Our Story
Narrated by Brooke
How We MetThe first time I saw Jared was at a high school track meet. Evidently, I started staring at Jared as he was walking across the field. Jared's younger brother noticed me gawking at Jared and told me that was his brother. Several months later, Jared and I crossed paths again at a church youth activity. We ended up sitting next to each other at dinner, eating barbecued chicken on a tailgate of a truck. The funny part about this was that Jared was there as a youth leader, he being 22 years old and recently returned home from a mission for our church. Maybe he was flirting with the 17 year olds instead of being a leader? :) Just kidding! Anyways, I must have made a good impression on him because a little over a year later, he spotted me walking across the campus of Brigham Young University with my roommates. He then looked up my phone number from the student directory (aka the "stocker net" LOL!) and called me. Needless to say I was thrilled he called and he invited me over for dinner at his place. He made me dinner (very impressive!) and we played frisbee at a nearby park. It was a perfect first date.
We were married May 4, 2007 in the Cardston, Alberta Canada temple. It has been a wonderful four years. We have done a lot of different things during our marriage. We studied at BYU during the fall and winter semesters. During the summer, Jared had a great job selling home security systems that took us all over the country. We have lived in Washington D.C.; Amarillo/Lubbock, TX; Atlanta, GA; Long Island, NY; and Fort Worth, TX. We loved traveling to the different places and we still love traveling. We graduated from BYU in April of 2010. Jared with his B.S. in Nursing, and me with my B.S. in Public Health Education.
Us Now
We recently moved back to Montana to be closer to family. Jared works as a Registered Nurse and I work for the county health department as a Public Health Educator. We love living closer to our families and living in the Rocky Mountains. We enjoy spending time together and doing a lot of different activities. Some things we like to do are mountain biking, skiing/snowboarding, 4-wheeling, eating good food, soaking in the near-by hot spring, traveling, watching movies, and attending basketball and baseball games.
Our Decision to Adopt
Jared and I love children and when we got married we planned on having children. Well things don't always go as planned. It has been over three years since we first started trying to get pregnant. We have tried various treatments and procedures with different doctors with no luck. So far our infertility is unexplained. Infertility really sucks. Even though most days I have completely accepted the fact that its going to take longer for Jared and I to have a family, some days are really hard. I once read Barbara Eck Menning's thoughts on infertility. This is what she said,"My infertility resides in my heart as an old friend. I do not hear from it for weeks at a time, and then, a moment, a thought, a baby announcement or some such thing, and I will feel the tug-maybe even be sad or shed a few tears. And I think, "There's my old friend." It will always be part of me..." This is exactly the way it is for me. The pangs of infertility never completely go away, but I don't let it consume me and make my life miserable.
Infertility is an emotional roller coaster ride. We decided to look into adoption after some very heartbreaking, unsuccessful infertility procedures. However, we do realize that adoption and infertility are two separate matters. Like I mentioned before, the pains of infertility will never completely go away. Adoption can help you find great joy and happiness in having a family and being a parent. But it will not cure infertility. We feel very strongly however, that there is a special little spirit that is meant to be in our family. So on Valentine's Day of this year we decided to call LDS Family Services to set up an appointment to meet with a counselor. I was very nervous about the whole thing but after talking for one minute with our counselor I was overwhelmed that this was the right thing to do. We both knew it was right for us so we immediately completed the first stack of application papers.We were approved to adopt on May 6, 2011. A perfect anniversary gift.
We are very excited for the opportunity to adopt. We know that is all possible through the selfless decisions of birth moms that this miracle will happen. We have the utmost respect for these courageous women for choosing what's best for their babies. We would love to have an open relationship with birth mothers, because it is best for all parties involved. We would also tell the baby we adopt that their birth mother place them for adoption because she loved them so much.
