I recently had the opportunity to chat with hopeful adoptive parents Adam and Kristi from Minnesota. Expectant mothers have the opportunity to speak with waiting families before they make their decision, but sometimes it’s nice to just get a little more info to understand who they are.
I asked them some fun questions that you won’t find in their adoption profile, and I learned that they are a fun, financially stable couple, hoping to grow through adoption!
1. What is a piece of advice or a life tip that’s always stuck with you?
Adam: The best life tip is always to keep things in perspective. That tip came from a former coworker and friend of mine who, after really bad days at work, would cheer us up by saying, “Hey, nobody died today; it’s a good day!”
He had been a former paramedic, and when he had a bad day at work, it meant someone had died. We were only working with technology, and a bad day might have meant a switch died or a site’s phone system stopped working randomly. At the end of the day, a simple perspective shift might just help someone get through a difficult time.
Kristi: My grandma always said, “You can’t wait for things to be perfect to be happy.” Too many people say, “I’ll be happy when…” and insert all sorts of stipulations for their happiness. If we limit happiness with circumstances, we will have a very limited amount of happiness. Joy is an attitude available to everyone.
Grandma would talk about hardships she and grandpa endured over the years and say, “But there was always reason to smile.” That has stuck with me. No matter what is going on in life, there is still happiness to be found.
2. What is something from your childhood that you want to make sure your child gets to experience?
Adam: Camping! Growing up, we didn’t have much, so our family’s ability to have vacations was pretty limited. But there was one mini vacation we took every summer: camping with family friends. Our family friends owned a camper and a boat. We would go with them for one summer weekend and enjoy the outdoor life. So, whether we own the camper or find friends who do, I want to be able to take my kids camping at least once a summer.
Kristi: We went camping a lot growing up as a family, and that is one experience I want to share with our children. Growing up, we had an old 1975 motor home, nothing fancy, and we never went to campgrounds that were farther than 30 miles from home but camping together was one of my favorite things.
I want our children to experience that, too, as it helped make a close-knit family. Sharing a small space, cooking over a fire, listening to cicadas, collecting rocks, eating s’mores, and having late-night conversations around the campfire are simple yet memorable experiences I cherish and wish to share with our child.
3. What was your first job? Did you like it?
Kristi: I grew up on a farm. My first paid job was picking rocks for my dad at age 10. I thought I was “hot stuff” to ride on the wagon pulled by the tractor with my friends in the field, and any rock larger than two fists we would pick and put in the wagon to be removed. This process protected equipment from “eating” rocks and getting damaged. We had so much fun singing songs and working together.
4. What would a perfect day look like for you?
Adam: A perfect day would start the night before prepping the brisket for the smoker. I would then wake up to our children asking to play with toys with dada.
We would wake up and play in the living room, eat breakfast, and then go outside on the back patio. It would be partly sunny and 75 degrees with zero bugs. After some time watching our kids haul buckets of water from the pool to “water the trees,” we would wake up mama.
We’d spend the day at a local park talking and enjoying family time. Then, we would come home to carve up the brisket at the dinner table, with our close neighbor friends joining us for dinner. We’d spend the evening talking and playing board games until it was time for bed.
5. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
Kristi: I would want to have dinner with the now departed, beloved comedian and actor Robin Willams. I admired him as an actor in movies like Patch Adams, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Dead Poets Society.
I think he’d be a hoot and the life of the party to make dinner interesting. His humor and improvisation would be fun, and I’d like to ask him to do various voices and reenactments of some of his movies while at dinner. To get to sit with one of the most larger-than-life movie personalities would be an honor.
Adam: I would want to have my grandma back as a dinner guest. Growing up, I spent two or three months of every summer at my grandma’s farm. It was such a fun experience, helping with dairy cows, all the farm cats, and the shenanigans I would get into with my cousin, Andy.
One summer, we built a custom ramp for a new scooter that Andy had gotten. We jumped off that thing more times than my grown body could handle today! Grandma would always come out and scold us lovingly. She always made the best food and had the best stories. What I remember most is the year I took German in high school so that I could understand what she and grandpa would say to one another.
Curious to know more about Adam and Kristi? You can check out their adoptive family profile online.
If you’re interested in talking to them as potential adoptive parents to your baby, just text or call Lifetime at
1-800-923-6784 and we can connect you with them.
Heidi Keefer is a Content Creator for Lifetime Adoption and has over 15 years of experience in the field of adoption. An author of thousands of articles and social media posts over the years, Heidi enjoys finding new ways to educate and captivate Lifetime’s ever-growing list of subscribers.
Heidi has a keen eye for misplaced apostrophes, comma splices, and well-turned sentences, which she has put to good use as a contributor to Lifetime’s award-winning blogs. She has written and published hundreds of adoption articles which explore the various facets of domestic infant adoption today.
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