Mike and Denise

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From Us to You

If you are reading this letter, you are considering one of the biggest decisions of your child’s life: adoption. This thoughtful act shows that you truly care for this child’s future and their potential as a person. Thank you!

If you choose adoption, you will face another hard decision: Which family would be best for your child? We hope you can see your child’s future in our family and would love you to choose us!

We are a fun-loving family of four who enjoys the small moments in life at home and the occasions where we can travel together with our extended family. We grew up in big cities with diverse groups of friends, Mike in Tennessee and Denise in California, before meeting in college in the Midwest. We married soon after in 2012 and have since built a financially stable home while raising our two biological children Ellie (4) and Tori (2). We have always planned for our third child to be adopted, and we would love for them to have a little brother or sister.

Ellie is a natural caregiver who dearly loves playing “mom” to her dolls and reading to her little sister. Tori is free-spirited in nature; she loves to sing and dance along to pop tunes with her big sister. Most importantly, they are kind-hearted to each other when it counts – even to our two senior dogs Delta (Beagle mix) and Dyna (Corgi). They would be amazing older sisters and we can’t wait to see their faces when we welcome their new baby brother or sister home!

As parents, we are committed to creating as many happy memories for our family as we can by building a solid foundation of respect for each other’s strengths. Recently with COVID, Mike works from home as an engineering leader for a large company and is often able to be flexible with his time to spend with the girls. He is currently the coach for Ellie’s Under-5 city soccer team! Denise recently paused her career working as an engineer at the same company to stay at home with our kids. She is often driving the kids to swim classes and tennis lessons, or playing art and school at home.

Ultimately, we are a team in everything we do and we can’t wait to add a new baby into our close-knit family. Typically on weeknights, we take walks around our neighborhood or have a family movie night and on weekends we try to squeeze in day trips to the playground or local events. Most often than not, we routinely have family meals together and have our nightly family reading time before bed. Currently, the books most requested by the girls are “The Hobbit” and “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”. Your baby will have lots of favorite books to choose from!

We want to provide our kids with all the opportunities to be physically active, enjoy music and art, succeed academically, and most importantly, be kind people. Since we believe education is a great foundation, your child would receive all the same financial and emotional support to pursue as much education as they desire, including college and beyond.

Your child would receive unconditional love from us as an equal member of our family unit and would be equally loved and accepted by our extended family. We both have extended family members from domestic and international adoptions so we see no stigma attached to it and we’ve seen firsthand how great adoption can be.

Mike’s parents only live a few hours away and visit often. In a few years, they have plans to move to our city when Mike’s father retires from his career as a pediatrician. Denise’s parents live farther away which allows us to plan longer trips over Thanksgiving and Christmas to get together at beaches, Disney theme parks, and National Parks. She also has extended family in Hawaii, so we are looking forward to the time when all three of the kids are old enough to travel and have a memorable visit with their extended family!

As for the relationship that we would continue to have with you, we are open to understanding your ideal communication needs in sharing their life with you. What you are doing is a very courageous act of love and we want to provide you with a peace of mind that your child is going to have a wonderful life with us. Your child will be so loved in our family. We can’t wait!

With love for you and your child,
Mike and Denise (& Ellie and Tori)

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Why We are Choosing to Adopt

We are “planners” by nature and adopting a child has always been a part of our family plan. While we have two biological children already, we want to extend our hearts to women like you who are looking for a loving home for their baby and peace of mind for themselves. We are in a place in our careers, in our marriage, in our journey as parents to provide those things. We’re excited to match with the right birth mother and grow our love by adding a new baby into our family.

We both have adoption stories in our family, both domestic and international. Denise has an uncle and cousin who were adopted, and Mike has several cousins. Denise’s grandparents fostered many children and ended up adopting one (her uncle) after having two kids of their own. They continued fostering for many years, being passionate about serving and helping others – a passion we share with them.

