Our top priority for ourselves and our future family is to live a happy and fulfilling life, which we strive for by focusing on spending quality time together. In our day-to-day lives, this is manifested through making sure we have time every day to enjoy something together, even through simple things like having dinner together, playing a game or watching a show. (Fun fact: Our favorite TV show is Survivor and Sean was a contestant on Season 45 of the show!) We also strive to be intentional about planning meaningful travel experiences with our family to create memories together.

It is also important to us that we meaningfully contribute towards the community, and we hope to instill this same priority into our future child as well. This guiding priority is what ultimately drove us to both decide to work in education, as we feel it is an important way that we can meaningfully give back to the families in our community.

When thinking of what our life will be like as a family, our dream for our child is that they will always feel loved. Reinforcing our collective love and care for our child will be the result of everyday words and actions, as well as by creating meaningful memories that reinforce their system of support they have in their life. Our intent is that by creating this caring environment, our child will feel comfortable in exploring who they are and discover what it is that they enjoy doing.

A parenting philosophy we believe strongly in is that rather than trying to impose our own interests or desires on our child, we want them to be able to choose for themselves through exploring and trying new things out.

We also believe that everything in life happens for a purpose, and we want to raise our child in a way where they embrace who they are and the circumstances that led to them being a member of our family. We will constantly affirm through our words both our love and your love for the child, and help them to understand that your decision was a manifestation of your love for them. Our hearts will only be filled with gratitude, appreciation, and respect for this decision that you are making, and we will make sure to express this every chance we can to your child.

We are confident in our decision to pursue adoption to expand our family because we have seen firsthand the blessing it can be both for the adopted child and everyone involved. One of Sean’s younger cousins Lacy was adopted from China when she was a newborn, giving him experience with the process of adoption and fully including and embracing Lacy into the larger family network. Lacy's adoption was an incredible miracle for both herself and her family, and we can’t imagine our family being complete without her in our lives. Even though Sean and Lacy are more than 10 years apart, Sean has always had a close and special relationship with her. We are confident that this experience has helped us to be incredibly excited to adopt a child and to prepare both ourselves and our family members for when we have the opportunity to open our home and hearts to our own adopted child.

We are also very grateful for our home and consider it to be our sanctuary from the world.

We live in a comfortable four-bedroom townhome located in a suburban neighborhood. In addition to a smaller park in our immediate community, there is also a beautiful 21-acre park down the road from us that we are very excited to spend lots of time at playing with our child. This park includes a large playground area, fields of open grass, and a duck pond that is a big hit with kids. More generally, our community is very well known to be extremely family oriented as it is actually known as "Family City USA," frequently hosting family friendly events such as family concerts, farmers markets, and family movie nights.

We also live in close proximity to many schools, with the closest elementary school located just up the road from us. Given both of our backgrounds working in education, we plan to be very protectively involved in our child’s school.

We are very grateful to have a strong and supportive family network. On Sean’s side, his parents frequently visit from New Jersey (especially during the college football season in the fall to enjoy a game!) and are thrilled at the prospect of being able to share lots of love with their first grandchild. We spend most Christmases out in New Jersey with Sean’s parents, doing things like visiting with Sean’s older sister Elaine who has autism, playing endless board games together, and taking the train to nearby New York City. Closer to home in Utah, we often see Sean’s younger sister who lives down the road from us. Sean also has a network of cousins who live nearby that we also frequently see, many of whom are currently having kids of their own. We are excited for our future child to be able to grow up close with cousins who are around their same age.

Matt also has many immediate family members nearby. His parents and two of seven siblings live minutes away, and another brother will likely be moving back to Utah next year as well when he finishes graduate school out on the East coast. One of our favorite family traditions is to prepare a meal (thanks mostly to Matt’s mom who is an incredible cook!) and bring it up the nearby canyon to enjoy the beautiful Utah scenery together.

We are so grateful that our child will have a built-in support system ready to go!

Thank you for taking the time to get to know us, it is nice to meet you through this letter. Our names are Sean (37 years old) and Matt (33 years old). We have been married for seven years and live in Utah. We both work in the field of education with Sean being a middle school principal and Matt being a K-12 education researcher for the University of Utah.

First, we want to express how much we admire you. It is one of the most selfless acts in the world to give birth to a child and, for your own personal reasons, make the decision to allow another family to raise your child. It takes real vulnerability and faith to make the choice you are considering. We hope to one day be even half as brave as you are.

We cannot accurately describe how grateful we are to you for considering working with us as prospective adoptive parents. As a gay couple that is unable to have children ourselves, we view adoption as a beautiful opportunity to achieve our dream of growing our family. Because of the love you have for your child and wanting the absolute best for them, you are giving us hope that one day our greatest dream of building a family by embracing a child into our home can one day happen. The fact that you are reviewing our profile feels like a miracle in itself and inspires us to be the absolute best parents we can be for our future adopted child.

If you decide to move forward with us for adoption, we will do absolutely everything we can to take care of and love your child. Joining our family will make your child the center of our world, and we are confident that we will be able to provide them with a good life. We are grateful to both have strong family networks that will provide community and support for your child as well. We live in a safe and family-friendly neighborhood and will provide them with a great education and opportunities to explore who they are and their interests. We hope to create meaningful memories with our future child both every day through the love they feel in their day-to-day life, as well as through traveling together to expand their worldview and going on family adventures together.

We know that the decision to move forward with adoption is extremely difficult, especially if it feels like such a decision could result in no longer having contact with your child. We want to assure you that it is important to us that, as you are able to, we want you to maintain a relationship with your child if you select us for the adoption. If you would like to, we will maintain regular contact with you and provide consistent updates on how your child is doing through letters, pictures, and emails. We are also hoping you would be comfortable with having in-person visits in the future. We feel strongly it is in everyone’s best interest (yourself, us, and the child) that if you are desiring to stay connected with your child after the adoption, we provide the opportunities to do so.

When communicating with your child about the decision to adopt, it is important to us that we regularly and often share with them about yourself and the loving decision that was made to place them for adoption. Our plan is to reinforce that the child has an expanded support network with both us and their birth mother all wanting what is best for them, with that care for the child being the motivation for why the adoption took place.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and for considering us for adoption. We hope that as you continue with making this important decision, you will feel a sense of peace and know that we support you in doing whatever you feel is ultimately best for yourself and your child. We would love to hear from you if you would like to learn more and connect.

Sean & Matt