Ryan and Emily

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From Us to You

Dear Expectant Mother,

Thank you for your bravery. We know that we will never fully understand what you are going through. We want you to know that we think that you are strong and selfless. We will teach your baby about your strength and bravery.

We have wanted to adopt a child for a long time now. Adoption is close to us as we have several family members and close friends who are adopted. We were also recently reunited with Emily’s birth half-sister and have come to appreciate adoption from both sides. We have made the decision to start this process for ourselves and we are so excited. We are excited to give a loving home and a thriving life to your baby.

What will life be like for your baby? Living two blocks from the beach in California, we bicycle, do water sports and go for walks on the beach year-round. We live in a small town that is family friendly. Your baby will grow up in a vibrant community complete with 4th of July parades, fish fries, and cultural festivities. Our weekends and vacations will be full of road trips, travel, exploration and new experiences. Your baby’s life will be full of adventure.

Your baby will be part of a large family, having two great-grandparents, six grandparents, nine aunts and uncles, and ten cousins (ages 5-17) who are totally supportive and cannot wait to welcome a new member into our family. Several of our closest friends have little ones or newborns that will grow up alongside your baby.

We promise that we will always love, protect, and care for your beautiful baby. We promise that we will give your baby the best life that we are able to give: a life of unconditional love, family, and friends; and a life rich with nature, travel, good food, books, stories, poetry, and art. We will work to instill in your baby the values of love, kindness, gratitude, and faith, but also an attitude of fun, play, craziness, laughter, lightheartedness, and wonder.

We are humbled by the gift you will be giving. We will always consider you a part of your child’s life. We are fully open to you maintaining a relationship with your baby and with us, as is right for you, without pressure or judgment from us. No matter what, we will make sure your baby grows up to honor you and to understand that putting up a child for adoption is an act of selfless love.

We will be forever grateful to you.

Check out our Instagram @ryan_emilyadopt

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About Us

We met in college, have been together for 18 years and married for 7 years. Our relationship has weathered long distance, illnesses, unknowns, loss and grief. We are very different people, Emily learns the life story of strangers at the grocery store while Ryan memorizes poetry on hikes in nature. While we take different approaches to things, we share the same interests and hobbies and most importantly, a love of living large and experiencing the world. We balance each other and bring out the best in one another. We fiercely support each other. Most of all we are each other’s biggest fan and best friend. We love and cherish each other and are so excited to have a strong partner to tackle parenthood with. We can’t wait to share our love with your baby.

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About Emily

I can’t wait to see Emily as a mother. Emily is the kindest, most generous, and selfless person I have ever known. She is so loving and thoughtful. She is the kind of person who, no matter how stressful her day has been, will reach out to her family and friends to ask how they are doing. Emily will be such a loving mom, and will also be a fun mom. Emily is all about the simple pleasures in life, laughing, playing games, going for a walk, hanging out with friends and family, spreading out a blanket for a picnic in a park, or tea, cookies, and a movie on the couch. Emily loves to crochet, cook, bake, garden, and travel. She is smart, responsible, and hardworking. She will be such a good example as a mom. Most of all Emily will be a loving mom. She has so much love to give and any child would be blessed to have her in their life.

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About Ryan

We’ve been together for 18 years and we’ve both changed a lot in that time. But the consistent things about Ryan, throughout all that time, remain the same: Ryan is easy-going, thoughtful, adventuresome, athletic, intelligent, calm, grounded, fun, silly and devoted. He is always making me laugh. He makes everything lighter and more fun with his playfulness and humor. He is very athletic and loves to be active; he played baseball growing up and surfs every day. One of my favorite things about Ryan is that he is a learner. He loves to learn about anything he doesn’t know about, which makes him the best travel companion and the best life partner. But my absolute favorite thing about Ryan is how deeply devoted he is to me and our relationship. I know he will be a devoted and loving father to our child.

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Our Home

We are fortunate to live in a beach cottage two blocks from the beach in California. Our house is our happy place where we love to cook in our gourmet kitchen, watch the sunset on our balcony and read books in the winter by the fireplace. The California weather allows us to spend most of our time outdoors. We have a community area with BBQs right across from our house where we spend time socializing with family and friends. There are two parks half a block from our house, complete with a playground, and tennis, basketball, handball and pickleball courts. Our small town is family-oriented and super walkable with the library, grocery store, restaurants and year-round community events just a short walk away. The local school district is excellent with lots of parent participation. It will be a wonderful place for your child to grow up.

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Our Puppy - Otis

We have one dog, a 15 lb. rescue poodle-terrier mix, named Otis who is 4 years old. Otis loves going on all of our adventures with us and is an absolute softie who melts for belly rubs. He is smart and knows lots of tricks, including putting his toys away and high-five. He gets along well with children of all ages, most especially any that will play catch with him for hours. He is calm and rarely barks. He has a snaggletooth and percolates when he sleeps. We think he is very special.

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Our Families

Our large and loving community of family and friends is at the center of our life. This wonderful group of people has supported us through the highs and lows of life and they are ready to lovingly welcome and embrace your baby into their lives. Our parents are all local with one set living only a block away, and they all are excited to love, care for and spoil another grandchild. Some of our siblings and ten nieces and nephews live locally while others live a long car ride away; but that doesn’t stop all of us from spending holidays and vacations together every year. Most of our friends have started families of their own within the last few years and will be a wonderful support system as we enter parenthood, as well as provide constant playmates for your baby.

