Q & A

• Open or closed adoption?  While we know a lot will depend on the level of openness our birth mother wants, we are very much for open adoption. We feel like with open adoptions, there are nothing to hide. It also allows the child to not question why they were placed for adoption, who their birth family is, and it allows them to still have a connection to part of who they are. However, we realize that this is not just about us and that it is important to take into consideration, how our birth mom and or birth father feels too. We are OPEN to all scenarios as we understand that the openness will depend on the circumstances. We will work together with our birth parents to make sure that we are also looking out for what will be best for the child in the long run.

• What will life be like in your family? It is our goal to have a Christ centered home. We both desire for our children to learn the teachings of the Gospel. We feel it is important to take time to eat dinner together as a family every night, or as close to that as we can. We want to be there for our kids. Family comes first! We look forward to dance recitals, baseball games, late nights and diaper changes.   Family Home Evening on Monday nights, specials with mom and dad, having snuggles in the morning and bedtime stories at night, waffles on Saturday mornings, going on walks in the evenings, laughing and playing games as a family. We will say I love you whenever we leave each other, and make sure that our kids know every day how lucky we are to have them in our lives!

• What is your marriage like? Our marriage is not perfect by any means, but I have to say, we are both really lucky to have each other! We work hard to support each other in everything that we do. We complement each other really well. Where I am weak Cody is strong, and vice versa.  We are always learning things about each other. Our marriage is something we work on every day, because of our religion and our beliefs, we know that our marriage isn’t just for this life, so it is something that we strive to make better each day! We enjoy a lot of the same things and we try to do things that maybe the other person enjoys too.

• What is Jourdyn’s Travis's family like? Jourdyn is the oldest in her family. She has one brother that lives up in Idaho with his wife and their two kids. They have a little boy that passed away shortly after he was born. Her youngest brother lives up in Cedar with her parents, but is planning to move up to up to Salt Lake. Her sister lives up in Salt Lake and goes to school at UVU. Although it is smaller than my family, they are all very close. We get together at least monthly with part of the family and we go to dinner with her family a lot. We all try to make time to do things together, and see each other on the holidays.

• What is Cody’s family like? Cody has a lot of family! He is the youngest of 6. Cody’s parents divorced when he was 2. His mom and dad both live in St. George and they both are very involved in his family’s lives. His dad remarried when he was younger. He has 2 step brothers and 1 step sister. He has an older brother that is married and lives in California. They have 4 kids. He has a sister that lives here in St. George. She has two older kids. Her son and his girlfriend have a little girl. He has two brothers that live in St. George as well. One is married and they have 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls. The other brother is also married and they have 2 little girls. His other sister is married and they have 2 little boys. His family all loves in St. George, except for a brother in California. We have lots of nieces and nephews on this side!!! When we get together it is loud and fun! Some of the traditions is the annual Easter egg hunt with his mom and the deer hunt with his dad and step mom.

• What are some of your favorite family traditions? With Cody’s family we go to Lake Mead every Memorial Day as well as Labor Day. His sister has a houseboat, and we go out tubing on some of the other small boats they have. We love playing with nieces and nephews. We cannot wait until we can be able to take our kids. We also get together every Christmas Eve with Cody’s family. We usually trade names with another family and get to give each other a gift. His mom is very musical and she has these chimes that each family member gets and we play Christmas songs with them all together. During the summer, we always go to the Demolition Derby at the Washington County Fair. Most of his family lives right here in St. George. My parents live not very far from St. George in a small town called Cedar City. My brother is up in Salt Lake and so is my little sister. My other brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece all live up in Paris, Idaho. Although we all live far away from each other, we get together for a lot of family things. Most holidays we are together, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and sometimes on New Years. Cody and I go up on the weekends sometimes for dinner. We get together for Christmas Day and we usually sleep over at my parent’s house. We also usually watch the Saturday session of General Conference with my family. I talk to my family all the time and we are all very close with each other.

• What is your struggle with infertility?  Due to Jourdyn’s cancer treatment when she was younger, she is not able to have children. Her ovaries were absorbed during her treatment. She has always known since she was 15 that she would not be able to have children.  We made an appointment with her OBGYN to discuss doing in vitro. They said that it would be difficult because of everything that her body had been through. We decided to think and pray about it. We went to the temple and after we knew that adoption was how we were meant to have a family.

We hope that this answers some of your questions about who we are and what is important to us, as well as who we are. We are open to answering any other questions you may have or ones that we have not thought of.  Please feel free to contact us, if you have any other questions that you would like to ask us! Thank you so much for taking time to stop by.