Hello from Mike, Joanna, and Alex,
We respect your courage in pursuing an adoption plan. We adopted our son two years ago and now hope to expand our family again through adoption. We want you to know that we will provide a loving, warm, and nurturing home. We would like to share a little bit about ourselves and our home so you can begin to get to know us.
About Us
We live in Santa Clara, California, a quiet part of the San Francisco Bay area. Between the beautiful weather, the mountains and coastline, and the tremendous cultural diversity, it's just a special place to live, work, and raise a family.
We met through Joanna's brother, who has been friends with Mike since college, and soon realized that we had each met our perfect match. We both like to cook, hike, and visit the ocean. We both value family life way ahead of work. Our personalities complement each other, yet we see eye to eye on everything important. We married in 1999 and are wonderfully happy together. The joys and challenges of life always draw us closer and our love grows stronger with each year.
For many years, we spent our time working, traveling and enjoying the outdoors together, yet we always knew that we wanted to have a family someday. In the Spring of 2006 we adopted newborn Alex from a wonderful birth mom and started a whole new chapter in our lives - parenthood! We were beside ourselves with happiness at meeting Alex for the first time and he has been a joy ever since. It has been a wonder to realize how deeply we can love a child, and we know we have much more to give.
About Mike
Mike is the typical laid back middle child and seldom gets stressed out or upset. He grew up in a diverse area of Southern California where his parents, older brother, and younger sister still live. Growing up, Mike ran track and sailed, but his passions were always music and mathematics. His band won a battle of the bands and he gigged steadily for years before moving away to attend grad school in mathematics at Stanford.
Before we met, Mike wrote textbooks for school kids for a few years. Now he is a computer programmer with flexible hours, perfect for those unexpected surprises that come with parenthood. He shares his love of playing games and doing puzzles with his mom and his love of music with his drummer dad. Mike continues to play music, lately playing bass in a jazz quintet for fun and occasional gigs.
About Joanna
Joanna has a joy of life and makes friends easily. She grew up in Columbia, Missouri where she played soccer and excelled in science and foreign languages. Though her parents divorced when she was young, she cherished her relationships with both her mother and father. Her step-father and his warm, extended family welcomed her and her brother into their lives. After graduating from college in Indiana, she moved to Japan where she lived and worked. It was a wonderful and life-changing experience. Every day she learned something new about people 
(including herself), culture or life, but after a while she longed to come home. Once back, she went to grad school in Atlanta, Georgia. Afterwards she moved to California for work—and soon met Mike!
Joanna is a planning engineer at a manufacturing company now. She'll be a stay-at-home mom for a year and then will return to work part time so she can be at home to participate in activities with the children. Joanna is the family photographer and also enjoys reading, gardening, cooking international meals, and studying different cultures.
About Alex
Alex has a mixed African-American and Caucasian heritage. He is a happy child with an outgoing personality. He loves vehicles of all kinds and gleefully names all the types he sees whenever we are out on a drive. On the weekends we often go hiking or play at the park with friends. Riding the train a few stops to the local farmer's market is one of Alex's favorite 
activities. Probably the most fun is just giggling with Alex at home as he asks for tickles or helping him read his favorite books. He has a sweet, friendly nature and is very sociable and interested in other children, especially babies.
Family & Friends
With our four adopted cousins it's no surprise that our families have wonderfully supportive of our plans all along. Though our families live in Southern California, Missouri, Texas and Minnesota, we keep in close touch and visit each other, often sharing special holiday times together. Alex gets along famously with all his grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins and often urges us to call them. The Texas cousins are close in age, and there are new babies in the extended family. The "big" teenage cousins in California love to get down on the floor and play too!
Our many friends in the Bay area are like our local family and they mirror the diversity of our area. They've encouraged and helped us in every way as we've become parents. We often go on hikes, play dates, train rides, and other activities with friends and their kids.
Our Home
Our home in Santa Clara is close to our jobs in a great family neighborhood with three nearby parks. There are lots of kids in the neighborhood and it is very safe. The school district in our area is excellent and we are fortunate that our local elementary school prides itself on its academic achievements and cultural diversity.
Our thoughts about parenting
We feel that giving unconditional love and support is the foundation of good parenting. We will teach our children love, values, and consideration for others through example, and we will help them find the things in life that inspire and fulfill them. Providing them an environment open to many different kinds of experiences is our goal, and we will make sure they have a special connection to their ethnic and cultural heritages. Education made all the difference in our own lives and we want to give our children every opportunity to bloom and develop their own talents and interests.
In Closing...
Thank you for taking time to read our letter. If you would like to get to know us better please feel free to call us toll free at 1-800-878-7019 or email us directly at mikeandjoanna@mikeandjoannahome.com or look at our website at http://www.mikeandjoannahome.com/. You can also call our friendly adoption attorney at 1-800-823-6788 or via email to adamsromer@aol.com.
Mike, Joanna, & Alex
