Dear Birth Parent(s),

Thank you for considering us and reading our family profile. We realize that you are up against many challenging and difficult decisions right now and we admire your courage to consider adoption. We have great respect for you making such a sacrifice to provide the best possible future for your baby. If we are lucky enough to be chosen to love and care for your child, we promise to always be open and honest about how they became a part of our family. Adoption has been such a huge and wonderful part of our lives since adopting our daughter four years ago. We are extremely excited about adopting another child and having our family grow.

We would like to share a little bit about ourselves to help you feel at ease and get to know us. Our names are Derek, Sandy and our daughter, Lily Grace. We've been happily married for almost seven years and have been blessed with wonderful lives - growing up in happy, healthy homes that instilled strong family values and lots of love and respect. After trying for some time and finding out we were unable to have children, we decided on adoption. This was a natural choice for us since our brother-in-law and other close friends are adopted. Our dreams came true the day we were blessed by adopting our beautiful daughter, Lily Grace through American Adoptions. It was by far the most incredible experience of our lives. We immediately made such a strong connection and bond with our daughter's birthmother we exchanged email addresses and share letters and pictures with her regularly. Lily Grace knows she is adopted because we talk about adoption openly, freely and in a positive way. We keep the many letters we receive from her birthmother for our daughter to read when she gets a little older. Some day, we hope that she will read them on her own and cherish them knowing how lucky and special she is.

Being parents has made us stronger as a couple teaching us what is truly important in life - family is everything. Being a stay-at-home mom means the world to Sandy. She wakes up every morning excited about the day's activities and adventures with Lily Grace ('dress-up" being her favorite these days, Lily Grace even tries to dress up our dog, Riley!) One of the best parts about being a parent is exploring and learning with them and making sure that we are always supportive and encouraging them- whether it's through music, sports, arts and crafts, going to the library or just playing and getting dirty in the backyard.

Some of our favorite things we love to do are going to the beach, taking our dog, Riley for a family walk after dinner, 'story time' at night and trips to grandma's lake house with our cousins. We love to make big dinners on the weekends and have friends and family visit. We also look forward to planning and taking family vacations a few times a year.

Our house is on a beautiful tree-lined street surrounded by young families with lots of children. We picked this neighborhood because we wanted a safe and happy place to raise our family. The first day we moved in, our neighbors came by with pies and cookies welcoming us to the neighborhood - we since have kept up the tradition ourselves for newcomers.

We hope this letter has given you some insight into what kind of parents we are. We would be honored to be chosen by you as the right adoptive parents for your child. We promise we will love the child as much as anyone can be loved and will raise them in a home filled with love, laughter, wonder, learning, fun and security not to mention a big sister that will be very protective and loving friend forever.

With much admiration and respect,

Derek & Sandy