Contact Aaron and Jared | JustChoice

About Us/Me

On a Sunday morning, you can probably find us listening to karaoke-worthy tunes while making bacon and eggs (enough for the dogs, too, of course). Since we both work from home, we try to spend a lot of time outside of the house on the weekends, sometimes doing yard work, taking walks with the pups, or heading downtown to try a new restaurant. Jared usually saves his weekly Target trip for Saturdays (who are we kidding, he’s already been there 5 times this week), and Aaron likes to work on house projects - right now it’s turning our entry closet into a built-in bench - gotta love TikTok DIYs!

 

During the week, Jared is a project manager for a translation company, and Aaron works in the tech industry. A lot of couples probably go crazy working from home in the same room, but we find that we keep each other sane. We each make sure the other takes breaks, and Jared sometimes forgets Aaron is on work calls and starts singing Adele. 

 

We live in a small town near Ann Arbor, MI, where we have lived for a few years. We have a big backyard for the pups to play in, and we spend a lot of time sitting out by the fire pit and chatting over the fence with our older neighbors Jim & Sandy - Aaron bakes them bread sometimes, and they thank us with bottles of wine - pretty sweet deal! It’s a safe neighborhood for evening strolls and seeing fireflies, or if you’re a dog, for chasing moles and making friends with deer. In the winter, you can take walks out on the lake where everyone is ice fishing, and in the summer, we try to convince the dogs they love to swim (they do not...yet). 

 

About Aaron

I could call myself a sensitive, music-loving putterer. While I wouldn’t say I have one specific hobby that I’m constantly working on, I like rotating through different hobbies. That means you’ll often find me bouncing around the house looking for things to fix (novice DIY-er, watch out!), taking care of our houseplants, or maybe feeding my sourdough starter for a weekend bake. I love watching something grow over time, so I enjoy taking cuttings from our plants to make our house a bit greener, or potting them for friends and coworkers to start their own collection. I play a lot of guitar (i.e., I can poorly strum the most vital chords), mostly in the evenings after work when Jared is cooking dinner. I love a lot of different music, but to get a sense of my faves, think Fleetwood Mac and 80s rock ballads; and I’m trying to learn some Harry Styles and Shawn Mendes for Jared ;). I’ve been fortunate to have worked lots of different jobs, from working with kids in the New England outdoors, to small and large tech companies, to teaching English abroad (I was in Korea for 2 years, and we’ve made it back there once as a couple to visit some friends!) I can’t wait to incorporate my love of the outdoors and excitement for travel in our family. 

 

About Jared

I think the first thing I usually tell people about myself is that I have a love of languages. I speak Spanish (pretty well), and I also know a little Italian. Aaron taught me how to read Korean, so I can sound things out, but I have no idea what I’m saying! I’m really close with my family, even though we’re a bit spread out now. My parents live near Boston, and my sister lives in upstate New York with her wife and their 4 dogs, 3 cats, and hedgehog. We talk almost every day on our family group chat where my mom sends us pictures of her flowers and my dad types in ALL CAPS. My sister and I talk a lot on the phone - basically whenever her butt accidentally calls me which is like 2 times a week. Before COVID, we visited family a lot, and we hope to be able to take more road trips back east again soon once this is all over!



Why adoption?

When we were first starting our journey and going through all the interviews and applications, this question always came up, and at first we were sort of like - did no one...did no one tell them...about the...the gays? Of course, we realize there are a lot of ways to start a family, but I think adoption was always first in line for us. Aaron’s dad and cousin were adopted, so it was already on his radar. When Jared was a middle school Spanish teacher, he remembers students asking about how to describe themselves as adopted in Spanish and how to talk about their families. This always stuck with him, because up until then, he thought of adoption as a secret that kids find out when they’re older, and that always seemed a little scary. When we first started on this journey, we still didn’t really have a clear idea of what we were actually doing, but being in this process, talking to other adoptive families, and working with a wonderful agency like Choice, we feel much more educated and confident that we were meant to be an adoptive family. As an LGBTQ+ family, we always knew our future family would be “unique” - this used to scare us, but now it excites us!

 

 

Our future family

The first thing you need to know about our future family is that it includes YOU! We want you to be a part of our family, however you’re wanting that to look. We’ve already been buying up all of the children’s books out there that feature adoptive families and the moms that made them possible, and we selected Choice specifically because they help families plan for open adoptions.

As a family, we’ll play lots of board games, do lots of puzzles, have Whitney Houston dance parties, travel, give belly rubs to the pups, cook new recipes, have sing-alongs, learn how to say our colors in Spanish, go on adventures - but most of all, we will love, value, and support each other. We are so touched that you are considering us, and we look forward to hopefully connecting with you!

 

About You

We cannot wait to meet you! We also know that this is a super uncertain, unpredictable, and probably difficult time for you, and we want to make sure that if you choose us, we are supporting you in any way we can. We just want you to know that even though we haven’t met you yet, we already love you, and we’re here for you. If you come across our page, and we aren’t the match for you, or this isn’t the path you take, we are still here for you, we love you, and we hope you find whatever path works best. This is part of the reason we chose to work with Choice Network as our agency - they are all about supporting moms! None of this would be possible without moms! We know at times this will feel weird and like it’s too much to handle, and we feel that way sometimes too, so we promise to approach every step with love.

