Tracie & Lauren In Arizona

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We have been together for 12 years and have been married for 7 years. We met at a mutual friend's baby shower in July of 2012 and after hanging out after the shower, we have been together literally ever since.

While we were dating, we quickly found out we both had a strong sense of family, a deep love and appreciation for music and take joy in traveling. We love spending time with friends and family both locally and those who live out of state. While we can travel anywhere, we often plan our trips around seeing our loved ones who are out of state. We love going to concerts, musical theater, sporting events, and hosting game nights with friends and family. We also enjoy bike riding, going to the batting cages or Top Golf, attending WNBA games, trying new restaurants, attending sporting and school events for our nieces and nephews and getaways that involve the beach/ocean and Disneyland. We love being the best aunties we can be to our nieces and nephews, including those that live out of state.

Knowing we both wanted to be moms, we started trying to build our family just a few years into our relationship. While not the traditional way of doing things, we even put getting married behind starting our family. When our journey did not go as planned, we turned our focus to planning our wedding. We got married in March of 2017 in a little white chapel with Elvis’s "Can't Help Falling in Love With You” playing in the background as we walked down the aisle and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” playing in the background after we sealed the deal with our “I Dos”!

Tracie was born and raised in Washington state and grew up in Kent just south of Seattle. She is the oldest with two brothers and one sister. She loves hard and is a natural caregiver, especially to children. She played many years of softball, sang in school and church choirs and was in a performing arts group where she danced and sang as a young child. She is detail-oriented, hardworking, kind and can multitask with the best of them. She loves decorating, organization and having a clean, inviting home. She is honest, has a good sense of humor and puts 110% into her relationships.

Being the oldest, she has always loved babies and children and became the favorite neighborhood babysitter from a young age. Her initial career was in childcare where she cared for other people’s children for 12 years, working her way up from teacher’s aid to Center Director. Life’s journey eventually moved her to Arizona in her late 20’s and led her to a life in the airline industry where she has now worked for the past 21 plus years. Working for an airline has ignited her love of travel and gives us the opportunity to see the world and family living outside of Arizona.

Lauren was born in Rochester, New York and moved with her mom and younger sister to Arizona as a young child. She was raised by her mom and stepdad. Lauren is driven, hardworking, loyal, has a great sense of humor and will do anything for her family and friends. She grew up playing sports and excelled in softball and badminton where she was all-state in both in high school. Lauren has a Bachelor’s Degree and currently works in the banking industry and has been with her current company for 14 years assisting small businesses with their financial needs.

We have always had cats throughout our relationship and currently have two cats - Sammie and Maezie. Our cats are very much a part of our family and have free rein of our house as it is their home too. The only places that are of course off limits are on kitchen counters, dining room table and furniture and bathroom counters! We even get pet sitters to come in everyday when we travel to feed them, clean the litter box and spend time playing and snuggling them while we are away.

We live in a spacious three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. Tracie works from home full time and works out of the office space off our kitchen. Lauren has a hybrid schedule and works from home three days a week so she shares a home office with our guest bedroom. The third bedroom has been set up as our nursery and has a crib, dresser, changing table and rocking chair all ready to go. We have a fully fenced in back patio/yard that has a lot of shade, and the front of our house faces a tree lined street. We live just a few blocks from bike trails, parks and schools. Our neighborhood is a very diverse community, including young families and professionals just starting out, as well as some neighbors that have older children and/or are retired.

Tracie is the oldest of four with one sister and two brothers. Her parents started dating in junior high school and have been married for 52 years. She recently lost her last living grandparent, her maternal grandmother who lived to be 101 years old! Tracie's sister is one of her best friends and her youngest brother is one of her most favorite people.

Lauren was the oldest with one sister. Her father passed away when she was 3 years old. Her mom and stepdad, who were high school sweethearts, reunited a few years after her father passed. They married when she was 8 years old and were married for 33 years making her the middle child of 5, adding 2 older stepbrothers and 1 younger stepbrother. Lauren is very close with her sister and would consider her to be her best friend, besides her wife of course! Her stepdad has recently passed away but coming from a blended family and being raised by her mom and stepdad, both Lauren and Tracie feel that family is not always blood related but can be people we choose or who choose us.

We both grew up with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents around. We are blessed and lucky enough to be able to give that same experience to our child(ren) because the majority of our immediate family live in Arizona. We are lucky to be able to get together with family often to celebrate birthdays and significant events. We regularly attend dance or choir recitals, wrestling matches, baseball, soccer, and basketball games and school events for our nieces and nephews who live locally. We also travel to see our family living out of state yearly, sometimes more than once a year, to stay close to those we cannot see all of the time.

We are lucky to have family here locally to spend holidays with, but do try every other year or two years to spend Thanksgiving with family on the East Coast. We have celebrated Friendsgiving with our two best friends since 2014. Everyone always brings their favorite dish to share. We always have plenty of games to play, laughter shared and memories made. The guest list and location may change. However, the tradition of gathering to give thanks to the friends we call family continues each year.

Each December, we dedicate a night to seeking out the best Christmas light displays in the surrounding area. We put up holiday lights in the car, play holiday music and grab Dutch Bros. hot chocolate for the drive. We started this tradition the first year we were dating. Our holiday light drive has become one of our favorite activities during the holiday season. We love it so much, most years we go out on a second night with our best friends or family. Every Christmas we bake gingerbread cookies, peanut blossoms and almond crescent cookies to deliver to close family and friends. Our delivery list has grown over the years, but taking a Saturday to deliver them allows us to stop in and say hi and spread a little holiday cheer.

We always have wanted to be moms and we tried for 6 years and went through several rounds of IUI and IVF. We were beyond excited to learn we were pregnant with twins, but after losing our twins midway through our pregnancy, we realized we still have a lot of love to give and would love to be able to add to our family. Adoption for us was the next natural step in our journey in being able to become parents.