Matt & Tina's Adoption Site

Matt 

I was born into a large Cajun family. I have one brother, Nicholas, who is five years younger than me. My parents have lived in the same small town in which they were born. When I was a child we would gather every week at my grandmother’s home for lunch, which is still just a few miles from my parents’ home. My brother and I loved playing with action figures, reading comic books and playing sports. We both had an appreciation for music and learned to play various instruments (I was in the band through college.) I have a lot of cousins and all of them have children so I have more than 12 cousins under the age of 10. I was the valedictorian of my high school – my parents always stressed the importance of working hard in school and attending college. I was part of my high school theatre and still enjoying public speaking. I graduated from LSU in December 2007 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. I moved to Dallas the following month when I was hired by the company where I still work.  I am blessed to have weekends off and home by 6PM every night.

I enjoy golf, basketball, reading, music and grilling (I am the king of the grill around here.) I play softball on the church team every Spring and Summer where Tina cheers me on. Admittedly I have an extensive Star Wars and Spiderman collection as well as a collection of superhero comic books from childhood. 

Tina

I grew up on a large ranch outside of Lake Charles, Louisiana. I have one brother, Kevin, who is three years older than me. He has two children who are 14 and 17. I loved being outdoors which is how I developed my love of nature and animals. Family time was very important to my parents - we owned a camp on a river where we went every weekend to fish, take boat rides and spend time together.  I also had a “princess” side. I enrolled in ballet at a very young age and loved wearing my tutu. I continued dancing throughout my teen years whether in a recital or on my school dance team.  Cajun families are similar to Italian families in that we always had plenty of family around. Every other Sunday we would drive to my grandmother’s house to have a large family lunch with aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandmother still loves to prepare big meals for us and is sure to make black eye peas and a coconut cream pie because I love them both! My mom is originally from Dallas where we would travel several times a year to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins here. When I was eight years old I told my parents that I would move to Dallas once I graduated from college. I followed through with this plan, graduating from McNeese State University in May of 1997 with a BS in Sociology and moving to Dallas in June.

I enjoy reading, jewelry-making, gardening, decorating, painting, chalk art and craft projects. I love to travel – I took my mom to Italy just before I met Matt. We are blessed to have so much in common.

As a couple we enjoy cycling, art & theater, boating and music. Since we both enjoy traveling we take at least one vacation a year apart from our trips to Louisiana and an annual trip with my brother’s family and my mom. We have stayed in a cabin in the Missouri mountains, toured New York City and visited Broadway, laid on the beach of Hawaii, snorkeled in Mexico and visited friends in the Los Angeles area. We have been anxious to go to Disneyland!