In our leisure time, we love to find a place outdoors to be active and to rest. When we plan a weekend or vacation, the first thing we discuss is what type of setting we want to have as our background. While Korry would choose the mountains and Tessa would choose the beach, we are happy in either! We've been known to find the best cabins surrounded by the tallest of trees where we can hike and explore the area. You're also likely to find us in a beach bungalow or camper van for a few days as close to the beach as we can get.

Two of our annual vacations spots include a staycation at a local rental house to relax poolside and a woodsy cabin in the snowy San Bernardino mountains where we love to sled and sip hot chocolate together. Going to these two places is also a tradition for our closest friends and family to join us! We love getting away from home to spend time with those closest to us and for all the kids to make memories together every year.

Our home leisure time is usually evenings and weekends in our backyard where we love to cozy up on our covered porch area, gather around the fire pit to roast marshmallows, run and race through the grass, climb and slide on the playset, and tend to our flower and vegetable gardens. We consider the park across the street as an extension of our front yard and love to walk over to enjoy a picnic or splish around in the splash pad with neighborhood friends.

Korry has served in a variety of roles in the live event industry for most of his professional life. He started out as a sound and lighting engineer running sound and lights for smaller events like church services and weddings. Loving being behind the scenes of larger productions, Korry became a successful stage manager and technical director overseeing a team of people responsible for making shows happen successfully from start to finish. His career has taken him on a national tour with notable artists as their lighting designer and engineer. When he became a father, he shifted his work to be more localized and family-friendly. He now serves the entertainment industry as a live event specialist working mostly from home with a regular business hour schedule.

Tessa began her teaching career working with college students in a career planning course offered at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. It wasn't until she became an elementary school music teacher, that she realized she wanted to teach younger students. After completing her Master's Degree in Elementary Education, Tessa went on to teach every grade from Preschool to 5th Grade in both private and public school settings. Most recently, she has become the Instructional Coach at the elementary school where she has been teaching for the last 15 years. She loves this new angle and approach to reaching young students; she gets to work with more than thirty teachers helping them to elevate their instruction to be the best they can be.

Living in California offers the unique opportunity to be able to drive to the ocean, the desert, the mountains, or the valley on any given day. While we love it all, Korry would choose the mountains and Tessa would choose the beach for a day away. Our house sits in a neighborhood full of kids and, with a park directly across the street, everyone gets to know each other at the playground or while running around the splashpad. The park also has a huge grassy field where families gather for picnics, sports camps, and birthday parties throughout the year. This child will become an instant member of the neighborhood squad with babies and toddlers right next door, across the street, and also two houses down. A few miles away we love using our private swim club that has a baby/toddler pool, large lap pool, basketball and volleyball courts, and clubhouse grills.

This child's nursery and bedroom is down a short hallway from the other two bedrooms in the house. Our favorite room in the house is the kitchen where a large island sits in the middle and family and friends seem to always gather around. The kitchen opens up to the side and back yards where we love picking fruits from our fig, apple, orange, lime, apricot, and avocado trees. Between the trees is where this child will climb, slide, and swing on the playset beside the huge sandbox filled with fun. The fenced-in front yard is a fun place where we like to sit and greet our neighbors as they walk their families (and dogs) to the park and where we wait for the ice cream truck on those hot summer days.

We come from two lively, loving families...one close by and one across the country!

Tessa's extended family resides within a 45-minute drive from our home. This child would grow up going to "family lunch" every first Sunday of the month where we all gather, cook food, play games, and laugh together. Cousins between ages 9 to 23 from Tessa's three older sisters' families look forward to playing games inside and outside in Papam's (grandpa's) pool and grassy yards. On holiday occasions like Christmas and Easter, our family gathers with over 50 aunts, uncles, and cousins from all over southern California. The festivities are almost exactly the same as when Tessa was growing up with tables and tables of food and hugs and kisses between everyone as the party begins and ends. The whole, huge family is so very excited to welcome this child!

Several states away in Indiana, the other half of our family will welcome us home when we visit 2-3 times a year. This child will be warmly greeted by Korry's two older siblings and their five kids who would love having another cousin around to go boating with on the lake, play card games, and explore the fields and forests of the Midwest. They also come to visit us several times a year and are so excited to watch our family grow!

The fact that you are reading this letter from us proves that you are literally the most self-less, most loving, and most heroic person in your child's life and future. We are whole-heartedly committed to making sure they know that from the beginning, every day, and throughout their life with us. We have built a life together over the last 20 years of marriage that includes the dream of raising children in a home full of fun, laughter, and adventure. While we are blessed with our son, he came to us after we had gone through two miscarriages and then three more after he was born. With the last miscarriage being the most traumatic of them all, we decided to begin saving and storing up the eagerness, excitement, and love that we have for our future child...for yours; a beautiful baby who can receive us and everything we have to give. We believe that everything happens for a reason and even the tragic losses we have endured were perhaps so we could be ready and able to parent this child you carry.

We want you to know that we will honor you continually throughout this child's life so they know who you are and how much you love them. We want to tell your story, in the highest respect, helping them to grow up understanding that all families are different and the journey that brought them to us was of deepest love. We plan to keep in contact with you with open communication however often you want and in whatever platform works best for you; sending updates and photos through email, phone calls, texts, letters, and in-person visits throughout their life, if that's what you wish.

We have built our marriage and household on a foundation of being real and honest at all times. We, as individuals, couldn't be more opposite from each other; Korry a steady, thoughtful introvert and Tessa an outgoing, social extrovert. We pride ourselves on celebrating our differences, working hard to compromise and see each other during times of stress and/or conflict. As parents, we allow children to be who they are, feel how they feel, and experience the world in real ways that shape and develop them as they grow. We look forward to celebrating and adding this child and their unique heritage, history, strengths, weaknesses, and personality to our family.

We come from families that value quality time and real relationship with each other. While we are a fun-loving, on-the-go family, we are intentional about reserving time and protecting space for us to just be together. We purposefully take one day at a time and do our best not to get wrapped up in the race and pace of life that surrounds most young families. Be assured we will always make time to create genuine relationship with this child in a way that helps them feel secure, seen, and deeply accepted for who they are.

Joseph, our spunky, silly three-year old son who nick-named himself "JoJo", was so excited to become "Big Brother" during our last pregnancy that ended so abruptly. This child will have their own place in our family, second to no one, fitted just for them, without comparison or parallel to their big brother. Becoming parents has been the biggest and best adventure of our lives thus far and we cannot wait to continue wherever this journey leads us. Many would say "we will love this child like they are our own" and while that is true for us also, we'd rather say "we will love this child - period" - with everything that we have and for the world that they came from, the distinct person they will become, and the special place they will have in our family and yours.

Thank you for considering us,

Korry & Tessa