Four of Mike’s younger cousins were all international adoptions, three from Ukraine and the youngest from Guatemala. Since they were international, there has never been any significant contact with their birth mothers overseas. Growing up, Mike would see them at family reunions and weddings, and it has been wonderful to see how they have grown into themselves and are part of the family just like the biological cousins. There is something extra special about accepting another child into your family, even when they come from a very different country or background. So we have seen first-hand how wonderful adoption can be for a family.

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About Denise, by Mike

Denise is a fantastic wife and mother, as well as being incredibly smart and hardworking in school and on the job. I am so glad our career growth has allowed her to take a break from work to spend time with our kids. Since I work from home, I can always hear her playing with the girls, or baking them something yummy, or gardening with them. Most of all I love to hear her teaching them. She’s a fantastic teacher, which has been a tremendously helpful skill while we’re holding the kids out of preschool due to the virus.

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About Mike, by Denise

Mike is an awesome father and role model to our two girls. He is a natural leader and problem solver but also has a witty and caring side to him that people easily gravitate to. Most importantly, at home, he can be as silly as our two girls as they all dance and sing to music together. In reality, Mike is a very involved Dad. He cheers Ellie on at her weekly sports lessons and volunteers to be her soccer coach. He even spends one on one time with Ellie to play Tennis with her on the weekends. At the end of the workday, you can always hear the girls say “Daddy!” with big smiles and hugs as Mike comes into the room.

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Our Personalities

We make a great team because we have the same values and we use our unique personality strengths to support each other. Mike is generally more a big picture thinker and more extroverted, while Denise is in the details and introverted. Mike likes to take quick action first, while Denise is more of a planner. Mike will reach for a Coca-Cola while Denise prefers Pepsi. Most importantly, we both believe in showing love to each other and our kids, bringing consistency with family routines and prioritizing special moments for the girls. Overall, we both value being dependable and trustworthy to others and even still maintain relationships with close childhood friends to this day. Having this diversity in personalities allows us to empathize with our kids no matter what they are like.

Right now, Ellie is extroverted like Mike, but also detail-oriented like Denise. Tori is a bit quieter and introverted as the younger child. But kids change so fast, so who knows if she’ll stay that way! No matter what kind of person your child turns out to be, they will have parents that can identify with them and support them as they grow into themselves.

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Lifestyle

Life at our house means spending time together. We are “homebodies” that prefer to hang out at home watching Disney movies, playing board games like Candy Land, and playing T-ball in the backyard. Sometimes on the weekends when the weather is nice, we use our neighbor’s pool to swim or head to the closest playground for the girls to explore. We live simply and save our money for things we really need.

We prioritize spending our time making lasting memories with family and close friends. We worked hard in college and early in our careers so that we would have the time and freedom to enjoy these moments with our family. We will continue to work hard so that our kids will have money to participate in activities that they are interested in and ultimately for college and a career they want. Currently, we are talking about space and gravity at the dinner table, so right now Ellie wants to be an artist and scientist when she grows up. We can’t wait to see where our kid’s passions will take them!

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Home & Neighborhood

We live in a mid-size Midwestern town, in a house we bought in 2012 with room for our family to grow. Ellie has her own room now, but we imagine Tori moving in with her soon, when she’s done sleeping in a crib. That leaves a nursery room ready and waiting for a new baby! We bought our house in a cul-de-sac purposefully, so our kids would have a low-traffic area to play around with neighborhood friends. Ellie has been learning to ride her bike there and is looking forward to teaching her younger siblings too.

Another nice perk about our neighborhood is that we are within walking distance of a city walking trail and the kids’ soon-to-be elementary school. It’s easy to imagine walking our kids to school when they are old enough. The school also has a playground and tennis court that we use a lot that your child would become very familiar with!

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Careers, Passions, & Callings

We both made a career in engineering because of our interest in math, science, and problem solving. But we also knew we wanted a life with financial stability and flexible time to devote to our family and friends. While we have bright futures within the large corporation we have spent our careers with, we also have a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passions!

