Juan and Casey
Hello from beautiful Seattle!
Juan (in green) and Casey (in yellow) here. We are thrilled to introduce ourselves and share about our lives and community of friends and family as we hope to grow our family through open adoption.
We met in 2014 on a dating app where we bonded over our shared love of travel, food and exploring different cultures. After a few weeks of chatting, we were so excited to meet in person. Then, on the eve of our first date, Casey told Juan he was feeling under the weather. To Juan’s relief, Casey was not one to make up excuses and asked to reschedule, except for on a night Juan had a work party. Juan chose Casey, and his co-workers teased him that Casey best be worth skipping the party for. And he was!
We spent our first date gallivanting around Pike Place Market, where Juan had just gotten an apartment. The market would become our home and stomping grounds for two years while we worked and saved money to travel to Southeast Asia, West Africa, Europe and Latin America together. The market is still an area that we love dearly, and we’ve become friends with lots of the business owners and local vendors that work from there. They’ll be ready to welcome our child with booster seats and crayons.
We’ve now built a home together and live with our two dogs, Hendricks and Breezy, who are practically real-life teddy bears. We love to go on walks, explore the local beach, parks, farmers markets and our favorite restaurants. We also love interior design and home projects. In fact, we recently remodeled our 1927-built house with our own taste and modern style. We enjoy hosting friends and family for dinners and holidays, movie nights, and impromptu dance parties. We hope to extend this same welcoming environment to our child’s birth family in the future!
Juan grew up in Venezuela in South America and moved to the US in 2001 for college at the University of Virginia (wahoo-wah!) in Charlottesville, a place that is still near and dear to his heart. He became an American citizen, which was a proud moment after being immersed in American culture for years and working hard to achieve this status. He moved to Seattle in 2012 for his dream job in the travel field – a job he held for 9 years before transitioning to his current job fulfilling another passion of his – helping small businesses grow through technology. He loves making friends wherever he goes, collecting sneakers, trying new recipes, and posting photos on Instagram of us jumping during our travels. We have a close relationship with Juan’s parents who now live in South Florida, and love getting together with them for holidays and more. We’re also close with his younger sister who lives locally in Seattle.
Casey grew up in the Seattle area and moved away to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer helping rural farmers in Ghana, West Africa. After this life-changing experience, he headed to San Francisco for graduate school at UC Berkeley (go Bears!) and then to Miami Beach for work. After living in enough hot weather, he moved back to Seattle in 2013 and has worked as an urban planner ever since. Casey loves all things related to cities, gardening (both indoors and out), and loves curating pop music playlists for his workouts. Casey’s parents, as well as his older brother and his wife, all live in the Seattle area and we get together regularly to share meals, celebrate special occasions, and for weekend getaways around the northwest.
We have always been excited to grow our family and feel that an open adoption is the right choice for us because we believe in being fully honest with our child, and want them to embrace their story with pride. As parents, we look forward to providing our child with a loving and stable home that that will allow them to blossom, and we know that they will be showered with love by our community of family and friends. We look forward to welcoming our child’s birth family into our community and home with open arms.
-Juan and Casey