About Us

We’re Jim, Jennifer, Gianna and Gavriel, and this website is all about our journey to Kazakhstan where we met our daughter (@ 6 mo old), our journey to Ethiopia where we met our son (@ 12 mo old), our life at home as a family, and our next adoption journey (technically in process for China, but may switch countries)!   

We (Jim and Jennifer) met in Minneapolis, MN in 1999 at church, and 11 months and 1 day later we were married.  We love the wilderness and realized our dream by building our house in the middle of a very heavily wooded acreage.

We lived in Minneapolis, MN for the first 8 years of our marriage, and currently live in the Finger Lakes Region of New York as a family of 7!  Our furry kids consist of two English Mastiffs and an orange cat (our St. Bernard sadly passed away in early 2008).  You can read why we chose adoption in the FAQs section above as well as the more detailed account in "How We Arrived Here" in "Gianna's Story" and then again in "Finding Mimu." 

Other than playing with the kids and dogs, our hobbies include reading, stock trading, and gardening, though they are no longer pursued quite as fervently now that we've got two little ones!

We’re both voracious readers and if there’s one thing we never have a shortage of, it’s books. Jim has gotten into stock trading and photography in recent years and continues to spend his spare time on both hobbies. 

Jennifer has developed a passion for gardening and spends her free time planting, weeding, mulching, and researching new plants.  Jennifer hopes to interest the kiddos in gardening too!

Our family activities now include lots of play time, chasing the animals, and swimming in any body of water the kids can find, be it an ice cube puddle on the kitchen floor, the bathtub, hot tub, kiddy pool, or the lake.