Marcie’s best friend growing up was adopted, so from an early age, adoption was always just another way of growing a family. One thing that Marcie remembers well was her friend expressing thankfulness that her birth mother was willing to make such a hard decision, which ultimately allowed her a great life with a very loving adoptive family. She even wrote a high school term paper about adoption and its positive impact on her life.

One thing we’ve observed over the years is that adults tend to overthink what children understand and accept quite easily. By openly talking about their adoption with them from the start, our child will understand how much their birth mom loved them, and because she wanted them to have the best life possible, gave us all a wonderful gift by allowing us to be a family. From children’s books to photos of their birth mom (if she is OK with it) to helping us include what to share with birth mom as they grow, our child will know how adoption is part of our family’s story.

Growing up in a Christian family, Marcie was always taught about God’s love and Him adopting us into His family by accepting Jesus’s gift to us, giving us more than one family throughout life. This is such a beautiful picture of adoption that not only made sense as a child but was an exciting and comforting thought growing up‒so many people who love us!

Marcie About Deron

After meeting at a wedding during college, what I first (and quickly) came to love about Deron is what a soft heart he has. He is patient, easy-going, smart, and is the most level-headed person I know. I doubt he has ever met a person who didn’t like him—he is just that kind of guy. In fact, I often joke that I think my family prefers Deron to me! I also appreciate his sense of humor and that he continues to appreciate (I think) mine, dry as it may sometimes be. When I was younger, I remember my dad saying how important it is to like the person you’re marrying, not just love them. Mission accomplished, dad! Deron is such a great partner in life, and I know he will make a wonderful dad!

Deron About Marcie

I’ve always admired how selfless and giving Marcie is. She puts others first and is always looking for ways to cheer someone up or make their day (I’ve experienced the latter many times in our marriage). I also love her unique sense of humor. There is never a dull moment in our home wondering what might come out of her mouth the next moment. She has brought so much joy into my life, and I know she will do the same for any child we adopt. I’m so excited to see her become a mother!

Deron has spent his entire career in the financial industry and is currently a supervisor at an investment firm where he oversees the products and services their financial advisors recommend, to make sure they are doing what’s in the best interest of their clients. He enjoys his job and the ever-changing landscape of the industry. He's fortunate to work a typical 7-4, Monday-Friday schedule, which allows him and Marcie to eat dinner together every night (and sometimes breakfast).

Meanwhile, Marcie works part-time for a financial consulting company. She loves the flexibility her job gives, allowing her to work from home most of the time and set her own hours. This will allow Marcie to be a stay-at-home mom so she can spend the majority of her time raising their child, without using daycare. After more hectic schedules early in their careers (Marcie teaching, coaching, and working towards her master’s degree and Deron working as a VP at his old job), they have become very intentional over the past several years about prioritizing their family over their careers. They believe this reprioritizing was a blessing that came at the right time and will allow them to be fully present for raising a child and be there for the everyday events and milestones in their life.

We live in a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom suburban home, on a cul-de-sac, with a mixture of younger and older families. We love our home and living on a small, clean lake that provides so much natural beauty as well as summer and wintertime fun-- from swimming, paddleboarding, beach time, and boat parades on Memorial and Independence Days, to ice skating, snowshoeing, and snowman making in the winter.

Our community has so many neighborhood parks and playgrounds (at least half a dozen within walking distance of us!), walking/biking trails, skating rinks, a community pool, water park, family concerts in the park, community education activities for all ages, and tons of other opportunities to enjoy year-round. Our city hosts annual July 4th and winter fest events with family activities, games, rides, food trucks, and fireworks, and is in the process of adding even more parks, trails, rec facilities, and outdoor spaces throughout the city.

In addition to a great, diverse neighborhood and friendly, supportive neighbors, we enjoy how close we are to everything we could want or need, from top-tier schools to outstanding medical care to the Minnesota Zoo (only a few miles away)! Despite all of this, we know that the most important part of a home is the family that lives in it. We are so thrilled at the thought of welcoming a child into our lives to share our home and community with.

