Hello, we are Mark and Lara. We are glad to have you learn more about us and our family.

We met as teenagers and became friends our senior year of high school. We stayed friends through college, including one year spent as roommates, and started dating after graduation in 2009. Lara had always thought Mark was cute, goofy and sweet, and Mark was attracted to Lara’s smile and intelligence. Our relationship is based on almost two decades of friendship, love, honesty and respect. What we appreciate about our relationship is how much fun we have together. Nothing is better than making each other laugh or smile or sharing a new experience or place together. We’ve wanted to bring a child into our family for a few years now, and we’re so excited to be on this journey.

We have built a life together in a cute one-story home, with our dog Nova, a lab mix, and our cat Buster. We live in Philomath, Oregon, a small rural town in the Willamette Valley. It takes less than an hour to get to the Oregon coast, and we’re surrounded by lots of great hiking spots. We love our town because it’s small, cute and easy to get around, but we’re not far from bigger towns and cities where we can go for sports, food, theater and concerts.

Lara is the chief financial officer at a small company that deals with emergency spills, environmental clean up and environmental professional services. Her favorite thing about her company is how baked into the culture work-life balance is. Mark works for the US Forest Service as a Field Coordinator. His job allows him to spend time in the wilderness during the summer, and he gets to train and mentor young folks with similar enthusiasm for the outdoors.

Weekends could find us enjoying our beautiful state doing some hiking, camping, rafting or enjoying the beach with Nova. We also enjoy cooking together or going out for a meal and some local beer. Mark likes to go on occasional backpacking trips with friends or fishing with his dad or friends during the fall and winter. He is excited to pass on his love of fishing and nature to a child. In the spring and summer, Lara spends a lot of time in the yard trying to be a gardener and also likes to bake, especially bread, pizza and cookies. She enjoyed baking with her parents growing up and looks forward to sharing this love with a child. We’ve been lucky enough to travel to several locations outside of Oregon and outside of the US together. We have many other places on our bucket list and hope to go on many travel adventures with our kiddo.

We cannot wait to share our life with a child, and we look forward to building a relationship with their birth family, in whatever way works for them. We know kids can’t have too much love, and we welcome open communication and connection with the birth family.

Thank you for reading our letter. We look forward to sharing more with you.

Wishing you all the best,
Mark and Lara