Dear Birth Parent(s),

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to tell you about ourselves, our life together and most importantly, our dream to adopt our second child. This dream may become a reality because of the courage you are showing.

Our names are Lisa and Ron. We have been together for 22 years, married for 16 of these wonderful years. The strength of our marriage is partially due to our amazing role models, our parents. As children, we always understood how much our parents loved each other and how much they truly loved us. We feel we have modeled this for our beautiful daughter Madison as well. We hope to forever provide our children with a loving home where they learn strong values, lots of laughter, a respect for others and an appreciation for what they have been blessed with.

Together, we have shared a love and respect for children. This is what led us to choose teaching as our professions. Ron has been a fourth grade teacher for over 14 years. Lisa has been teaching third grade for 12 years. We both take great pride in educating children, providing them with a safe and nurturing environment and we look forward to following their future progress. Because we live in the community where we teach, we are fortunate to see students in the supermarket, at movies, knocking at our door on Halloween or even baby-sitting for Madison. Being a part of their daily lives is one of the many benefits of being a teacher!

We have been blessed with amazing family and friends with whom we spend most of our time. Some of our favorite things to do together include going out to dinner, going to sporting events, golfing, traveling and simply spending time together. In the summer, we love going to Lisa's family home on the lake to swim, boat and water ski. Ron particularly enjoys fishing while we are there. He recently took our daughter fishing for the first time, she caught two fish!! Our extended family includes aunts, uncles, and more than 30 cousins who we spend holidays and many special occasions with. We receive tremendous support from all of our family and friends. Everyone is looking forward to welcoming another child into our family!

In sharing our lives together, we have always assumed children would be a part of it. Unfortunately, we were not able to conceive a child of our own, although we had great confidence that we would create a beautiful family together. If we had known 16 years ago the sheer joy that an adoption experience would bring, we never would have struggled with the fertility issues. Adoption gave us new hope! This journey began with the adoption of our sweet, charming and hysterical daughter Madison. We thank God for bringing her birth mother into our lives and blessing us with the greatest gift parents could ever know, a child! Now, our hearts are filled with new hope that we can welcome a second child and sibling for Madison, who will be the best big sister! She is looking forward to teaching her brother or sister all of her jokes, reading her favorite books and in her words "just playing" with them.

The sacrifice you are making for the sake of your baby shows what a remarkable person you are. We will forever be grateful to you for the love you showed your child and the amazing gift you have blessed us with. Thank you for allowing us to share our hopes and dreams with you.

With heartfelt appreciation,

Ron & Lisa