Pahoua enjoys journaling, crafting, and serving in various mentoring roles. Pahoua currently leads the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Affinity group for over thirty college students at a public university. Once a month Pahoua leads interactive activities that promote community building and help students reflect on their APIDA heritage. Pahoua also mentors four high school students through a college access program for economically disadvantaged students from diverse backgrounds. Pahoua takes pride in giving back to her community and hopes that her work as a mentor allows her to set a strong example for her future child.

Cha loves gardening during the summer and playing sports like badminton and pickleball throughout the year. Cha is also a very proud plant parent and takes great care of the twenty two house plants in our living room. According to Cha, he can never have enough house plants. He is also a podcaster! Once a week, Cha and his friends meet up and talk about miscellaneous topics on their podcast.

About Cha:

About Pahoua:

We've dedicated our entire professional careers to supporting diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in our community, especially with children. Before Cha's current role as a Community Experience Manager at the largest non profit in our city, Cha served as an Elementary Afterschool teacher for seven years, working primarily with low income, students of color. For eight years, Pahoua led a citywide youth program that empowers 1200 girls between the ages of 5 and 18 to defy stereotypes and challenge spaces that traditionally were not created for them. Pahoua currently leads a pre-college program at a public university that support first generation, and low income high school students from all over the United States in preparing for college. She is passionate about providing underrepresented high school students equitable access to a college education and strives to get students excited about career exploration.

As parents to a child whose race may be different from our own, we are prepared to apply what we know about creating physically and emotionally safe, inclusive spaces. We will also continue to do our due diligence to learn and grow to be better parents for our child. We'll fiercely advocate for and protect our child. We will also lean on friends and families in our community to guide us. We're very fortunate to have mentors and friends with diverse ethnic identities that are willing to support us.

Our home is nestled in a suburban neighborhood bordering the outskirts of rural farming communities. In our cul-de-sac, neighbors walk over to greet you, walk their dogs, and string Christmas lights during the winter. We've lived in our house for 7 years now and love all the quiet, calm charm that our neighborhood offers. In our big, beautiful, fenced in backyard, Cha loves to grow vegetables like tomatoes, Thai chili peppers, and eggplants.

We live close by an elementary school with a huge, colorful playground, small parks, walking trails, and we're minutes away from a city bike path. In the summer, we enjoy attending festivals like the annual Sweet Corn Festival, where hundreds of people picnic and eat dozens of the sweetest corn in Wisconsin and ride familiar carnival rides. We are also very fortunate to live a short 20 minute drive to free family friendly attractions like the zoo, the arboretum, and botanical gardens.

We both come from big families. Cha is the youngest of six and a proud uncle of twenty four nieces and nephews. Pahoua is the second oldest of eight and an aunt to five nieces and nephews. We live about an hour away from almost all of our siblings and close relatives. We frequently drive out to visit family on weekends and during special holidays. We live ten minutes away from Cha's mother, his brother (Thae), and sister in law (Mee). Cha's father, our favorite couch potato, lives with us and he cannot wait for us to welcome a baby to our family and home.

Cha's sisters, Mai, Mai Thao, and Zoua are foodies who love to cook. They coordinate all the Korean barbecue dinners, hot pot gatherings, and seafood boils. Pahoua's siblings (Arlee, Kalia, Choua, Kong, Nouchee, Yenghoua, and Laxeng) love board game nights and spending time together. We enjoy miscellaneous family outings together like taking the kids to the community pool, apple picking in the Fall, or hiking at a national park together.

Both our families are very supportive of our adoption plan. They cannot wait to meet and spoil our baby! We also cannot wait for our baby to grow up with our nieces and nephews!

First of all, we cannot begin to imagine the difficult decision that you are making. Your decision to entrust your precious child into another's care is a gift of immeasurable value. Through your adoption experience, we hope that you find peace and healing.

We met almost sixteen years ago right before we started college. During college, we shared a strong, platonic friendship that evolved and became something unexpected. Ironically, we used to give each other relationship advice before we decided to be together. We officially dated for six months before we decided to be together forever. In October of 2014, our marriage was culturally recognized in our Hmong community and celebrated through a two day long Hmong wedding. We feel privileged to say that the foundation of our relationship is rooted in a deep understanding of each other, friendship, unconditional love, and humor. We really are a silly couple that laughs everyday with each other. Even on our toughest days, we always manage to find joy and laughter.

We both share a commitment to serving youth and believe that it is a calling that is more than an occupation, but it is a lifelong passion that is deeply rewarding. During the first few years of marriage, we both worked directly with children between the ages of 5 and 18. Cha served as the Afterschool Elementary teacher, leading holistic, educational activities for 2nd and 3rd graders while Pahoua taught important life skills like financial literacy, stress management, and cooking skills to middle school and high school girls. Our combined experience helped us feel equipped to parent and it ignited our excitement to begin our own family. After years of failed attempts to get pregnant, we learned that Pahoua had a medical condition that would not allow her to conceive. While processing our grief in the last two years, we also discussed in depth how we would want to start our family and every conversation led us back to adopting.

Please know that we are fully committed to providing a loving, stable, and nurturing home. We promise to fill your child's days with an endless supply of happiness, laughter, and exploration. As parents with experience in nontraditional, education settings, we vow to help your child attain the education path that they choose for themselves. We also promise that as their first teachers in this world, we will provide the life lessons necessary to help them feel confident in their decisions, free to express themselves, and become a caring, contributing member to the communities that they're a part of. You would be giving us our family's most important gift. Please know that they will be loved and cared for, not just by us, by our families and people who make up our communities.

Through our open adoption agreement, we promise to regularly send photos through email, text messages, and mail. We are also interested in exploring what in person visits can look like in the future. We're open to creating a private social media account where we post photos of important milestones and birthday celebrations. The social media account will allow you to watch your child grow with us. Thank you for reviewing our profile and considering us.

Sincerely,

Cha & Pahoua