Mike is involved in several local community organizations. After running for City Council a few years ago, he is now on a few different boards and commissions for local government bodies and non-profits. If young professionals and parents don’t participate in how our communities are run, then the older generation makes all the decisions without us. We want to teach our kids to be involved in their community and have their voices heard.

Denise is passionate about the environment and finding ways to reduce our waste. She is an avid recycler and donator of our gently-used items to people that need them. In order to teach our kids the importance of taking care of the planet, Denise recently built a raised garden bed where the girls can learn about where our food comes from. The girls have helped plant, water, and harvest tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons from our own backyard! We want to teach our kids to be generous to others and take care of the environment for future generations.

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Our Families

Our families come from a diverse set of backgrounds, cultures, and live in many states across the country. No matter what your child’s personality or ethnicity, they will fit right in with our melting pot of a family!

Denise’s grandparents have roots in China, Japan, and Portugal, and grew up in Hawaii’s blend of Eastern and Western cultures. Denise’s parents were raised in Hawaii and established roots in Los Angeles where Denise grew up. She still has grandparents and relatives that live in both Hawaii and Los Angeles and tries to get together as often as they can. Ellie and Tori look forward to getting their next care package from their grandparents (Denise’s parents) with yummy Hawaiian and Asian treats!

Mike has a large extended family that lives across the South, the Midwest, and the East Coast. Luckily, his parents live just a few hours away – which is handy with kids because his father is a pediatrician. One of our favorite destinations for family vacations is National Parks. We have taken our kids to several already and are always talking about which one we should visit next. Both our families enjoy the beauty of nature, and National Parks always have fun trails for our kids to walk and explore. Your child can join us in our family goal of one day visiting all of the National Parks!

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Racial & Cultural Diversity

Since we both grew up in large cities, we have been raised to appreciate various cultures and friends with different upbringings. Denise has a multicultural background and has participated in many Chinese and Japanese cultural traditions. Denise also grew up with close Hispanic family friends where she danced in their quinceanera and made tamales with them most Christmases. For our wedding, together we made 1000 paper origami cranes, a Japanese tradition meant to grant the new couple a wish!

We are both children of public schools, and plan for our kids to be the same. The melting pot of public schools does a great job bringing children and families of different cultures and backgrounds together. The city we live in is much more diverse than the average Midwestern town of this size, which we really love.

When raising your child, we will teach them about their birth heritage and cultures as well as our own. That way, they will have a strong sense of who they are and where they come from. They will grow up with our diverse family while still having plenty of opportunities to meet people like them in our diverse community.

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Family Traditions

Our chief family tradition is family dinner every night. We both grew up with this tradition, and we are keen to continue it with our kids. We think it is an important way to connect as a family, and Mike really appreciates it after a long day of work in the home office.

Both our families live too far away to have a consistent tradition for holidays yet. Often we will alternate years, spending one Christmas with Denise’s family and the next one with Mike’s.

One special tradition we have is playing games together, like teaching Ellie some of our favorite board games or playing some of our favorite songs on Rock Band. It’s like our own little family band! Ellie loves to sing, especially Miley Cyrus and Carly Rae Jepsen songs, and Tori likes to bang on the drums. We can’t wait to see what instrument our newest bandmate will prefer!

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Our Promise to You

Thank you for taking the time to consider us as the family to potentially adopt your baby. We do not take for granted the gift and the responsibility you would be giving us. We promise to love your child just as if they were one of our own. We promise to support them in all of their interests, endeavors, and dreams. They will never want for love, compassion, or comfort.

We also promise to be truthful and respectful about you, your story, and how you did what you felt was best for them. And we promise to share any stories and heritage from your family that you would like us to with them. We hope our words here have given you a feeling that you know us a little better. Thank you for reading them, and we wish you all the best in your journey!