Craig and Cynthia

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From Us to You

There is a saying about adoption that talks about children not being given up. But rather, a birth mother gives life to her child, and she also gives a piece of her heart that will remain with her child forever. We know you are facing the hardest decision of your life and the fact you are even reading our letter (and probably many others) is symbolic of the unconditional love you have for your baby.

If we are lucky enough to become adoptive parents through you, know that you will be honored in every aspect of your child’s life. After all, this adoption journey has started with you and your selfless decision to put your baby’s needs first, above everyone else.

We know there will always be a connection between you and your baby, and we want to foster that relationship by inviting you into our lives. Maybe spending time together during holidays, birthdays, first days of school, other life events, or getting together just because. We also understand the difficulties this may present to you and respect and understand your choice if this is not a relationship you choose to have with us.

Parenthood and raising children can be challenging and adoption can be confusing and difficult concepts for children to understand. We want to use your baby’s story to provide encouragement and we want him or her to know we are a safe place to share feelings and ask difficult questions when they arise. What they will ultimately come to realize is that every aspect of this adoption journey revolves around love…the love you have for your baby and the love we will provide through our lives together and in our home.

Even though we don’t know you yet, we have prayed for you every day since we have been on the journey to becoming parents. We are proud of your bravery and will do everything in our God given power to make you proud of us as adoptive parents.

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Why We're Choosing to Adopt

We talked about having children together long before we were even married, and we knew it was something very important to both of us. When we were diagnosed with unexplained infertility, we talked about the many options presented to us, one of those being adoption.

After multiple rounds of Invitro Fertilization, we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy, Matthew, who was stillborn at 40 weeks. After the devastating loss of our son, we both still have dreams of growing our family and we know our journey isn’t over. We spent a lot of time talking with each other and leaning on our family and our faith. We have talked extensively with our close family and friends, and they could not be more supportive of us in our choice to adopt.

We love our children so much and we want to share that love with another child. The possibility of adoption has restored our hope in growing our family and we are honored that you would consider us to be part of your child’s life.

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Meet Cooper!

Cindi has a 19-year-old son, Cooper, from a previous marriage who we have raised together since he was 11. He has been with us on the journey to grow our family and is excited to be a big brother. He just finished his first year at an out-of-state university where he is studying mechanical engineering. We love spending time together during the holidays and school breaks and we also visit him at school a few times during the school year.

We carry Matthew in our hearts every day and he will forever be part of the story we tell our children about the journey of growing our family.

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Our Lifestyle

We both work shift schedules around a 4-day work week. We have a pretty good routine on our work days…Craig gets up early to get our dogs walked and fed. Cindi usually handles getting breakfast and lunches prepared for the day. Most of the time, we are fortunate enough to enjoy breakfast together before leaving for work. Dinner is also an important meal in our home and it’s a time for us to connect as a family to talk about our days at school and work. We have a “no phones at the table” rule and this is the time we usually have the most undivided time with our son to find out about what he has going on in his life. We value that time with him more than anything.

Our weekends are usually spent doing the standard chores one day (cleaning, laundry, meal prep, etc.) and that leaves us with two days to enjoy time together taking our dogs out, visiting with family and friends, or an occasional weekend away somewhere local.

We do have some flexibility in our work days between the days and hours we work, which allows us the opportunity to maximize the time at least one of us is home with children. Craig currently works Sunday-Wednesday and Cindi will work Tuesday-Friday. Craig’s parents live near us, as well as several close family friends, all of whom make up our “village” for the few days a week when we both work. When they’re ready, we plan to enroll children in daycare/preschool a few days a week to prepare them for school.

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Meet Cindi

Cindi is the strongest most independent woman I have ever known. She is also the hardest-loving person I have ever met; she loves with every ounce of her being and makes sure everyone knows they are loved. Family always comes first, and she will always do everything she can and more for us. Cindi loves to cook, and she has perfected dishes that our family and friends love. She often can be found making meals for our extended family and friends because that is one way she shows her love for others. I have never met anyone who wanted to be involved in their child’s life as much as her, often spending every day of the week at sporting events, staying up late after a long day of work to help with homework, or just spending time with our son. She extends the same love for our nephews and niece who absolutely adore their aunt Cindi because she will spend time with them doing the things they love while also encouraging them to be the best versions of themselves.

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Meet Craig

Craig is the most selfless and hardest-working person I have ever met. He devotes every ounce, of everything he has, to our family, always. Whether it’s waking up early to take care of the dogs before going to work, staying up late to finish projects around the house, or staying up all night on a graveyard shift but still making it to an early morning baseball game for our son.