With our large extended family, we never have to worry about a solid support network or plenty of family time. Our parents, five siblings, 20 nephews and nieces, and a slew of cousins, aunts, and uncles all live within a couple hours of us. Every year brings fun holiday get-togethers, birthday parties, and other special events. Last summer alone, we celebrated 4 family weddings and 4 graduations!

In the summer, we enjoy hosting each of our families for a day of fun at the lake—eating, laughing, swimming, paddleboarding, playing games, and watching fireworks around the firepit. Our families have farming backgrounds, which taught us about working hard but not taking ourselves too seriously—we love to joke around and laugh together! As the “baby” in her family, Marcie’s siblings still like to tease her about how “easy” she had it on the farm growing up (a point with which Marcie disagrees).

Every Christmas at Marcie’s parents’ farm, everyone decides on a dish to bring to minimize work for mom/grandma. But we’ve all learned that no matter what is agreed on, she will always make pies and buy enough Christmas candy to feed an army… “just in case.” It has become a running joke that if grandma ever really did get run over by a reindeer, there would be pies strewn everywhere. Everyone is so excited for us to become parents and to welcome another family member!

We are so appreciative that you are considering adoption for your child and honored to potentially share in that journey with you. For all the emotions we are feeling throughout this process, we know you are experiencing even more, and we know that this must be a very difficult time for you. We want you to know that if you do choose us, they will be in the best of hands and will receive all the love, support, and attention any child could hope for.

We feel very fortunate to have some excellent role models who have shown us what long, healthy, happy, marriages look like. We also feel blessed that, because we’ve been together since college and married for over 20 years, we’ve been able to grow together both as individuals and as a couple throughout our adult lives. We hope to demonstrate the same type of marriage, values, and behaviors to a child that Marcie's parents, married for over 60 years, have shown us. The impact their relationship had on Marcie growing up and on us as a couple today has been truly significant. They continue to be an example of how important the love, honesty, support (and humor!) shown to each other has been in shaping the values and behaviors that we have taken into our own marriage. It seems that type of relationship is relatively rare today, but it is one that we share. We are both devoted, never having to doubt that the other one is committed, will be honest, will do what we say, or will be supportive of anything we might be going through individually. We love spending time together and are so excited to share this with a child - whether it’s taking a walk or bike ride, playing games, working on a project, going on a trip, or just sitting together reading, watching a movie, or goofing around and laughing (laughter is very common in our house). They will have the strong sense of love, security, and support that we both had as children and continue to have as adults. Our hope for them is that they grow to be happy, confident, kind, and respectful, always striving to do what’s right, even if it isn’t easy.

We also want you to know that we are not only committed to each other and a future child, but to honoring you as well. The child will know their adoption story from the start and understand how the very difficult choice you made was done out of love and is what allowed us to become a family. Adoption will be a common word in our house. We’ll read books and tell stories about adoption, share photos and stories of their birth mom with them (if you are OK with it), and have them participate in what to share with you as they grow up. We promise to exchange emails, letters, and/or calls (based on your preferences) of all the fun and important things going on throughout their life in hopes of always showing just how much your gift means to all of us. If you and the child are interested in arranging visits as they age, we are open to staying connected in that way.

Lastly, we want you to know that, from our own experiences of having known several adoptees in our lives, while they sometimes expressed curiosity about their birth mom, they never held any anger or resentment towards her. What they have expressed was appreciation that adoption allowed them to grow up with the families they did and have the experiences they had. Please know that this child will know the difficult decision you made for them, and as their adoptive parents, we will model the understanding and compassion that we believe that decision deserves.

Thank you so much for learning a little about us. We will be overjoyed if you decide to choose us, but want you to know that even if you don't, we wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Deron & Marcie