Waiting families

OLAUS + JENELLE

Thank you SO much for considering us as adoptive parents! We love kids and have always been interested in adopting. We planned to have biological children, but after several years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, we are ready to close that door. We’re so excited to grow our family through adoption! We have a lot of love to give as parents. We are lucky to have a wonderful life filled with family, friends, travel, and fun. The only thing that could make it better would be to have kids to share it with! 

We live in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, surrounded by gorgeous mountains, forests, streams, rivers, and lakes. Olaus’s great-great grandfather homesteaded here in 1904 and we still live on the family ranch along with his parents, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and their families. We built our dream home 7 years ago on our 2-acre property, and we frequently have wildlife in our yard. Animals like moose, swans, foxes, elk, deer, and even bears come to visit. We live 8 miles from Grand Teton National Park and 50 miles from Yellowstone National Park. 

We love living so close to family. We are a close-knit bunch who love to go skiing, play board games, have BBQs, and celebrate holidays together. We can’t wait to introduce our child into this family because we know they will be loved, cared for, and supported by everyone. They will get to grow up on the ranch with the same freedom to roam and explore outside that we had when we were kids. We raise horses, cows, chickens, llamas, and donkeys, and we also have an adorable 10-month-old puppy named Johnny Cache, who is excellent with kids. 

We have been together for 11 years and we got married in 2016. We are a fun, goofy, generous, and adventurous couple. We are deeply in love and have built our relationship on honesty, mutual respect, and great communication. We work hard, we are always learning, and we never take life too seriously.

We love spending time outdoors! We hike, camp, cross-country ski, snowboard, ride horses, fish, kayak, surf, stand-up paddle board, sail, scuba dive, rock climb, forage for mushrooms and berries, visit hot springs, and ride bikes together. 

Jenelle grew up in Montana and that’s where most of her family lives. She enjoys yoga, reading, playing chess and mahjong, and traveling. She has a business degree and a psychology degree with a focus on infant and child development. She adores kids and ran her own nature-based daycare for 5 years. She also has a health and wellness business which provides her a lot of freedom and time flexibility.

Olaus is an artist at heart and loves to draw, paint, and make things. Those passions lead him to a career as a graphic designer, and he started his own design studio in 2017. He is equally happy dancing at a big concert or at home reading a good book.

We love to travel! We have explored Europe, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Mexico, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Hawaii, and the Caribbean together. We now have friends all over the world and believe children can learn so much from other cultures.

Olaus is also a part-time organic vegetable farmer and has a community farm share program where 30 families get vegetables every week from us during the summer. We love providing our community with sustainably-grown food. We love to cook big dinners with family and friends where everything is from our ranch. 

Thanks again for taking the time to learn a little more about us. We are honored to be considered for this special role.

Olaus and Jenelle