Welcome! Meet:

Derek + Greg

Sports Marketing Manager / Operations Manager

Washington

Asian / Caucasian

All About Derek & Greg
Video
Why Adoption?
Gallery
Family and Home
How We Met
Advice to Future Child
Perspectives on Open Adoption
Favorites

All About Derek & Greg

Hello! We are Greg and Derek - A fun-loving, adventurous, family oriented, pair who is so, so excited to start our family.

We met in 2015 and bonded quickly over our love of the outdoors, career ambitions, penchant for travel, and our love of family. Our first date was a run on New Year’s Day around Discovery Park in Seattle followed by coffee. We got married in the San Juan Islands in 2021 in what our friends and family would describe as a truly “Greg and Derek” event - a wedding party that was a beautiful mix of family, friends, children and pets, endless laughs and tears, and even a choreographed dance routine.

Greg grew up on a dairy farm in Eastern Washington where he learned the value of hard work, and the importance of family and community, at an early age. After spending ten years as a CPA working with and for non-profits, Greg now oversees the operations team for a small investment firm in Seattle.

Derek works in marketing and communications for a sportswear company in Seattle. With a degree in journalism and a background in sports and coaching, he has combined several of his passions in his career and loves his team. He’s thankful for a flexible schedule that allows him to split time working at home and in the office as well as flexible work hours, something that has increased importance as we plan for a family.

When we’re not working, we like to spend time with friends, travel, and enjoy the outdoors. Our most recent travel adventure took us to Portugal and England. We fell in love with the history, food, and countryside in the cities of each country, and we hope to one day return to share those experiences with our child. In addition to travel, we tend to embark on a lot of camping trips throughout the summer to soak in the coast, mountains, and rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Family in Oregon and Montana also sees us frequently venturing out on road trips for long weekends and holidays. Seeing and experiencing the world with our child is something we really look forward to doing. Quieter weekends often have us at home tending to the garden, working on home projects, and when it’s warm enough, sitting around the back yard fire pit.

Why Adoption?

We discussed early in our relationship that having kids and starting a family was something we both wanted to do. We love children and we both feel called to be parents, so we were happy to begin family planning on a shared foundation within our own relationship. Of the options we considered between adoption, fostering, and surrogacy, adoption feels like the right decision for us; we want to start a family initially by welcoming a child who we can build our lives around. We recognize that birth parent backgrounds are so unique and different from person to person and our hope is to instill a sense of security and safety in our childs’ birth parent(s) to ensure they feel confident, supported and reassured in their adoption decision. Our hope is that our adoption can be open so that our child can grow up knowing their birth parent/s and understanding the full evolution and nature of their story.

Family & Home

We moved into our home in south Seattle in 2018 and have fallen more deeply in love with our house and our neighborhood every day since.

The house is a 3-story craftsman with lots of room for children to sprawl and play. The extra bedrooms we are fortunate enough to possess are currently used as a home office, a guest room and a home gym, but we're excited about turning at least one of those into a kid's room! Our pandemic project was redoing the yard; it was the perfect hangout for socially distanced outdoor gatherings, but now it's ready for its next chapter of being a play space.

One of our favorite summer activities is setting up the projector and showing outdoor movies in the backyard. Hocus Pocus was quite a hit last fall!

We live one block from the local elementary school which our neighbor's kid attends. For now, we drop by frequently to play fetch in the big grass field attached to it with our dog when school isn't in session. Nearby, there's a community farm and more green space for play and outdoor time. We love that our neighborhood is extremely community driven; at its core are a handful of restaurants that pull everyone together including our local coffee shop, a pizzeria, a delicious burger joint, and more.

Our neighbors are extended family to us. We have great relationships with everyone around us and some of our neighbors have become true friends; they were integral at our wedding and have been our weekend hangout buddies, dog watchers, Christmas guests, and so much more. One of our favorite memories was when Greg's niece called to ask if we would throw her a birthday party at our house. She was very specific that we invite all our friends and neighbors because she had so much fun meeting them and dancing with them at our wedding. We turned our house into Hogwarts and the whole neighborhood showed up, dressed in their finest robes, to celebrate!

Our neighborhood is about 40 minutes from Derek's parents in Gig Harbor, and it's easy to get to other parts of the city like west Seattle, with its parks and beaches, or the Fremont neighborhood where Derek works.

Greg’s parents also live in Washington, along with large extended families throughout the Pacific Northwest. On both sides, our families are super supportive and can’t wait to be involved in our child’s life. We know that parenting is hard work and we feel truly blessed that we have a network of folks we call family - be it blood or chosen, across the pacific northwest and right next door, to assist if we ever need anything and to shower our future child with love and support.

How others describe me

Greg is a devoted, dependable, and intensely caring husband, friend, and family member. He’s an incredibly hard worker who is able to put his mind to a task and see it through to the finish line, which I definitely appreciate when it comes to big projects around the house or yard, or even smaller projects like taxes! And I admire that quality in him when it comes to his career and of course his drive to help us start a family. Our friends and family know him as being both dependable and super fun. He loves to play games and joke around, and he makes any gathering feel complete! He’s always able to find ways of celebrating life’s special moments, and I know that– among so many other qualities– will make him a fantastic father.

