As a military family, who spent many years abroad, we have a unique perspective on the world, and maturity to back it up. Our friends used to joke we were the parents and already married when we were dating, and that joke was kind of true. We always try to organize, take care of, and otherwise help out our peers and family. It can be things as simple as one hour phone calls five time-zones out or enough food to last two weeks with a new birth, but we love serving and cherishing those close to us. We believe that makes us uniquely suited to take care of a baby, and expose them to the wonders around us.

We have never lost our appetites for exploring the world, trying new things, meeting new people, and that is a gift we think we can share, enabling our child to be a child and absorb as much as they can about this wonderful world. We are big, caring kids at heart, and we think its great to leverage our hearts in spreading joy wherever we go.

Maile About Matthew: Kind and quirky, Matthew is always up to something whether he is crafting the latest recipe for the week, beating a video game, rallying the neighborhood for adventure, or designing and running workshops to help advanced the next level of research and development for America. He is my rock, throughout all the ups and downs that life has thrown at us. Matthew already has a startling amount of "dad jokes" that can be funny and his time with much younger siblings has left him ready for teenagers and young adults.

Matthew About Maile: Big hearted (maybe too big sometimes) and brave, Maile is, in my humble opinion, the best wife in the world. I fell in love with a woman who is always willing to fight for what she wants and lend a hand to friends in need, whether it be a cup of tea and an hour listening session or her family's secret shortbread recipe. Maile's work in the service keeps her busy, but she always makes time to explore the locations she's sent to with family and friends, making new ones along the way and leaving hearts touched at every place she calls home. I truly adore her and how she can lighten up any room she enters with her winning smiling and empathy.

We will cherish your child with all our hearts for all of our lives. Part of cherishing someone is talking openly about what culture they come from. Both of us have analytic brains and enjoy researching, discovering new traditions, and including what we learn in our lives. Whether it is a culture that we are familiar with, or a culture that is new to us, we plan to learn as much as possible and incorporate it into our daily lives. We love exploring culture through food and festivals, so sharing similar traditions will come naturally for us. We also enjoy learning history, both the good and the bad and all the shades of gray in between, and sharing our knowledge with others.

We have a diverse set of friends and family from a variety of cultures who have promised to support us in our adoption efforts, ranging from Indonesian cousins to African German bridesmaids. An advantage of the military is that you meet people from across the US, and world, and it has exposed us to a larger worldview than most of our peers. Both of us have spent time living abroad, and we are stronger for the experience.

Finally, our home of choice, where we hope to settle after Maile retires, is one of the most diverse in the nation with plenty of local cultural groups we can reach out join to make sure our child knows and understands their heritage.

Our community is rich in diversity and history which really drew us to the area. There is an annual Scottish parade to celebrate the founding families that takes over the entire city! The best part is that the parade includes every possible group throughout the community, not just the Scottish organizations and families. Although the Scottish puppies who "march" by are Maile's favorite. Almost as cute as all the kids either in the parade throwing candy to the crowd (and eating some along the way), and the kids cheerfully grabbing the candy and running back to their parents with glee.

We live in a townhouse that has three floors, three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a living room, a dining room/office, and a walk-out kitchen to the back patio. The front door is actually on the middle floor and the kitchen is on the first floor! While that is a different layout from any other house we've lived in, we've come to love our quite nook that is within a 20 minute walk of downtown adventure.

In less than a five minute walk we have four public playgrounds geared to different age ranges, as well as a community recreational center with after school clubs and a swimming pool. There are a ton of hiking and bike trails also. A short metro away is D.C.'s museums, food trucks, and cultural events. Our favorite D.C. event is the Cherry Blossom Festival, which we look forward to each year.

While Maile is an only child, she has 16 cousins on her mother's side and 4 cousins on her father's side. Maile's extended family lives throughout Virginia, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Texas, California, and Hawaii. We see Maile's 90-year-old maternal grandmother, nickname Tutu (which is Hawaiian for grandmother) at least once a month. Tutu and Aunt Peggy live about 20 minutes away from us. We bring Starbucks and sometimes brunch to kick-off our visits and just chat about life and catch up. Maile's family is super excited about welcoming your child into our family. So much so that Maile's parents have already picked out grandparent names!

Matthew grew up with one brother but now has six siblings, enough cousins to make a football team, and two great sets of parents. Growing up the oldest, Matthew is still always planning events, coordinating with his siblings, and cooking for the whole family. When he gained his step siblings, he was always ready to take the youngest sister to the museum or playground or help his middle sisters move. His brother, who lives nearby, is planning on being a troublemaker of an uncle, but the good kind of trouble like ice cream trips. Both sets of his parents are looking forward to a grandchild to spoil, and his three nieces and nephew can't wait to play with their new cousin. Matthew's extended family loves to have big family meetups and can't wait to have giant meals with the baby.

We are excited to start this journey with you.

Our story is quite simple: We met and started dating in 2012 in Ohio. For two of those years, Matthew was overseas in Europe: Netherlands, Norway and Sicily while studying for two masters degrees. The military moved Maile from Ohio, where they met, to Maryland. Before graduating, Matthew proposed and we got married in Virginia in 2015. In 2017, the military moved us to Alaska. We have been trying to grow our family since 2017 but had trouble with fertility and turned to adoption. In 2019 the military moved us to Virginia and we quickly settled down to pursue adoption. We have a lot of love and wonder that we wish to share and pass on to your child.

We are open to all races and all cultures. After mourning the loss of the two miscarriages in 2018, when we thought hard about adoption we realized that all we want is a child to cherish and nurture and we want one without delay. Our love is not limited to, and does not care about, the color of their skin. We want to know what their culture is so that we can honor those traditions and teachings. We have informally (and one or two we seriously have considered formally as a sister) adopted many of our friends as family over the years and have an incredible diverse community, both near and far, who can help us learn and honor new cultures until we can incorporate those aspects as our own. Our neighborhood is known for diversity and has families of all ages around us. Our school system ranks #8 out of over 11,822 school districts in America for diversity. Our school system ranks #1 out of 132 school districts in Virginia for diversity.

Staying connected: Connecting with you and staying connected over the years is important to us. Before the birth, we are open to phone calls and emails. We are also open to visits as long as pandemic risk levels have gone down and we are not a risk factor for you as the birth parent. Alternatively, we are happy to do a digital meet and greet. After placement, we are happy to make reasonable efforts to facilitate yearly visits. The military may move us to locations where this is not feasible. Should this be the case, we will make every effort to sync vacation opportunities to include these visits or make efforts to visit before/after the military moves. Naturally, after placement we are open to phone calls and emails to stay connected. We look forward to at least one visit within the first five years of birth and we are open to yearly visits and exchanging pictures and letters for up to 18 years.

Life doesn't always go to plan. Our journey to adoption has been a long and hard one. But we can promise this: any child in our home will live a grand adventure full of love and experiences from a huge family of friends and relatives all over the world. That child will always be the number one adventure in our hearts and we will share everything we have with them. We will love, protect, and raise them with everything we have, no matter what, and ensure they grow up to be happy and amazed at the world around them.

Matthew & Maile