Art was born and raised in Hawaii, in a traditional Catholic Filipino family. His parents instilled in him the importance of education and hard work and the strength of family. He is the youngest of 3 other brothers and 1 sister, who all live in Hawaii also. Art's sister, Janet, who is closest in age to him, has been married to her high school sweetheart for 19 years and has 2 teenage children. Her eldest looks up to his Uncle Art and wants to follow in his footsteps. Art's brother, Edmondo, shares 3 sons with his girlfriend, Gina, and only lives 10 minutes away. Occasionally, Art and Tammy will get a phone call from them with an invitation for karaoke and a barbeque. Whenever Art's son, Shawn, is home for a visit, his 3 little cousins are always excited to see him. Art's second eldest brother, Pancho, is married and is already a grandfather to 3 grandchildren. Art can still remember always wanting to emulate his older brother, Pancho, and learned a lot of his fishing and surfing skills from him. Art's eldest brother, Eddie, enjoys making the rest of the family laugh. The whole family enjoys his funny stories, especially during their annual camping excursions. His late night scary campfire stories never scare the rest of the family, but never fail to make them laugh. Art's mother moved out of the house where he grew up and in with his sister several months after Art's father passed away in 2006.
Tammy’s Birthday at Her Parents House
Tammy is the youngest of two daughters and was born and raised in California. Tammy's parents always kept her active in sports and extracurricular activities, like softball, volleyball, basketball, piano lessons, and karate. Tammy's mother is the matriarchal figure for all of her younger siblings, as she is the eldest of 11 children, so the house where Tammy grew up was always the "central" place to gather. In addition, Tammy's father is the youngest of 5 children. So, like Art, Tammy also grew up surrounded by family and relatives. Included in Tammy's long list of cousins are 2 adopted cousins, who now live on the East coast. Holidays and birthdays were always a "full house".
Most of her family and relatives reside in California, which makes living in Hawaii difficult at times. But they make up for the distance with frequent phone calls and visits. Both of her parents are retired and enjoy making trips to Hawaii as often as they can. If you hang around Tammy's family for only a short time, you will learn quickly that the love they have for each other is so apparent. One way they express their endearment for each other is by creating nicknames, and these nicknames will stick with you for as long as you are a member of the family. Tammy's only sister, Martha, is almost 4 years older and loves children. She and Tammy are very close and consider each other best friends. Martha cannot wait to be an auntie. She and Tammy's parents are anxiously anticipating a new addition to the family and fully support Tammy and Art's decision to adopt. In fact, they already have a strategic rotating visiting plan set up to help out Art and Tammy after the baby arrives.
Our House and Neighborhood
Our Home
We feel very blessed to be able to live in our neighborhood and community. We feel safe and secure and love our neighbors. Two of our close friends and their little girl live down the street, and one of our neighbors is a young couple who is just starting their family too. We couldn't ask for better neighbors. One of them even invited us to help ourselves to his herb garden whenever we want. We live in a family oriented community. Our house is just around the corner from a big park with a popular playground and plenty of potential playmates. Every weekend this park is filled with children playing soccer. Just a couple of blocks in the opposite direction is another park that hosts another playground, basketball courts, volleyball courts, and is home to many softball/baseball games. Part of our association dues is used to upkeep a total of 5 recreational centers, which are scattered throughout the community, and they offer a multitude of extracurricular activities for children and adults, as well as community swimming pools. If we don't feel like swimming in a pool, we are only about 15 minutes from the nearest beach. There is a choice of public or private elementary schools to choose from, and the high school is only 5 blocks away, right across from the public library.
A Park Close to Our House
We live in a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with separate living and family rooms, a formal dining room, and a breakfast nook. The house was built in the early 1980's, so when we first moved in (in 2002), we had a lot of updating to do. We take pride in the fact that we've completely renovated every room ourselves, except the kitchen, which is next on our home improvement list. Our favorite improvement was the addition of central air conditioning, which comes in handy in Hawaii.
American Adoptions, a private adoption agency founded on the belief that lives of children can be bettered through adoption, provides safe adoption services to children, birth parents and adoptive families by educating, supporting and coordinating necessary services for adoptions throughout the United States. For more information on American Adoptions please call 1-800-ADOPTION (236-7846).