Derek is a thoughtful, hard working, fun individual who cares deeply about those around him. He is also unapologetically himself, radiating authenticity in every aspect of his life. His vibrant spirit infuses every moment with joy and fun, making him not only a fantastic partner to Greg but also a cherished friend, son, brother and dog dad. His caring and thoughtful nature are ever present in his ability to never forget a birthday or significant event in anyone he cares abouts’ life. Derek is also an incredibly hard worker, which is something Greg has always admired in him. No matter how long or chaotic his work day might be, he always manages to drag himself to the gym and to prioritize making sure the dog has gotten her 45 minutes of fetch in. His hard work and dedication, commitment to his friends and family and his overall zest and joy for life are going to make him a fantastic father!

How We Met

We met online in the winter of 2015 while Greg was helping his sister’s family move cross country by car. Besides entertaining his baby niece, Greg had nothing to do for a week straight but message back and forth with Derek. We bonded quickly over our love of the outdoors, career ambitions, penchant for travel, and our love of family. Derek also took quiet notice of how great Greg was with his baby niece as he was constantly sending video messages of him and his sister singing “5 little monkeys” to a giggling kiddo. Once Greg got back from his trip, we scheduled our first date – a run around Discovery Park in Seattle followed by coffee – on New Year’s Day. Trying new things and saying “yes” to zany ideas has been the foundation of our relationship ever since.

Advice to Future Child

The biggest piece of advice we will give to our future child is representative of the values and principles by which we live our lives - to love and trust in yourself and to treat others with kindness and respect. Our biggest hope for our child is that they grow up understanding and valuing every aspect of who they are as a person. We want our child to be strong and confident in their own skin and to appreciate and be proud of their background, their culture and everything else that has contributed to making them who they are. As adoptive parents, we recognize that many aspects of that identity will likely be different from our own and we look forward to both the joy and the challenge that will come with helping our child navigate and explore these topics. While it’s important to us that we help our children become strong, confident adults, we also want to instill in them the importance of treating others with kindness and respect. We want them to grow up recognizing and celebrating diversity, whether that’s race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status or something else. In a society that’s built on inequality and systems of oppression, it’s important to us as parents that we are educating our children and instilling in them the basic humanity of treating all people with kindness and respect.

Perspectives on Open Adoption

We started our adoption journey with one main criteria in mind as we made decisions: What would be the best decision for our future child? We quickly realized that open adoption aligned perfectly with the values that we hold dear; openness, honesty, love, and communication. To be honest, we were nervous at first. The thought of creating and fostering a lifelong relationship with our child's birth family was a little scary. But, the more we learned, and the more we stopped to really think about it, the more we realized - what a gift open adoption truly is.

It is important for our child to know their birth parents and to be able to tell the story of where they come from. But more than that, we hope to foster an environment where our child's birth family becomes a part of our extended family and can be involved in our child's life to whatever extent feels right for us all. In our perfect world, our child has the opportunity to get to know their birth parents in a way that is genuine and positive for everyone; they'd be able to ask their questions and to better understand who they are and how they came to be where they are, Our goal as parents is to build relationships and live our life in a way that honors our child's birth family, reflects our understanding of the loss they feel, and celebrates their journey.

Our "family" is currently enriched with family friends who we call our aunts and uncles, neighbors, lifelong friends, and more. We welcome and look forward to including our child's birth family as well.

Favorites

Derek

Favorite Movie: Jurassic Park (but I also can’t wait to share The Land Before Time with our future kiddo)
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Derek’s side of the family does a yearly family reunion called Cousins Weekend. Most recently, it was in Sunriver, Oregon, with 50+ attendees from four generations. Both of us look forward to this weekend every year as it’s always filled with amazing people, delicious food and of course lots of competitive yard games.
Hobbies/Interests: gardening and plants, boating, running, sports culture, travel, and recently, cooking
Dream Vacation: There’s a lake in Palau that’s filled with jellyfish that don’t sting you! Ever since I saw it on a nature show a few years ago, I’ve dreamed of visiting and going on a snorkeling excursion with all these small, friendly jellyfish. The water is crystal clear and there are these small clouds of jellies as far as the eye can see. It’s supposed to be an experience you really can’t get anywhere else, and I think it would be amazing to take our future child there- once they’re old enough of course- to encounter the natural world in a really exciting way.
If I Could Choose a Superpower: Teleportation! I’d love to be able to snap my fingers and appear anywhere in the world, instantly- it could make working and travel and chores so much easier. Plus, as a new parent, I think it could be an incredibly helpful superpower.

Greg

Favorite Movie: Independence Day and Legally Blonde (don’t make me choose!)
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Every year we DECORATE our house for Christmas. It takes a full day to put up our outside lights and it’s something I truly love doing. My family has always put up extravagant Christmas light displays and it’s something I look forward to doing with our future children as well.
Hobbies/Interests: sports and fitness, game nights with friends, woodworking, camping, hiking, boating
Dream Vacation: I relish the idea of being able to take our future child to Disneyland. It’s chaotic and crowded but I can’t imagine a better feeling than seeing their face light up at all the magic around them.
If I Could Choose a Superpower: The ability to generate food and clean water in any environment on earth. That way I could help build sustainable ecosystems in places currently suffering from lack of basic nutrition.