Family & Home

We purchased our home in 2015. It is a charming colonial home in an established family neighborhood just outside of Washington DC, with great neighbors that have become some of our closest friends. We can see our local elementary school from our front door. Our neighborhood is a culturally diverse and sometimes quirky community, with easy access to nature trails, parks, restaurants, and high-quality schools.  We love having friends and their children over to our home for events and look forward to bringing our own child into this community.  Our neighborhood has an annual block party that Brandon helps organize, and which we use our front yard to play yard games. Our home has a pool and a screened-in porch that our cat, Raja, loves to spend time watching birds. We have a fenced-in backyard with plenty of room for a swing set and sandbox for a child to play in with friends.

We take pride in our home, and Brandon loves decorating the house for various holidays—the neighbors look forward to our Halloween and Christmas decorations! Having been built in the 1970’s there are small things we’d love to change about our home, but we are fortunate not to need any significant changes. We love where we live and feel it will be a great home to raise a child.

We consider ourselves fortunate to come from an extremely diverse and supportive family. Whether it’s for birthdays, holidays, or no reason at all, we take every opportunity to gather with our loved ones.  While we have a physical distance between our families, we’re also able to connect regularly with video calls on Alexa—Gregg usually talks to his parents twice a day, once at lunch and usually after dinner! Brandon’s family lives almost entirely in southern Georgia. He has a niece and nephew that we’re able to see over Alexa, and on trips down every year.  Brandon’s mother and grandmother visit us in-between visits when they can. Brandon has many aunts, uncles, and cousins who are excited for the new adventure that adoption will bring to our family. Gregg’s parents and older brother live much closer in New York, which allows us the opportunity to visit much more. Gregg’s parents visit every three months, staying at least a week each time.  We have two nieces, who make Gregg willing to dress-up as Santa every year and Brandon taught how to jump into the pool.  We also have a large extended family of cousins that call us “Uncle Gregg and Uncle Brandon.” 

We also have a huge "chosen family," all the friends that we've made from our neighborhood community. We love our neighborhood because of what a diverse cultural hub it is, and our lives continue to be enriched by the amazing people who have let us be a part of their families. We are dedicated to raising a child in a similarly diverse setting and introducing them to a range of cultural opportunities.

We both highly value family- seeing local family regularly for dinners, game nights, and events and making time to see family.  Our family is extremely excited about our adventure into parenthood and always asks us how the process is moving along.