We live in a vibrant and diverse community with major populations of African American, Asian, Latino, and Caucasian people, and ethnic/cultural diversity are a celebrated part of our everyday lives. This diversity is reflected in our close friends and their kids, and our future child will have a built-in group of little buddies with lots of different wonderful cultural, food, and music traditions. We love to go to the many festivals that take place locally, like the annual Juneteenth parade and Lunar New Year festival.

One of the things we love most about the Bay Area is the incredible abundance of international food, and we look forward to sharing delicious different cuisines like Ethiopian, Indian, Vietnamese food with our future child. We understand that if we adopt a child of a different race/culture their life experience will be different than ours, and it’s a priority for us to integrate their cultural heritage into our lives and give them examples of strong, responsible, successful people who look like them. We will talk about their culture regularly and integrate it into our lives – we believe the world is a better place with more people, perspectives, and cultures represented, and bringing our child’s cultural traditions into our household would make our lives so much richer.

In addition to a public-school education, we plan to create plentiful opportunities for education through experience. The trifecta of our favorite hobbies are arts, food, and nature, and we can’t wait to expand our child’s knowledge by taking them to concerts, plays, festivals, and to travel and explore different places and cultures together. Jeanette’s mom is a music teacher, and we would love to encourage them to play a musical instrument if that interests them. We plan to integrate education and art into play, like doing clay sculptures or learning about fractions while baking. Additionally, we can’t wait to build family traditions cooking delicious food and exploring new recipes with our child.

We have always known that we wanted to be parents and share our loving, close-knit families with our children. Adoption has been part of our plan since early on, and was something we talked about before we even got married. Through the love we experienced for our friend’s children and our godchildren, we knew we were capable of loving a baby as our own the moment that they were in our arms. And we truly both love kids – nurturing our godchildren and friends’ children as they grow up is one of the greatest joys in our lives. We had hoped to have a blended family of biological and adopted children, but after losing two pregnancies we are overjoyed to be able to build our family through adoption. It is our greatest joy to share the things we love with each other and our friends and family, and we can’t wait to continue sharing it all with our children.

We have the best family in the world, a close-knit group who don’t just love each other, but truly enjoy being together. The story of how we met actually starts with our parents, who became best friends and bandmates almost 50 years ago. Everyone was delighted when we fell in love at college and then got married, officially joining our families for life.

Although we lived far apart during our childhoods, now both sets of our parents and Sam’s brothers live in the same charming mountain town two hours away from us. When we visit, the line between families disappears—everyone gathers for big BBQs at the beautiful mountaintop ranch, or we head into town with all of our siblings to watch our parents’ band perform before ending the night with stories by the fire. Mornings find our family gathered around the breakfast table, conquering a crossword together while sharing homemade baked goods.

Jeanette’s sister lives even closer, and we see her and her husband often for museum visits, concerts, or relaxing in the yard. Holidays are extra special because we never have to choose which family to visit — everyone celebrates together! This child will enjoy cozy days spent with our big, blended family cooking, playing music, doing art/craft projects, and enjoying the outdoors and each others’ company.

Our families are incredibly supportive of adoption and excited to welcome this child into a family bursting with love and creativity, built on the foundation of enduring, loving relationships.

We live in Northern California, in the beautiful and diverse San Francisco Bay Area. Our cute little two bedroom/two bathroom craftsman home is perched atop a hill in a tight-knit neighborhood where everyone knows and watches out for each other.

The kitchen is our favorite room, with sweeping views of the city, its famous bridges, and the gorgeous nearby mountains that make it feel like you’re cooking in a tree house. We picked this house because of the huge, terraced yard – an oasis of nature that feels like a wildlife preserve, with so many birds and animals to observe, and fig, plum, apricot, apple, and pear trees that bring us fresh fruit year round. We love spending time in the yard together, with friends and their children, and imagine it will be a magical place for our future child to play and let their imagination run wild.

Our neighborhood has everything we need within walking distance, and you can often find us taking a stroll to the locally-owned coffee shop or produce market, or popping by the family-run drugstore with an old-timey candy counter. Neighbors walk their children to the nearby elementary school, which is as diverse as our community. There are many beautiful parks nearby with everything from playgrounds and public pools to redwood trees and trails. We love to attend our neighborhood’s annual street festivals with international food and music, and friendly neighborhood block parties where kids of all ages play together.

Although we don’t yet know each other, we have one thing in common: we love this baby deeply, and want to do everything we can to give them the best life possible.

We have had the privilege of loving each other for almost 20 years (married for 12), growing up from starry-eyed college kids into responsible adults, carried through all of these years of change and transformation by the constant and unyielding steadiness of our love and respect for one another.

We have always known that we wanted to be parents and share our loving, close-knit families with our children. Adoption has been part of our plan since early on, and was something we talked about before we even got married. Through the love we experienced for our friend’s children and our godchildren, we knew we were capable of loving a baby as our own the moment that they were in our arms. And we truly both love kids and nurturing our godchildren and friends’ children as they grow up is one of the greatest joys in our lives.

Although we planned to have one biological child and adopt one child, the universe reminded us of what many already know: we are not really in control, we can merely steer the ship around the obstacles life places in our path. Over the last few years we lost two second trimester pregnancies due to a rare, unsurvivable birth defect. It was a heartbreaking experience, and carrying and grieving the children that will never join our family is one of the hardest things we’ve ever been through. But as with every challenge that has cropped up in our lives, our steadfast support and love for one another not only got us through, but also deepened our relationship.

And still, even as we grieved the children we lost, the way we feel about adoption has never changed. In fact, after the last pregnancy, adoption was like a shining beacon of hope that we held onto, getting us through each day with the knowledge that someday we would welcome a child into our lives.

We appreciate the magnitude of the decision that you are making, and we are in awe of your selflessness and dedication to this child. We are grateful to even be considered to bring up this precious baby, and if chosen we would delight in sharing the child’s life with you through letters and photos.

We feel so lucky that our parents have been best friends for 50 years, and our families are very close. We can’t wait to take our future child to watch their grandparents’ band (both sets in one band!) perform in the small town where Sam grew up, take them to see the dinosaurs at the science museum where Jeanette works, and to share the beauty and diversity of art and nature with them. Our parents modeled for us what it is to be interested in the world and invested in exploring what resonates for you, and we hope that seeing us engage in things like rock climbing, knitting, playing instruments, going to museums and performances, baking, or even gardening will inspire this child to explore their own interests. Whatever calls to them and piques their interest, we will foster that curiosity and their growth.

We know that we were put here on this earth to shepherd a child through life by offering them our love and support, and that the steady foundation we have built as a couple will carry us through this next most important phase of life. We can’t wait to watch our musical parents encourage them to explore playing instruments and nurture creativity. We look forward to having a little helper as we pick fruit from our trees to make jam and pies. We can’t wait for them to play with our godchildren and join the next generation of tiny friends that we love so much.

We and our families have so much love to give, to this baby, and to you.

Sincerely,

Sam & Jeanette