Emanuel & Javier In Texas

We meet over 19 years ago. At that time, Emanuel worked for Old Navy. I saw him, and it was love at first sight. I tried to talk to him as a customer, but he was always professional and my attempt to talk to him failed. Close to a year later, we reconnected on a dating website. Emanuel sent me a message, and I was thrilled. This time, I took my time to reply. We talked for a while and a couple of months later, I made the decision to meet him. We connected instantly and have been together ever since.

When Emanuel and I met, I was working in an Emergency Room as a clerk and studying to get my paramedic license. I moved from the hospital to a private office as a medical assistant and continued my nursing studies. I spent eight great years working in the medical field.

Emanuel worked for Game Stop for 15 yrs. When he was promoted to District Manager, we moved to Texas for this career opportunity. After moving to Texas, I started working for Game Stop as well as a Project Coordinator. I worked there for about 9 years before I decided to pursue the job I wanted to do for a long time; a Flight Attendant. I currently work as a Flight Attendant for American Airlines. This job gives me the flexibility to make my own schedule and the opportunity to spend more time seeing my family in Puerto Rico and different parts of the USA. Emanuel is currently working for Starbucks as a District Manager. He was able to transfer the leadership skills he developed at Game Stop and join an organization rooted in Human Connection. This has been great for our work-life balance. We get to experience a better quality of life.

Javier's education and experience working in the medical and business fields has helped him to be more rational and secure in life and in relationships. Despite this, he has not changed who he is! He is a really patient person, family oriented and super friendly. He loves to laugh and make everyone around him feel happy. He loves helping others to ensure that they have a place to go or a place just to be listened to. Emanuel's education and experience has helped him develop his emotional intelligence, active listening and empathy. Javier is really an extrovert, outgoing and the life of the party, while Emanuel is an introvert who is thoughtful and a planner as well.

During our free time, you can find us at the movies, traveling to explore the world, visiting friends/family, playing video games and visiting theme parks (We LOVE Disney). In addition to the things above, we like to do community service. We participate in cleaning the lake, back to school service for kids of low income demographics and food pantry drives every year. We also donate our clothes and shoes to charity.

When we decided to buy our first house, we looked for a place that has good schools, hospitals and parks nearby. Our neighborhood is really diverse and we are surrounded by diverse neighbors from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

Our house is a new build with an open concept and 4 bedrooms. We wanted 4 bedrooms to allow us to have a nursery and a guest room for family members to come and visit, especially those grandmas that will want to be around the baby 24/7 :)

The house has ample patio space for playing, running, setting up a trampoline, kiddy pool, birthday celebrations and future pets. Our community has a pool, a basketball court, trails for walking, neighborhood activities with food trucks or potlucks and schools within walking distance.

We have nephews on both sides of the family who love us, and we take every opportunity we have to spend time with them and create memories together. One of our nephews Niko lives in Puerto Rico but has grown up knowing us and taking family vacations together. He visited us and stayed with use during Christmas, we took a cruise a couple of years ago and last year, we went to Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando. Gerald is our other nephew and lives in California. We have been part of his life since he was a tiny baby. He stayed with us during two holiday seasons and we got to play Pokemon together and watch movies. We have watched him grow from his Mario Bros phase to his most recent Five Nights at Freddy's phase. They grow so fast :)

Our two favorite holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas since they bring our family and friends together.

Every Thanksgiving, Javier cooks traditional Puerto Rican food with turkey, rice with pigeon peas, potato salad and elbow pasta salad. Since our family is in Puerto Rico, we use this holiday to bring all our friends together who might not have a gathering of their own. We also have friends from Puerto Rico who miss the food, and it brings joyful memories back to life.

For Christmas, we create a Christmas wish list to put on the fridge. We both go little by little and fill in things we might want for the holidays. Then we surprise each other on Christmas Day with something from the list or completely go rogue with a gift of our own. We send gifts to our family members through mail and we receive from them. On Christmas day, we gather around our Christmas tree and call our family through video conference to open gifts together.

We have been together for 18 years, and little by little, we have been building our life together one step at a time. Before we could even dream about adoption, we wanted to establish a stable household so we could offer a baby a stable home, lifelong values and an environment that will set him/her up for success in life. This is something we’ve been wanting for a long time since we got married. Now, we have created a beautiful life together. For us to have a baby would mean the completion of our family; to have someone we can share what we have and the love that we have to offer.