I know birth parents often have many questions for adoptive parents so I’ve tried to think of a few that I will try to answer here. If more come up I’ll do another post later! If you have any questions for us that you’d like me to answer, post them in the comments!
What kind of neighborhood do we live in?
We live in Taylorsville, Utah right now. It is a small-ish city in the Salt Lake Valley. It is right next to West Valley City, Murray City, and West Jordan City. The neighborhood we live in is really quiet because our neighbors are mostly retirees! Our neighborhood was built 40 or 50 years ago and many of the residents have lived here from the beginning. Adrian’s grandparents were one of the first couples to build in the neighborhood and have lived here ever since. Adrian’s mom and siblings grew up in the neighborhood and now his mom is living here again! Our church house is located in the middle of our neighborhood which makes it really easy to get to church on Sundays. Many of our neighbors know us because of Adrian’s family’s history here, but we are still getting to know them. It’s like having lots of grandparents and aunts and uncles around all the time!
What is our religion?
As I mentioned, we do go to church! We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormon). We were both raised in the church and attended throughout our childhood. However, we both had some time in our lives where we strayed from the church and had a hard time accepting some aspects of it. We both found our way back, at various times and in various ways. Adrian and I met at a time when I had recently returned to the church and he was making his way back as well. When we got married, we were not originally sealed in the temple. We both had some things to work on when we got married and we didn’t feel ready to make that commitment. We struggled with attending church and participating fully in the activities for a while after getting married. However, two years later we felt that we were ready and more committed to the church. We were sealed in the St. George Temple in November 2016. We feel as though that decision and experience brought us closer together as a couple and to God. We currently attend church every Sunday and teach a youth Sunday school class every other month. We have loved getting to know the teenagers that we teach and have grown in our knowledge of the gospel through that service.
Funny faces at church
What do we do for a living?
I mentioned this in the introduction, but I’ll go into more detail here. I am a Certified Social Worker (CSW) at an elementary school in Granite School District. I help kids learn about their emotions and how to manage them. Lots of kids come to see me because they feel worried or sad or angry and I help them learn healthy ways to cope such as deep breathing, talking about it, art, journaling, etc. I also work with teachers to help them understand their students’ behavior in the classroom. Sometimes difficult experiences cause kids to act out and teachers sometimes don’t know what to do or what to say. I try to coach teachers to build relationships with students so they feel safe and comfortable when they go through something difficult. I LOVE working with kids! They are so full of love and acceptance! The kids call me Ms. Tiana and I’ve got a lot of them trained to call me Princess Tiana!
Adrian works for a long-time family friend in a business that installs windows in homes that are being remodeled. He has been doing this for about a year now. He likes the work because it is physical and he gets to build and use his hands! He likes a job that makes him feel tired at the end of the day (even when he complains about it!). He plans to keep working there as the business is expanding and developing into something more! Adrian is a TRUE handy-man! He can fix ANYTHING and if he doesn’t quite know how he can watch a YouTube video and then he’ll know how to do it! He has a very creative brain and can think of something and come up with a way to build it in his mind. He gets very focused when he is working on a project and will work and work until it is done. He ALWAYS finishes projects and likes them to be done well.
What are some things we like to do?
Sometimes Adrian teases me because I don’t have a lot of hobbies. I like to be at home, snuggled in bed, watching TV. I like to journal, play board games, and try DIY projects. I am a true home-body! I do love to travel though and often drag Adrian along with me! We recently took a day trip to Twin Falls, Idaho, went on a week-long trip to visit my dad in San Francisco, and traveled to Europe with my family a few years ago (Adrian hates airports!)
Adrian is the opposite of a home-body! He LOVES to be out of the house and often gets antsy when we stay home for too long. He loves to ride motorcycles, build stuff, go for long drives, and watch UFC and WWE. He is most happy when he is out of the house doing anything except sitting at home!A DIY project (re-doing a dresser)
Most of the time when we are doing things together we end up going on long drives in the mountains, sometimes getting out to hike, sometimes just driving and looking at the scenery. We watch a lot of Netflix and YouTube at home, too! Although, we recently bought memberships to the Planetarium and the Leonardo Museum to help us get out of the house more often. Sometimes we like to go window-shopping and just walk around stores looking at things to buy that we never buy! We like to do this with houses so when we are driving around we will look up houses that are for sale and find them to look at!Adrian’s motorcycle
We love spending time together, so whatever we end up doing we enjoy ourselves.Shooting guns with Adrian and his friend Aaron.
Adrian’s favorite thing is to be a creeper in the background of pictures.
A Miracle for the McCalls 