We love our neighborhood and know it will be a great place for a child to grow up. It is safe and friendly with tall trees and many parks. A terrific grade school is just a couple of blocks away. We look forward to biking with our child to our local farmers’ market, an old-time movie theater, and the library. Every August, we host a block party for our neighbors. For Halloween, we decorate the house with ghosts and jack-o-lanterns and have over 200 trick-or-treaters.

Our backyard is good-sized with fruit trees, colorful flowers and vegetable beds—a great yard for a kid to play in and explore. One of our favorite things is to cook for friends and family using food we have grown ourselves. Each summer, we pick peaches at a local organic farm with friends and then make jam and pie.

We look forward to creating new family traditions with our child and to sharing old ones such as our Italian Christmas Eve dinner of rigatoni and meatballs. On Christmas day, our extended family joins us for a celebration filled with food, a crackling fire and holiday stories.

We both grew up going to church and spirituality is important to us and our families. Recently, we have been looking for the right religious community for our family and have been visiting different churches.

We live with a sweet 7-year-old dog named Josie. Kids love to pet her amazingly soft ears. She loves people and is very excited about having a baby in the house as she is sure more food will end up on the floor.