Who does Justin think he is!!! See my bio-post for more on that.

Hi Everybody!

Well, its my turn to scratch out a bio-post.  Becky did a really nice job with hers and hopefully I can come close to that standard.

I am Justin and I am 35 years old.  I was born in Dayton, Ohio and spent most of my childhood between Ohio and North Dakota.  We moved back and forth a couple times.  Actually, we moved a lot in between the big moves.  I became very good at making new friends and starting over.  At the time I hated moving so much and I would have given my left arm to live in one neighborhood all through school.  In the end, well not the END but as of today, it was probably good for me.  I am told I am very easy to get along with and I kind of pride myself on that.  I am very easy-going.  I would say that it was the moves that made me good at fitting in and finding my niche.

I am very lucky to have a large, if not a bit disjointed, family.  I have a mother and sister that live in North Dakota.  I have a step-mom and three more siblings that live a couple of hours away in central Minnesota.  My dad and his current wife live about an hour and a half away, just north of the twin cities.  I have been through some family stress like everyone else but in the end I am a pretty fortunate guy.  I have a lot of people that care about me and care about my happiness.  Also, it goes without saying, I also have a bunch of people that really want a grandchild/niece(nephew) to spoil.  : )

I have lived in Minnesota since 1992.  I went to high school in a small suburban town.  I played some sports in high school and I got decent grades (B/C).  The most important thing I did in high school though was bond with a group of guys that I still have the honor of calling my best friends today, all these years later.  I have had the same best friends for 20 years and I think that is the coolest thing ever.  We are very lucky to still have each other.

Once out of high school I went off to a community college for two years and earned my associate degree.  I wanted to be a cop (little did I know how long of a road I was starting down!).  I completed my degree and I was still unsure about where I wanted to go and what facet of law enforcement I wanted to work in so I spent a couple of years doing various security gigs.  Eventually, I landed a security job at Mall of America.  I met some great people there and in fact I added two more guys to my list of long-time friends.  I learned a lot and fooled around with school in an effort to finish my bachelors, which I didn't finish at that time.  In 2006 I was hired on as a corrections officer at a county jail.  I spent six years there and while there I finished my bachelors degree and completed the requirements to become a licensed peace officer.  In 2013 I was hired as a deputy sheriff.  I applied, tested and interviewed for three years before I finally got the job I had wanted since I was 18.  It was a REALLY long road.  It lasted a month.  Seriously, I spent one month in training with a law enforcement agency only to find out that was not what I wanted to do.  I decided to get out of the field before I got comfortable.  I knew if I stayed, I would have gotten lazy about job searching.  I didn't want to have a job I hated for 25 years.  Now, I work in corporate security with a large company in the twin cities.  The schedule is very nice and the opportunities to advance and move up are abundant.  I have finally settled down in regards to my career choice.

Now, lets get to the important stuff.  I met Becky in 2006 using Match.com.  I had a ton of girls I was seeing at the time (nope, I am outright lying to you, I dated a few girls...like 2 actually) before I met the coolest girl ever.  Becky and I had profiles that didn't really mesh that well and honestly, prior to our first date, I was pretty sure this wasn't going anywhere.  Well, here we are in 2013 and we have been married for almost 5 years!  The nice thing about our relationship is that we are both easy-going people.  We don't get wound up over the petty things in relationships.  I dislike vegetables and she dislikes casseroles.  She dislikes hard rock and I absolutely hate 80's music.  She likes to keep all of her clothes on the floor in assorted piles and I like to be able to walk on carpet, not piles of shirts.  You get it.  Ever since we got involved in a serious relationship we have talked about family and what it means to us.  We may have not agreed on the number of kids we wanted (five is very excessive) but we always talked about starting a family and raising happy, mostly well-adjusted kids.  We always felt like between the two of us our kids would get exposure to a lot of different things and different people.  We were so excited to get started.  As it turns out we hit some road blocks.  We found ourselves facing a decision of either not having a child or adopting a child.  We absolutely wanted to be parents and quite frankly, we felt like we would be pretty awesome parents.  Adoption was new to both of us but the more we looked into it and the more we talked to people, the more we realized it was a perfect solution for us.  We can help another family while building our own.

If all goes well, someone will see our profile and know in their hearts that we are the right people to entrust with their most precious gift.  We have wanted an opportunity to be parents for so long and while it has been an emotionally taxing journey, we are better for it and we are ready for anything!  My Batman stuff may be kind of nerdy, I don't know how to really build or fix anything and I am not an outdoorsman but I am ready to tackle being a father and aside from my quirks and hobbies, I think I could be a pretty cool dad (if nothing else the kid will get a good dose of learning how to break stuff you are supposed to be fixing).


Thanks for reading and as always......stay classy, blog readers.

JB