Dear Expectant Mother,
Thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We appreciate that you are considering us as adoptive parents. We admire your courage and determination in considering an adoption plan, and the strength, love, and care you are expressing through this decision.
Our names are Ryan and Hannah and we live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are ready and excited to start our family through open adoption. We hope that this letter gives you a picture of who we are and conveys our excitement to be parents! We assure you that a child entrusted to our lifelong care will be loved and cared for unconditionally by us, our family and friends. He or she will also know of the love and thoughtfulness that you put into your adoption decision and you will always have a special place in our hearts.
ABOUT US
We met with the help of Match.com and our first date was on St. Patrick's Day, 2000. We hit it off from the moment we met - we even showed up wearing matching clothes (something we have made sure not to repeat!). Our relationship is a healthy mix of thoughtfulness, love, and silliness, along with the usual ups and downs. We share a love for family, music, culture, ethnic foods, the outdoors, baseball, and other activities. We married in 2005 under California redwood trees with a few close friends and family as witnesses. After years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, we are thankful to turn to adoption to fulfill our dream of building a family together.
ABOUT HANNAH
Hannah grew up in a loving family of six with a stay-at-home mom and hard-working dad. She continues to have strong bonds with her parents and three siblings. A Californian to the core, she loves the outdoors, is dedicated to recycling, and strives to eat and live healthy. She has even gotten Ryan to eat veggie-burgers (though he still likes beef burgers, too). Hannah has an AA in Music, received a music scholarship to Hungary, taught English in Slovakia, and traveled around Europe in her 20's. She then returned to the U.S. to attend university and work in Berkeley, later receiving a master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology.
Hannah now works as a speech and language therapist for children with special needs. Hannah takes great pride in her work and is rewarded by the joy she feels with every step her students make towards more successful communication. Hannah is a caring individual who will always be there for her friends and family when the chips are down. She empathizes so much with touching stories we watch on TV and in movies that Ryan can predict when to hand her a Kleenex!
Hannah has always wanted to be a mother and she will be a fabulous one! Her first jobs were babysitting and being a nanny. She still visits with the family in Texas that she worked for 17 years ago and cannot wait to love, care for, and explore life with our child. She also loves music and has sung in choirs, played piano, flute and recorder in musical groups, taught music lessons, and even made an album with a group. We have attended many concerts celebrating a variety of musical styles together and look forward to many more.
ABOUT RYAN
Ryan was born and raised in Michigan. Coming from the Midwest, he has an amazing work ethic and is a "straight-shooter." He was raised in a family of five with two older sisters. His dad instilled in him a great appreciation of sports and business, and he worked from an early age at their local health club. His mom ran the household, worked successfully in sales and financing and even did some modeling. Ryan graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Russian Language and Literature. He studied abroad in Russia for 9 months, living with a Russian student. In 1997, Ryan took advantage of the "Internet boom" in Silicon Valley and moved to California.
Ryan now works as Regional Manager for a translation and localization company near Google. He loves working at a place full of people and languages from all over the world. He has been in sales with the same company for six years.
Ryan has a gift for lightening the darkest of nights with his humor, exuberance, and fun-loving personality. When we visit with friends and their kids, he is the one seen playing peek-a-boo, making silly faces, and throwing a ball around. He is so eager to be a dad that he already has the cats calling him "papa" and can be caught snuggling with them on the couch while watching a baseball game. Ryan is a fantastic listener and is able to show that he cares that way. He is amazingly talented at balancing responsibilities and thoughtfulness with his wit and goofiness.
OUR HOME
We own a townhouse 45 minutes south of San Francisco. We enjoy "just" staying home, walking to the farmer's market or by the bay and strolling through nearby parks. We share an appreciation of our community, which is culturally and ethnically diverse, child-friendly, eco-friendly, and active. Hannah works in special education for a school district that contains some of the highest-rated schools in the state. We used to live in San Francisco, and still go there often to attend music concerts or show "The City" off to visiting friends and family.
Our household currently consists of the two of us plus two cats adopted from local shelters. Snickers is a beautiful black and white cat with six(!) toes on all feet. Stewie is an orange tabby. They both love to chase each other up and down the stairs and give us many laughs with their wrestling matches.
OUR VALUES
We believe in solid and meaningful relationships, spiritual faith, a good education and unconditional love. We both grew up as Christians and maintain the moral values instilled in us from our upbringing, although we are not weekly church-goers. Our house is always full of music in a variety 
of styles. We look forward to sharing our love for learning new things about the world, people, music, cultures, friends, and family with our child.
We believe in fostering a child's individual personality and talents and are excited to see where that might lead. Communication is also very important to us and we value providing each other a safe place to share the best and worst of times without regret or judgment. We believe this gives us a strong foundation for the challenges and joys of parenting.
We respect that you are facing an incredibly difficult decision. We know you want a nurturing and loving family environment for your child and are confident that we can provide that, with the help of our extensive network of family and friends.
If you would like to contact us directly please call us toll-free at 1-888-650-8979
Email: AdoptingUs@yahoo.com
Website: http://adoptingus.webs.com/
Or you can call our friendly adoption attorney Susan Romer at 1-800-U-ADOPT-US (1-800-823-6788)
Email: adamsromer@aol.com
—Hannah and Ryan
