We both have many hobbies. Angel loves plants, gardening, and cooking. Kurt loves listening to records, playing music, following baseball,and spending time exploring in Pittsburgh.

Angel and her friends enjoy dinner get togethers, game nights, and girl's vacations.

Kurt and his friends enjoy seeing live bands, going to hockey and baseball games, and getting together a few times a year for weekend retreats.

We also really enjoy remodeling houses, apartment buildings and other things (like our camp). It has become both our hobby and our work, and we actually love it. To help provide financially for our family, we purchased an 11-unit apartment building about 4 years ago, and completely remodeled it. We have remodeled the house that we currently own and live in. We recently bought a camp in the mountains and have been remodeling that. We buy these things as affordably as possible, and then put a lot of work into them and try to make them as beautiful as we can. Although it's sometimes taxing and difficult, it is also incredibly rewarding creatively and financially and fun!

Family traditions are very important to the both of us. We both grew up in families that had important traditions, and in the 10 years that we've been married, we have developed our own as well.

Our favorite new tradition that we've developed is what we call, "White Friday." We both normally have off from work the day after Thanksgiving, of course called "Black Friday." So instead of going out and shopping - we take that Friday and decorate our house inside and out for the upcoming holiday season. We spend the day together decorating, and then at night, we make hot cocoa and drive around our neighborhood and look at all the houses that have also decorated for Christmas. We sometimes have our nieces and nephews with us, and they love seeing everyone's Christmas lights! It's become a very important day for us, and it's a great way as a family to get in the holiday spirit and spend time bonding.

Our extended family traditions are important to us as well. Both of our families usually plan multiple trips to the mountains for "camp weekends" during the summer. During the rest of the year we get together for birthdays and major holidays for dinners and activities. Both of our extended families get along well, so we're lucky that most of our "get togethers" are blended with both families.

We have both been directly affected by adoption within in our extended family. There have been adoption situations going both ways - family members who chose to place a child for adoption, as well as gaining members through adoption - members who have become some of our closest familial relationships. Angel herself has adopted siblings.

Our path to choosing adoption as a couple started back in 2015. We were married that year, and started trying to conceive a child naturally. Almost immediately, we got pregnant and our hopes were high. Sadly, that pregnancy failed and we were unable to ever conceive naturally again. Over the course of the next 8 years, we did everything in our power to start our own family - from fertility treatments, to IVF, to Embryo adoption and more. Once our last attempt failed, we started to consider adoption. We now know that adoption is the way we are meant to become parents and we are excited for this next chapter of our lives!

We live in a small suburb of Pittsburgh. We are lucky enough to have a beautiful park at the end of our street, and our neighborhood is surrounded by trees and hills.

We bought our house is 2012 and have been remodeling it ever since. People like to call our place a "hobbit-house" because it is filled with polished woodwork, brass, green plants, books and good food. Angel has a special room dedicated to fish tanks and plants. Kurt has a study in the basement where he listens to records, and does book keeping for their business.

There are opportunities for children to play sports, develop hobbies, and play with other children in the neighborhood at the local ball fields and recreation areas in the "downtown" section of our small town. Also, living 10-15 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, we are close enough to enjoy the unique events and cultural amenities there available for children that only a larger city can offer.

Our home away from home is definitely our camp, in the northern mountains of Pennsylvania. It sits inside a national park in a secluded area, alongside a mountain river. We spend as much time there as humanly possible!

We come from opposite sides of Pittsburgh - so we've settled in an area in-between, where we are central and closest to both sides of our extended family. Kurt's extended family comes from a more rural area east of the city, and have been successful in areas of both machining and manufacturing as well as real estate investing. Angel's extended family is more centered in the city itself, and have been more involved in the arts, buying and selling, crafts and creative endeavors. Both families also have backgrounds in service industries, and health and human care.

We are about a 20-minute drive from all of our extended family, which is nice because we love spending time with them. We spend a lot of time throughout the year meeting at various birthday parties, holiday get togethers, and dinners. We also spend a lot of time "in the mountains" with our extended families, as some of us are lucky enough to have camps there.

There is so much that could be said about the love and support that we get from our extended families. The most accurate thing to say is that the emotional and financial support they provide has enabled us to make this adoption possible. They have all been so supportive of this journey, it's hard to put into words.

Hi there! This is Kurt and Angel. It's nice to meet you. As you begin to get to know us, we hope that the strongest impression that you get from us, is one of honesty. Our goal is to treat you with as much honesty and respect as possible. This is such an important decision for all of us, that the only way to approach it is with a spirit of togetherness and trust. We are open to your feelings and thoughts about this process. We are open to discussing levels of future communication and how you feel about that. We want you to feel good about this.

We are happy to have crafted a world we think this child will love to grow up in - a world of love and support, consistency and family. A world filled with camping, nature, and hikes in the forest. A world filled with music, art and literature of all types. A world of devoted grandparents, doting aunts and uncles, and playful nieces and nephews. Our house is in a small suburb outside of the city of Pittsburgh. We love enjoying all the events and unique paces that our city has to offer. We go to baseball games, street fairs, food festivals, and other outdoor events when the weather is good. In the winter there is outdoor ice skating, plays and shows, hockey games and holiday festivals all over the area. We are also lucky enough to have a year round camp about 2 hours north of the city that sit just outside of a beautifully wooded state park. We spend as much time there as possible. For us, it's the most beautiful place we know of. There is so much wildlife to see and so much fun stuff to do in nature! We can walk to the river from our camp, and we go swimming and tubing all the time. We are surrounded by trees and woods, so we go on hikes and see animals all the time we'd never had seen in the city like bald eagles, owls, porcupines, snake families and all kinds of stuff. We have campfires at night and sit on our deck and watch the river go by.

A little about us... We met about 15 years ago when we were both servers at Red Lobster! We would get burgers after work and talk for hours. We were friends for a long time before we started dating. Eventually we were married 10 years ago and we've been on a ton of adventures ever since! Angel grew up in the city and loves growing, preparing and cooking foods. She has a deep love of children and family and comes from a family with 5 sisters - 2 that were adopted. Angel is also a small business owner, having found success with her cleaning business as well as being an extreme couponer (aka a "Coupon Lady") Kurt is a property owner, real estate investor and music fanatic. His family comes from a small town in an agricultural area a short drive from where we live.

We see adoption as a gift, a gift of immense importance to us and we are so grateful that you are considering working with us. We plan to treat this child like gold, to protect it at all costs and to provide the support it needs to find stability and happiness in this world, to treasure it until the end of our lives and hopefully beyond. We have made the decision to have an open or semi-open adoption. We are open to discussing how you feel about future communication, and we're very open to future communications at the level you feel comfortable with. Letters and picture updates would be a good starting point and we can go from there.

Thank you and peace to you -

Kurt & Angelina