Hello from London, Ontario, Canada! Thank you for considering us as adoptive parents! We are thrilled to give you a glimpse into who we are and our lives together. We met in high school, dated for 10 years, and have been married for 7 years. We have two daughters (one adopted and one biological daughter), and they are such loving sisters. We are all excited for the opportunity to adopt again and look forward to continuing to grow our family!

We have always known that we wanted to include adoption in our family, as our extended family has grown through adoption.

We promise we will love any child who joins us through adoption as our own and provide them with every opportunity we can. We truly believe that we have been called to pursue adoption and we are very excited to bring these perspectives to our family.

We met when we were in high school and have been together ever since. We quickly realized how much we had in common (and how much we didn’t!). After ten years of dating, Kevin proposed while we were on a vacation in France - a day we will never forget. We were married in the mountains in Canada in 2015, surrounded by our closest friends and family. Even after being together for nearly 17 years, we grow closer to each other every day. Our family grew in 2017 when our daughter, Lux, joined our family through adoption and again in 2021 when our second daughter, Zahri, joined our family. They are going to be the best big sisters!

I grew up playing every sport I could (basketball, volleyball, field hockey, badminton, track and field), but especially loved playing soccer. I was fortunate to play soccer at a national level growing up, in university, and overseas in Scotland, while studying kinesiology. After my varsity athlete days, I went on to pursue a master’s degree in kinesiology, a doctoral degree (PhD) in medical science, and then a medical degree. I am currently a doctor, and I am training to be an orthopaedic surgeon. I plan on working as a surgeon-scientist and doing joint replacement surgery. I love to volunteer in our community and work as an exercise physiologist to deliver exercise programing to arthritis patients. I keep active primarily through exercise classes including yoga, spin, and barre. I like to do crafts and bake – activities that the girls and I now enjoy together!

The thing I admire most about Kristen is the way she takes care of people. She loves hosting friends, listening carefully to others, celebrating their success, and helping them finish tasks. She is incredibly organized and consistently reaches out to others. She is truly an incredible mother to our girls!

I have always enjoyed sports and keeping active, which led me to pursue education in Kinesiology. I completed my undergraduate degree, master’s degree, and doctoral degree (PhD) in Kinesiology. What I most love about my job as a university professor is that I get to use my creative and logical sides to conduct research, and I get to pass on this passion to the students I teach. I especially love the freedom my flexible schedule gives me to spend lots of time with my girls!

Outside of work, I continue to keep active through sports and resistance training. I enjoy reading and serenading (whether they like it or not) the rest of the family on my guitars. My absolute favorite things to do now are sharing my hobbies with my daughters. I love taking Lux and Zahri to the pool and park, reading them bedtime stories, baking, cooking, and having tea parties.

The thing I like most about Kevin is his kindhearted and selfless personality. Kevin has a personality that draws others to him and, without knowing it, he deeply impacts those around him. He’s a wonderful husband, and an even better dad.

Lux was born in Florida in 2017 and joined our family shortly after. She is already an amazing big sister; she has an incredible sense of humor and loves making Zahri laugh. Lux’s two favorite things are music and movement! She will dance or sing along to any song, and she loves keeping active in dance, gymnastics, cheer, and soccer. She also loves baking, reading, playing at the park, and swimming. Lux thrives in school and enjoys learning about science.

Zahri was born in 2021 and has been on the move ever since. Zahri is easy going and has a calm personality. Zahri’s favorite activities are giving or receiving hugs, showing off her big smile, and doing whatever it is Lux is doing.

There is nothing we love more than spending time together as a family. We share many passions and hobbies and look forward to passing those onto the children. Here are just a few things we can’t wait to do as a family of five!

Travel: We are passionate about exploring the world around us. We have visited over 40 countries as a couple and even more as individuals. We love the way experiencing other cultures and gaining new perspectives brings us closer together. We find the way traveling exposes us to other ways of life to be incredibly meaningful.

Cooking: We love to spend time at home together in the kitchen. Kevin does most of the cooking – he enjoys baking, grilling, and making homemade sausages. Kristen is known for her sweets – cupcakes, cake pops, and cookies!

Music: We both appreciate and enjoy listening to music. Kevin loves to play guitar, and Lux and Zahri love to start dance parties!

Exercise: We love keeping active! We frequently attend spin classes and yoga together, and our proximity to lakes and the cottage allows us to enjoy hiking, cross country-skiing, and snowshoeing. Also, we have trained and competed together in a few half-marathons and a full marathon.

Our home in London, Canada is close to several lakes, where we love to spend time outdoors. In the summer, we enjoy hiking, kayaking, swimming, and fishing. In the winter you can find us snowshoeing, skating, and cross-country skiing. We also love spending time at Kristen’s family’s cottage, which is only a couple of hours away from our home. It’s such a relaxing place and we love spending time with our family there on weekends.

We built and moved into a brand-new house in 2019, in London, Ontario, Canada. The house is spacious and modern. We have a large backyard with lots of room to play, a forest behind the house, and several playgrounds within walking distance. We are looking forward to making many memories here as a family. We love to host BBQ’s, brunches, and celebration dinners at our home. We often have several friends and family over each month. We also attend a local church close to our home and we are well connected with some close friends. It’s a wonderful community for raising a family!

We are fortunate to be surrounded by close friends, and our parents and immediate family (parents and siblings) travel often to visit us. We each have one sibling and we have two nieces who are close in age to our kids and love spending time together. We especially love celebrating special occasions! Holidays are spent with our extended families and friends, and when we can, we go away on family holidays together.

Everyone is very excited for us to adopt again and cannot wait to meet a little one!

We share our home with our eight-year-old, soft-coated wheaten terrier, Xavier. Xavi is an extremely playful, hypo-allergenic dog, who adores children. He’s going to be an incredible playmate for another child! He loves going for walks and hikes, playing with other dogs at the park, getting chased by Lux and Zahri, and accompanying us on car rides, boat rides, and road trips. He even sleeps at the foot of Lux’s bed every night!

We love celebrating holidays and birthdays! We usually go all out and have a themed party for each celebration – including dressing up, decorating the house, and celebrating with fun themed food. We have always enjoyed celebrating Canadian holidays, and now get the privilege of celebrating American holidays with Lux as well.

Our favorite part of parenting is passing on our interests to our children and finding ways to share new interests that they develop. We value celebrating our differences and cherish that adoption is a part of how our family is built. We are open with Lux about her adoption story and we talk about her birth family often. We celebrate her birth parents’ and siblings birthdays, and we love to celebrate American holidays. We would love to have an open adoption and will always celebrate and recognize all our children’s’ families. We continue to take classes on biracial parenting, adoption, and even styling black hair so we can ensure Lux feels proud of how she looks.

Even though we all look different, we are very much a family and are conscious to ensure we all feel like we belong together.

We wholeheartedly thank you for considering us as an adoptive family. We are so grateful for the many opportunities afforded to us in education, extracurricular activities, and travel - and we want to give the same opportunities to the children.

We hope to instill in them our values of acceptance and appreciation for culture in our family. We provide regular updates and photos to Lux’s birth parents, and we are more than willing to have contact with you throughout your child’s life and share with you updates through text and photos. We promise that your child will always know your story and how they came to be a part of our family. Thinking of you throughout this time and hoping to meet you someday soon!

With love & gratitude,
Kristen, Lux, Zahri, and Kevin