Mari & Ray

Fifteen years ago, we began building a life together. Along the way, we became each other’s best friends, biggest cheerleaders, and lifelong partners. Every year has made us more certain of each other.

That life is grounded in love, resilience, and shared dreams. We love to travel and to discover different cultures through food and meaningful experiences. We have encouraged each other’s hopes and celebrated each other’s growth in our careers. Through joyful milestones and difficult chapters, including our fertility journey, we have been a steady source of comfort and strength for one another.

Some of our favorite moments are the simplest ones: cuddling on the sofa with our fur baby, watching a favorite show, and being home together. Our relationship rests on love and a commitment that grows stronger with every year we share. We cannot wait to share the life we have built, and all of its joy, with a child.

Our home is warm, peaceful, and unmistakably ours. It is where we unwind after long days and share everyday moments. We spent years renovating it room by room, choosing the paint, the floors, and the finishes together, until every space reflected both of us. On warm evenings, we love sitting in the backyard, watching the light change over the lake.

We feel fortunate to live in a diverse, family-oriented neighborhood, where children grow up alongside neighbors from many cultures and traditions. Neighbors regularly gather for house parties to create a genuine sense of community. We would be delighted for our child to grow up surrounded by people who help them see the world with an open and loving heart.

Family is central to our lives, and we are especially close to our brothers and sisters, who have been our closest friends and protectors since childhood. Their children have been part of our lives from the day they were born, through their first days of school and beyond. We celebrate birthdays, graduations, holidays, and milestones big and small with our nieces and nephews, who range in age from newborn to college graduate. Being their aunt and uncle is one of the greatest joys of our lives, and it means a great deal that they often come to us for guidance about life and careers.

Our families are looking forward to welcoming a child into this circle. Adoption and foster care are part of both sides of our family, so any child who joins us will be surrounded by people who already know what adoption means to a family.

Our friends are family too, many of them known since high school. Some live far away, but we make time for annual trips and visits that keep us close. Through our adoption journey, our family and friends have encouraged us at every turn, and they are ready to love a child as their own.

Our heritage holds a special place in our souls. We are proud to honor the Caribbean and African American roots that shape our families, traditions, and the meaningful ways we come together.

Each Christmas Eve (La Nochebuena), we celebrate together, taking turns hosting in family homes. At Thanksgiving, friendly cookoff competitions bring us to the table with our family in Michigan. For more than fifty years, our family reunions have honored where we come from, bringing together cousins, distant relatives, and generations of family to reconnect.

As our family grows, we would raise our child to be bilingual in Spanish and English, we look forward to passing our culture and traditions on to a child while creating new ones together.