Zareen & Matt

We wouldn’t say that we are huge adventurers, but we think it’s important and good for the kids to experience what the world has to offer and to try new things. On recent vacations, we have gone skiing, to New York City, and to Washington, D.C. We are hoping to take the kids to Europe before Lucas goes to college in a few years. Lucas and Zareen are more homebodies while Matt and Whitney like to get out in the world and befriend everyone! We have a good balance of getting out in the world on special trips but also staying close to home with our family and friends.

Meet Elsa and Penny. Elsa is an 8-year-old black lab who LOVES to fetch the ball. Diving into the lake to get the ball is her FAVORITE thing. Penny is a three-year-old goldendoodle. Penny loves to swim but doesn’t care much about the ball (other than to steal it from Elsa and play keep-away... a true little sister move). Everyone in our family loves animals, and Bebe (Zareen’s mom) has chickens at her house so collecting eggs and chasing chickens is a favorite activity at Bebe’s house. FUN FACTS: We all love these dogs so much but Whitney is the biggest animal lover in the family. If she could choose, we would have every type of pet... bunnies, ferrets, hamsters, cats, you name it. She is constantly lobbying to add more pets to our family. FUN FACT: We all love these dogs so much, but Whitney is the biggest animal lover in the family. If she could choose, we would have every type of pet... bunnies, ferrets, hamsters, cats, you name it. She is constantly lobbying to add more pets to our family.

We are big on traditions in this family. Lucas especially loves the comfort of keeping the same traditions every year. Holidays always look the same: lots of quality time with family, good food, and games after we eat! Every summer, we take a family trip to Branson, Missouri with Nana, Pops, and Gigi (Matt’s parents and grandma). Pops puts on a Mother’s Day Extravaganza every year with the help of Matt and Zareen’s brother Immy, and they really go all out for the ladies. We spend weekends at the lake with family and friends doing the same things: fishing, boating and always stopping for a snow cone on the way home. Matt and Lucas play softball together on Fridays in a league. We watch and go to lots of sports games--every year we have a family March Madness bracket and Kentucky Derby horse picks. And, there’s always the traditional road trip Pringles duck lips... Lucas actually does not love that tradition anymore now that he is a cool teenager.

We built our forever home and moved in at the beginning of 2024. Everyone in our family is VERY excited to be here. We walk to church every Sunday, and Whitney walks home from school sometimes. Having a space for our family where we can have dinner together, have friends over, watch sports, go swimming, shoot hoops, cook, garden, and play with the dogs is our dream come true, and we are beyond grateful for this blessing. We have friends and family over in large and small groups a lot. We are also very blessed that both our parents still live in the homes that we grew up in so we get to visit our parents in our childhood homes, and we do that very often. Our plan is to stay here forever so we refer to this house as Forever Home. We hope to grow our family here and to host our kids and their families when they grow up, just like our parents host us and our family now. FUN FACT: Zareen is most excited about growing flowers and veggies in the garden. We planted roses, peach trees, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and lots of veggies and other flowers. Zareen loves having fresh cut flowers around the house.

We are incredibly close with our families, and we are very blessed that our families love each other so we can blend and spend time all together. Zareen and Matt are both the first-born Texans in their families. Matt has one younger brother who lives with his wife and their four daughters in Houston. We get to see them several times a year. Our nieces are ALL soccer superstars so we get to watch their games when they come up to DFW to play. Matt’s parents and his Gigi live about 45 minutes from us, and we see them several times a month. Matt has a stepdaughter named Hannah whom he raised and who is half-sister to Whitney and Lucas. Hannah and her husband Matt are a wonderful part of our family as well. Zareen has an older sister, an older brother, and a younger brother. Her sister lives in New York City with her family, and we see her and her family a few times a year. Both her brothers and their families live in the DFW area so we see each other a lot. We have 8 nieces and nephews on Zareen’s side. Zareen’s dad passed away in 2019, but her mom “Bebe” lives nearby so we get to see her often. Zareen’s dad was a first-generation immigrant from Pakistan-- she misses him and hearing his funny accent every day, but our family does a good job remembering him. Being half-Pakistani and half-white made Zareen a little different than other people growing up, but she now values her unique background. With a family this big, there is always something or someone to celebrate, and both sides of our family like to host family gatherings that get noisy and fun. We cherish the love of our parents and our siblings and would love to add another special member to our family.

