Matt, Stacey, and Ben Uhrig

To kick off the New Year we happily spent time with our favorite peeps - The Johnson-McCormick family! The Johnson-McCormicks are very close friends of ours and "our story" with them is very special and one worth sharing.

Long story short - about 5 years ago, while shopping at the Mall we "bumped" into another couple while checking out ties at Brooks Brothers. (OK - actually the other couple was having a hard time picking out a tie, Stacey overheard the conversation and made a suggestion and then we walked out of the store). After leaving - the guy from the store approached us at the Verizon store. He said "I hope you don't think this is weird, but we are new to the area and you 2 seem like a nice couple. would you like to grab dinner some time?". Hmmm....when someone random approaches you in a mall and asks you out to dinner - it may seem weird - but in this situation - it didn't at all. Some how we knew in our minds - this was a cool couple - someone that we would like to spend time with. We come to find out - we live 5 minutes apart and have quite a bit in common.

Over the years we came to call Heather and Braydon Johnson-McCormick 2 of our closest friends. Though they later moved to PA we still remain closely connected. About 3 years ago - when we decided to move forward with adopting a child we wanted to share this special news with them. We arranged for dinner and couldn't wait to tell them our BIG NEWS! So - we meet and THEY say - we have BIG NEWS. We laugh - so do we! Ends up BOTH families are getting together to tell eachother we are BOTH ADOPTING!!! You can imagine our thrill, excitement and pure estonishment to find out that 2 of our closest friends will be experiencing an adoption journey at the same time as us. So exciting! Though our journeys were very different (our adoption through Korea, theirs through Haiti) it was extremely comforting knowing we could share our ups and downs with someone who would truly understand. In addition, it was nice knowing another mixed / inter-racial family as this too is a life changing decision (to raise children of other ethnic backgrounds from your own).

Though we have called The Johnson-McCormicks some of our closest of friends over the past 5 years - we have come to find that Ben (2) , Kyle and Owen (2.5) also consider themselves close friends. The 3 boys clearly have a very special bond and love eachother very much. We feel extremely blessed that fate brought our families together.