 

About Us/Me

On a Sunday morning, you can probably find us listening to karaoke-worthy tunes while making bacon and eggs (enough for the dogs, too, of course). Since we both work from home, we try to spend a lot of time outside of the house on the weekends, sometimes doing yard work, taking walks with the pups, or heading downtown to try a new restaurant. Jared usually saves his weekly Target trip for Saturdays (who are we kidding, he’s already been there 5 times this week), and Aaron likes to work on house projects - right now it’s turning our entry closet into a built-in bench - gotta love TikTok DIYs!

 

During the week, Jared is a project manager for a translation company, and Aaron works in the tech industry. A lot of couples probably go crazy working from home in the same room, but we find that we keep each other sane. We each make sure the other takes breaks, and Jared sometimes forgets Aaron is on work calls and starts singing Adele. 

 

We live in a small town near Ann Arbor, MI, where we have lived for a few years. We have a big backyard for the pups to play in, and we spend a lot of time sitting out by the fire pit and chatting over the fence with our older neighbors Jim & Sandy - Aaron bakes them bread sometimes, and they thank us with bottles of wine - pretty sweet deal! It’s a safe neighborhood for evening strolls and seeing fireflies, or if you’re a dog, for chasing moles and making friends with deer. In the winter, you can take walks out on the lake where everyone is ice fishing, and in the summer, we try to convince the dogs they love to swim (they do not...yet). 

 

About Aaron

I could call myself a sensitive, music-loving putterer. While I wouldn’t say I have one specific hobby that I’m constantly working on, I like rotating through different hobbies. That means you’ll often find me bouncing around the house looking for things to fix (novice DIY-er, watch out!), taking care of our houseplants, or maybe feeding my sourdough starter for a weekend bake. I love watching something grow over time, so I enjoy taking cuttings from our plants to make our house a bit greener, or potting them for friends and coworkers to start their own collection. I play a lot of guitar (i.e., I can poorly strum the most vital chords), mostly in the evenings after work when Jared is cooking dinner. I love a lot of different music, but to get a sense of my faves, think Fleetwood Mac and 80s rock ballads; and I’m trying to learn some Harry Styles and Shawn Mendes for Jared ;). I’ve been fortunate to have worked lots of different jobs, from working with kids in the New England outdoors, to small and large tech companies, to teaching English abroad (I was in Korea for 2 years, and we’ve made it back there once as a couple to visit some friends!) I can’t wait to incorporate my love of the outdoors and excitement for travel in our family. 

 

About Jared

I think the first thing I usually tell people about myself is that I have a love of languages. I speak Spanish (pretty well), and I also know a little Italian. Aaron taught me how to read Korean, so I can sound things out, but I have no idea what I’m saying! I’m really close with my family, even though we’re a bit spread out now. My parents live near Boston, and my sister lives in upstate New York with her wife and their 4 dogs, 3 cats, and hedgehog. We talk almost every day on our family group chat where my mom sends us pictures of her flowers and my dad types in ALL CAPS. My sister and I talk a lot on the phone - basically whenever her butt accidentally calls me which is like 2 times a week. Before COVID, we visited family a lot, and we hope to be able to take more road trips back east again soon once this is all over!



Why adoption?

When we were first starting our journey and going through all the interviews and applications, this question always came up, and at first we were sort of like - did no one...did no one tell them...about the...the gays? Of course, we realize there are a lot of ways to start a family, but I think adoption was always first in line for us. Aaron’s dad and cousin were adopted, so it was already on his radar. When Jared was a middle school Spanish teacher, he remembers students asking about how to describe themselves as adopted in Spanish and how to talk about their families. This always stuck with him, because up until then, he thought of adoption as a secret that kids find out when they’re older, and that always seemed a little scary. When we first started on this journey, we still didn’t really have a clear idea of what we were actually doing, but being in this process, talking to other adoptive families, and working with a wonderful agency like Choice, we feel much more educated and confident that we were meant to be an adoptive family. As an LGBTQ+ family, we always knew our future family would be “unique” - this used to scare us, but now it excites us!

 

 

Our future family

The first thing you need to know about our future family is that it includes YOU! We want you to be a part of our family, however you’re wanting that to look. We’ve already been buying up all of the children’s books out there that feature adoptive families and the moms that made them possible, and we selected Choice specifically because they help families plan for open adoptions.

As a family, we’ll play lots of board games, do lots of puzzles, have Whitney Houston dance parties, travel, give belly rubs to the pups, cook new recipes, have sing-alongs, learn how to say our colors in Spanish, go on adventures - but most of all, we will love, value, and support each other. We are so touched that you are considering us, and we look forward to hopefully connecting with you!

About you

We cannot wait to meet you! We also know that this is a super uncertain, unpredictable, and probably difficult time for you, and we want to make sure that if you choose us, we are supporting you in any way we can. We just want you to know that even though we haven’t met you yet, we already love you, and we’re here for you. If you come across our page, and we aren’t the match for you, or this isn’t the path you take, we are still here for you, we love you, and we hope you find whatever path works best. This is part of the reason we chose to work with Choice Network as our agency - they are all about supporting moms! None of this would be possible without moms! We know at times this will feel weird and like it’s too much to handle, and we feel that way sometimes too, so we promise to approach every step with love.

JustChoice's number to text 614 - 551 - 4642

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