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Our Lifestyle

We both love experiencing new places and new things but we also love being home and the comfort and routine of our own cozy household. We both have flexible work schedules with lots of working-from-home. Day-to-day you will find Emily in the kitchen cooking or baking something delicious and Ryan in the water, surfing or swimming. We spend every meal together and enjoy quiet evenings reading, crocheting or watching a movie. Weekends are full of social activities with family and friends, backyard BBQs and birthday parties. A three-day weekend will find us either working on a fun project around the house or on a quick overnight trip to the mountains or the desert. We love road trips and all forms of travel.

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

Family is central to our lives. Unable to have a child on our own, we have wanted to adopt a child for a long time now. Adoption is close to us. We have several cousins and close family friends who were adopted. One of our best friends since childhood was adopted. Adoption is part of our circle of family and friends. We also recently experienced the other side of adoption as we were reunited with Emily’s birth half-sister, who was placed for adoption when their mother was a teenager. This reunion with my half-sister has made us appreciate all sides of adoption, especially the birth mom’s perspective. In seeing my mom’s own pain and grief we realize how essential an open adoption is to a healing and positive experience for everyone.

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Racial and Cultural Diversity

We live in a part of California that is very culturally diverse. We consider ourselves lucky to live in a culturally vibrant part of the country where so many ethnicities, languages, cultures, foods and traditions all come together. We both speak Spanish and both lived abroad in Spain for a time. As students of history and anthropology, we share a love of different cultures, languages, traditions and cuisines. Our group of friends is culturally and ethnically diverse and we enjoy participating in the mix of cultures in our region.

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How a Child will Enrich our Lives

A child will enrich our lives beyond our wildest dreams. We are so excited to get to experience the world anew through their eyes. Every experience and tradition we have will be made fuller and richer with the addition of a child. Our family will grow and with this addition, so will the joy and love in our lives grow exponentially, not just for us but for all of our family and friends. A child will affirm and expand the most precious things to us in our lives: family and love.

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Our Hobbies

We look forward to sharing with your baby our shared interests and hobbies of camping, hiking, traveling and cooking. Ryan is excited to share his love of surfing, reading, swimming, history, writing and playing the ukulele. As a former pastry chef, Emily loves baking with her nieces and nephews and is excited to impart a love of food and baking with your baby. Emily is also excited to share her penchant for arts and crafts, including crochet, needlework and sewing. We love music and enjoy Sunday mornings listening to albums on our record player. We enjoy watching movies, going on picnics, going on bike rides and family dinners.

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Our Vacations

Having lived in Europe for several years, we are avid travelers who love to explore and experience new places. We also love our families’ annual vacations locally. Every summer we go to Catalina Island with one side of the family and then go camping in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains with the other side. Every other year we visit friends and family farther away, on the East Coast or in Europe. We love to take road trips across America, exploring new cities and national parks. Wherever we go we inevitably find delicious food, fun activities and interesting history, all of which we are eager to share with our little one.

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Our Family Traditions

Traditions are how we mark the passage of time with family and friends. We can’t wait to share our traditions and create new ones with your baby. In the summertime we will go on family vacations, road trips and sometimes travel abroad. In the fall we will go to fairs and festivals, pumpkin carving parties and go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Thanksgiving and Christmas will both involve lots of cooking, baking and eating as we make the rounds to all our families throughout the holiday season. Our small town’s Christmas parade will be a highlight of our holiday festivities as well as the holiday baking traditions with our nieces and nephews each year. The Fourth of July is one of our favorite holidays and includes a homegrown parade as well as music, fireworks and BBQ on the beach. We have family dinners each month for all of the birthdays that month. When we get together with extended family we enjoy games, puzzles and good conversation.

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What We will Teach Your Child

First and foremost your child will know love. They will be taught to be honest, compassionate and caring. We will instill a sense of humor, spontaneity and playfulness in your child, as well as confidence and a positive self-image. We will model being a good citizen and the importance of service to each other and the community. We will foster creativity, imagination and curiosity in your child. We will teach them a love of nature, people and culture. We will make every opportunity available to them to help them become a vibrant and thriving individual.

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The Kind of Parents We will be

We will be parents much like the parents that raised us: we plan to create a home for your child built upon unconditional love. We will be supportive and nurturing parents. Our home will be built on consistency, stability and security. It will also be balanced with fun, spontaneity, surprises and room to grow. We will provide a home-life that is stable, safe, balanced, healthy, fun and rooted in love.

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What Type of Relationship We would like to Build with You

We would like to have an open adoption that allows you to maintain contact and knowledge of your baby’s life. Through seeing Emily’s mom’s experience with adoption, we appreciate how important an open adoption is in creating a positive and healing experience for everyone. It is important for you to know that your child is well and loved and it is important that your child know they are loved by you. We are humbled by the gift you will be giving us and your child. We will always consider you a part of your child’s life. No matter what, we will make sure your baby grows up to honor you and to understand that placing a child for adoption is an act of selfless love.

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Our Promise to You

We promise that we will always love, protect, and care for your beautiful baby. We promise that we will give your baby the best life that we are able to give: a life of unconditional love, family, and friends; and a life rich with nature, travel, good food, books, stories, poetry, and art. We will work to instill in your baby the values of love, kindness, gratitude, and faith, but also an attitude of fun, play, craziness, laughter, lightheartedness, and wonder.