- California -
Hello from Southern California! We are Jake and Kristan, parents to Lincoln, Holland and Eliza, dogs Riley and Rosey. We love our family dinners and love finding new favorite donut and ice cream shops. We love being outside - playing at the beach and taking road trips to national parks and snowy mountains. We love reading books and watching movies together. We love time with our extended family and close friends. We love each other, and would love for another child to join our family!
By Jake: Kristan is my favorite person, and I'm beyond lucky to be her husband. She's an amazing mother; her kindness and patience inspire me everyday. I've learned so much about parenting from her, and raising our children together has been the joy of my life. She does an excellent job of helping our children learn, encourages them to be kind and instills values we pray will guide them throughout their lives. A devoted Jesus follower, everyday she focuses on being kind, compassionate and loving to everyone she encounters.
By Kristan: Jake is hilarious, artistic and a phenomenal cook. He is super smart and does his job well as a chemical engineer, but what he loves most is being a dad. He's the most considerate, loving and fun dad - our children are so lucky to experience life with him as their father. His gentle guidance, and fun spirit makes them gravitate to him for cuddles and laughs. I somehow fell even more in love with him when he held each of our children for the first time, and continue to be amazed by the example he provides as the father of our family.
Hello Birth Mother.
Thank you for taking time to consider our family for such an important decision. We are honored to be considered. We were called to adoption years ago, and along the way, we have grown to love the possibility of having a lifelong relationship with you as well.
For your child, we promise to help them love and learn in a close-knit family and safe home. We will make sure the child has the resources and support they need to grow and thrive. We promise to teach empathy, gratitude and tenacity.
For you, we promise to respect the level of involvement you want to have with the child. We will share that your decision was made with love. We will honor your culture and heritage and teach the child about it so they will also feel pride in who they are.
As you make this decision, please know you are loved. We pray for your peace, your comfort and will forever keep you close to our hearts.
With sincere appreciation, respect and love,
Kristan and Jake
Our style is together. We play and problem solve together. We love playing pool games and card games, and having friends over for game nights and meals. When we can’t solve a problem together, we turn to resources to help and support us. We make sure we have one meal together every day, and we save Sundays for church and family time.
In our home, your child would join a family who laughs and dances together, regularly cuddles for story time and movie nights, celebrates holidays and birthdays, appreciates learning, talks a lot and most importantly, loves each other.
Our home is a kid-friendly, baby safe open and inviting home in a wonderfully diverse neighborhood.
Our open concept kitchen, dining and living room is the heart of our home. Our family room is full of toys with a big couch for snuggling for movies and stories. We have comfy cozy spots around the house for building forts or reading nooks. We have a shallow backyard pool (fenced for safety), with several neighborhood parks and surrounded by hiking trails. We are near the beach and walkable distance to top-rated schools.
What we love most about our community is who we share it with – our neighborhood and our church group is filled with children. Families from all over the world, and the country, have made this area their home and become part of our extended family. We love that we get to learn and celebrate so many different cultures and traditions. We feel very lucky to raise families with such kind, loving, supportive people.
We have a sweet, gender neutral room with all the baby essentials ready for a new occupant! We have all the supplies necessary, and will have fun picking out special new items for a new baby.
Our family includes two dogs, Riley, a white bernedoodle, and Rosey, a red and white labradoodle. They are silly and fun, protective and loyal.
We meet in Seattle in 2008 and eloped a year and half later in New Orleans (our parents were the only wedding guests!). As newlyweds, we traveled the world and experienced many wonderful cultures. We dreamed about our future family, which we hoped would include adoption. Our son, Lincoln, was born in 2011 and our daughter, Holland, was born in 2014. We relocated from Seattle to San Diego, and the desire to adopt pulled our hearts again. We were matched with a birth mom who gave birth to our third child and second daughter, Eliza, in 2021. She has been such an amazing addition to our family, and she inspires us to grow our family again through adoption.
Adoption was always a part of our lives – Kristan’s mom, aunt and uncle were adopted as children. She also has two cousins who were adopted from China as toddlers. Jake also has cousins who joined the family via adoption. From their experiences, we’ve gained perspective from adopted children, and we will always work to make sure our adopted children know the important aspects of the story of how they came into our family, and will feel as much love from us as possible. We will also share how much their birth parents love them and made decisions for them based on that love.
“Above all, love.” These words hang in our kitchen as a reminder of the most important lesson of all. We remind our children of our love for them, and Jesus’ love for all of us. To us, love means hope, patience, grace, forgiveness and doing to others as you would do for them. Love is our grounding power in times of trouble, and our gratitude for our joy. Our hope is that our children will be respectful without judgement, celebrate differences, empathize with care and above all, love.