We talked about having children together long before we were even married. Throughout our struggles with infertility and devastating loss of our son, Craig has been the rock and protector of our family. He provides for us in every way that families need fathers to provide for them…financially, emotionally, spiritually, and with all the love that he has. Although he is a stepdad to my son, he treats him as his own. I know he will be a loving and supportive father to all children in our family and I couldn’t imagine doing this life with anyone else.

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Our Home

We live in a quiet community in south Orange County, California. We love our neighborhood because it is far from the freeway, and it also backs up to a national forest, which is unheard of in this part of California. Our neighborhood has many younger families like our own, with children ranging from babies to teenagers. Our home is a 2-story, 5-bedroom home with plenty of room for our family and pets and even our extended family and friends when they come to visit. Having a full house during the holidays and school breaks when our older son comes home from college fills our cup to the top. We have dreams of filling one of the rooms with your precious baby and hopefully a baby brother or sister when the time is right.

We try to take advantage of this great area where we live and spend a lot of time outdoors. Our home is only a few miles from the beach where we spend time in the summer. We are a few hours from the mountains where we enjoy snowboarding and visiting with family (Craig’s aunt) in the winter and camping, fishing, and mountain biking in the summer

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Our Family

We are both the youngest of siblings in our families. Craig has an older brother who lives in Texas with his wife and their three children. Cindi has an older sister who lives on the central California coast with her husband and their fur baby. Both of our parents live in southern California near us and Craig also has two grandmothers who live nearby. We are blessed to be able to spend time with our parents and grandparents often.

Because we have family in different parts of the country, we try to coordinate holiday plans with each family at least every other year. During the years we don’t see our extended family for holidays, we typically make a trip there (or them here) during the summer or at another time during the year.

Craig grew up camping and riding dirt bikes with a close group of families in his neighborhood, all of whom now have children of their own. We still see them often and get together for birthday parties and other life events. Cindi grew up with a close group of friends also and we all still live in the same area. A child in our family will grow up around other children similar in age to him or her, whether it be with our niece and nephews, or with our friends’ children who we consider to be family.

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Racial and Cultural Diversity

As adoptive parents, we want to foster a positive environment for your child and provide a home where he or she feels loved and supported in their cultural identity.

Growing up in Southern California, we have both had a lot of exposure to one of the most racially and culturally diverse regions in the country. As an interracial couple (Cindi’s mother is Japanese), our older son has already been raised to value and respect the qualities of multiple races and we plan to raise all children in our household with the same values.

Craig’s parents have hosted several foreign exchange students from different parts of the world. This has also afforded us the opportunity to learn about different cultural traditions, cuisines, and languages.

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Meet our Dogs!

We unexpectedly ended up with 4 dogs. We have 2 German Shepherd rescue dogs, Gunner and Rowan, who are the most loving and protective dogs and are both great around children.

Craig works as a police K9 handler, and his first working dog was retired early in his career after sustaining an injury in the line of duty. Keto now lives with us as a pet and is trained as a sport protection dog, but he is very family-friendly and loves retired life.

Craig’s current working dog, Solo, also lives with us and goes to work with Craig every day.

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Traditions

As a family, we enjoy many activities together throughout different times of the year. Baseball season usually runs from March until September and we love going to Angels games throughout the season. We also drive to San Diego or LA when the Cubs come to town (go Cubs, go). Craig grew up camping with his family and we also like to camp either in the desert a few hours away, or in Mammoth, which is about a 6 hr drive from us.

We LOVE traveling as a family and sometimes travel with our extended family also. We were married in Paris and had the opportunity to spend several weeks traveling around Europe with our extended family, which made for some great memories. Our next vacation abroad will likely be to Japan to see Cindi’s mother’s family. We have spent a lot of time traveling abroad with our son, but we have recently talked about visiting parts of the US that we haven’t seen yet, like Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore.

We cannot wait to include another child in our family traditions. Some of our best memories as a family include time spent at baseball games, on camping trips, and during one of our many travel adventures. We want nothing more than to include your child in our family traditions, as well as create new family traditions with him/her.

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Our Promise to You

We recognize and understand that you are facing a very difficult decision, and we cannot promise to make it easy for you. What we CAN promise is to raise your child in a home where he or she always feels loved and supported. We promise to raise him or her in a positive environment where they are always encouraged to be their best. We frequently talk about the power of kindness and caring in our home, especially when our son was younger. We promise that your child will be raised to practice kindness and caring toward others, whether it be family, friends, classmates, or complete strangers.

While it may not always be fun, we also promise to use age-appropriate manners to turn your child’s mistakes into teaching moments. Because while we are currently talking about your baby, he or she will someday grow up to be a teenager and later an adult. Our hope is to raise a responsible and compassionate human who will at some point be independent and self-sufficient. But most of all, we promise to honor and respect you in all aspects of your child’s life and throughout the rest of ours.