Life With Us

Our child will be surrounded by loving family members and friends. We live close to our parents and our siblings. No one in our immediate family lives more than an hour away from us! We have two nieces, Olivia and Sadie.

We have two twin nephews, who are also our godsons, Chase and Connor.

Mara's parents are retired from teaching and running a daycare.  

They are doting grandparents who love their grandchildren more than anything, and who are very supportive of our adoption process.

Chad's mother is also retired, and sees her grandsons nearly every day, taking them to swimming lessons, kindergarten, and setting up Easter Egg hunts like the one they were thoroughly enjoying in the picture below.

Our social circle is also very supportive of our journey to become parents.  Mara's life-long best friend, Carrie, and her husband, Scot, have five children of their own.  They are missionaries; Scot was the minister who officiated our marriage ceremony! 

Although the image below is a bit blurry, it's a picture from Carrie's digital scrapbook from Christmas of last year. It epitomizes the closeness of our families and our relationship, which is more like family than friends. 

Our good friends Luke and Kim, pictured below at a local charity event for the American Cancer Society, are fellow dog lovers.

Kim is a nurse in a neo-natal intensive care unit!

We stay in touch with former students and baseball players, and sometimes they even become close enough to feel like extended family, so we've attended their college graduations and been a part of other milestones in their lives.

Our town is small but has a lot to offer.

We have a beautiful local park with everything a small town park should have, from baby ducks

to a playground

to monuments honoring local heroes.

We live across the street from a local fire company

and within walking distance of the area schools, where Mara works and where our child would attend.

The downtown area is quaint

and full of good places to grab a bite

or spend some time.

Schuylkill Haven takes pride in its history and works hard to be a safe and vibrant place.

It recently revitalized some old factories into an art center that holds events and classes for children to attend.  The picture below is from the local newspaper, taken when Mara and one of her dearest friends and colleagues, Janie, attended an art show at the factory featuring our friend Luke's art!

We have nearby friends with children, like Katie and Matt, who have Owen and another baby on the way. 

We believe a child would have a fulfilling life with us. We have access to everything wonderful in a small town, like many playgrounds, a library, a recreation center, small schools of high quality, and an amazing network of family and friends who support us. We also live close enough to bigger cities to expose our child to diversity, history, and culture, all three of which are very important to us. 




We know our current life has plenty of room for a child or children, and we can't wait to see our world through their eyes.