews had fun waiting at the bottom of the slide for me to come down. They would all get a tidal wave of water on them (check out the picture below to see it) when I was splashing to a stop. It was so much fun! We really enjoyed that slide.

Another fun thing we did there was I started a game of Parcheesi with the teenage nieces and nephews. If you haven't heard of Parcheesi, it is a combination of Sorry and Backgammon. Once they got the rules down and started a game it lasted for about two hours. It was fun teaching them how to play the game then having them wipe me out as they played! The game got pretty loud and we were told multiple times to be quiet as we were playing it. Finally, we relocated to an outdoor hallway so we would not keep people up who were trying to sleep.

One last funny memory I want to share is the reenactment of the human pyramid family picture. I'm sure you have reenacted famous pictures from your childhood years later just to see if you can do it. For me in my family, it was a picture of my uncle David with my dad on his shoulders, then I was on top of my dad's shoulders. This is a classic picture in my family, because my dad is 6' 2" with broad shoulders and my uncle is just standing there like it was no problem. Well fast forward 10 years and we tried to reenact the picture...my dad is still a big guy and I was no longer the little toddler I once was...I was about 6' 5" and 225 lbs. To make a long story short, we took the picture but it nearly ended in disaster with my poor uncle buckling under the pressure!

So back to the family pyramid picture. When Brianna was younger all the siblings made a pyramid family picture. For some crazy reason Brianna was on the bottom row (actually it was because she was the tallest girl at the time)...the reenactment had switch the placement of people around a little bit to make things work out. I took a bunch of pictures as they were trying to get the picture to work. I love the expressions on some of their faces as people were laughing, yelling and hoping that the picture could finally be taken and they could be done with the thing. Fun times.

All in all it was a great experience. Brianna comes from a wonderful family and that is a great blessing.

Oh what do you do in the summertime?

Now that we have less than a month of summer left before Jessica starts kindergarten (yikes!), I figured it would be good to give an update of some of the things we've been up to. 

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? I'm pretty sure that means I can stop writing here...but I won't.

First off, we built a fairy house and a fairy garden. And then, a few weeks later, when this fairy house got rained on and fell apart, dad built Jessica another fairy house out of wood to last forever. She swears she saw Tinkerbell visit a few times.

We built a beautiful fence! Man...gates are hard work! Andrew is patient and I'm grateful he was willing to build the design I wanted, because, really, doesn't this look beautiful??

We planted our garden...and this year, we even planted an herb garden. I love it! Today I picked my first Armenian cucumber, and I had to use my shirt as a bucket to hold all the cherry tomatoes I picked, so the garden is finally getting real.

We got a dog...Bailey! And we loved her...

But sadly, after a few weeks, Bailey had a hard time adjusting to life here, and we had take her back to her first family. It was rough...and the only thing that made it easier was seeing her so happy to see them. We still miss her sometimes though.

We made some sweet homemade tie dye shirts (with craft paint) to celebrate Independence Day. Best family night activity ever!

We celebrated Jessica's 5th birthday too!! This was an awesome card she got from one of her birth grandmas. It played music, and we heard it a lot!

We had two exchange students from Japan come to stay with our family for two weeks! It was fun and exhausting, and it made me very thankful for google translate.

We've also played with lots of friends, eaten picnic lunches, gone to the library, the park, and the water park many times...and made a lot of messes. Here's to another month of summer fun!