We are Catholic Christians. Our belief in God and our love for all people around us shape us. We believe being Christian means loving everyone without judgment. The gospel of Matthew in the Bible compares humans to salt and light. Just like salt makes food tastier and light highlights what's good and what’s bad, we aim to be helpful and positive influences for each other and others every day, no matter where we are or what we are doing. Life has ups and downs. Getting through them with grace and understanding for each other and everyone we meet is important. Knowing that our faith, our family, and our friends are there to support us is a very peaceful feeling. We share laughter and disappointments and successes and tears and celebrations with them. We show up for each other in good times and bad and hopefully act as the salt and light for each other.

If Whitney is our do-er, Lucas is our thinker. He’s overall a very traditional and faith-filled high schooler. He is generally pretty quiet and reserved, but you need to pay attention to him because he has a very sly and clever sense of humor. Lucas inherited his dad’s love of sports—playing sports, watching sports, and knowing ALL the sports facts. He’s a varsity tennis player and also loves video games. He’s slow to open up but very loyal once you become his friend. Now that he can drive a car, Lucas loves having some independence to hang out with his friends, and drive himself to the gym to work out and is growing into a responsible young man. He would love to go to Texas A&M and be an Aggie like his dad and big sister.

Whitney is our doer! She’s in middle school, and she is a serious social butterfly making friends anywhere we go. She is always up for an adventure or anything that involves hanging out with people and making memories. Her love language is quality time so she’s even a good sport about doing homework if one of us sits and spends time with her while she does it. She plays flute in the middle school band and plays soccer. She loves Taylor Swift, makeup, game nights, and Netflix. Whitney is all about having fun and enjoying life to the fullest. Even though she loves fun, she's learning that being responsible is important too. Outgoing and energetic are words that describe her well. She feels her emotions big time! She's very excited about becoming a big sister. Her enthusiasm and love of life make life an exciting journey. She’ll be a very loving and doting big sister and will no doubt be a source of fun and love and care for her future sibling.

I thank God every day for bringing Zareen into my life. When I met her, I was blown away. Here was a beautiful, hardworking, successful woman who was also the most genuine and considerate person I had ever met. The more I got to know her, the more I learned that she has all the qualities you want in a spouse and a best friend. She's always grateful for what she has and willing to help others. She's loyal, smart, self-driven, generous, and selfless. Zareen calls herself a "pusher" because success was important in her family. But she also pushes those she loves to be the best they can be, and she does it in a loving and supportive way. She's more interested in making the lives of those around her better than spending time on her own needs. It didn't take me long to figure out how much I loved Zareen and her values. Early on, she shared with me her deepest desire to have a family and children. She's so good to me, Lucas, and Whitney, and I can't think of a better person to grow a family with and help raise more kids. FUN FACT: One of Zareen's favorite places is the public library. She loves to curl up and read whenever she gets a chance and has a deep knowledge from her love of reading. However, she jokes that she has the sense of humor of a teenage boy. Some of her favorite movies are Pitch Perfect, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Stepbrothers, Talladega Nights and Big Daddy. Silly, fun movies are her number one choice.

When I was single, I had a very specific list of traits that the man I hoped to meet would have. He would be funny, smart, confident, kind, honest and hardworking. It did not take me long after I met Matt to realize he was all those things and so much more. He is also brilliant, generous, silly, playful, positive, faith-filled, and patient. And, he’s an amazing dad. His kids know that he will always be there for them... He’s at every game, every performance, every important (and unimportant) event in their life without fail. He coaches their teams. He shoots baskets with them in the driveway. He makes the unpopular decisions that sometimes parents have to make to be a good parent. He helps them with homework. He is steady and even and loves them without any conditions. I aspire to be a parent like him, with his never-ending patience and deep commitment to his kids. The best way to describe Matt is that he shows up for people. He shows up for the kids, for me, for his parents and Gigi and brother and his brother’s family, for my family, for our friends. He is the person you want to call if you need anything because he will figure out what you need and make it happen. He’s a good man with an incredible heart, and I am so thankful every day that he is my partner in life. FUN FACT: Matt knows every rule to every sport ever invented. I think he would be an amazing sports commentator because he always makes the perfect comment about the sport right before the actual TV commentator does.