Choose A Family : Parent Profile
Shinar and Scott
Dear Birth Mother,
We are very pleased that you are reviewing our profile and considering adoption for your child. We realize that this is a very difficult decision and thank you for allowing us an opportunity to describe ourselves.
We met while working as graduate students at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Four years later, on two opposite sides of the country we decided to join our lives. Shinar with her daughter Janna joined Scott in California to start their new family. We have been happily married since 2001.
We are a very loving, affectionate, and playful couple who are nearly inseparable even when it comes to things like grocery shopping or running errands. We interact with each other playfully and we try to never take life too seriously. We love children and dream of having another child. We are experienced parents through raising Janna, and take pride in being parents. We are truly in love and our strong relationship forms a solid base for our family.
As we raised Janna, our 19 year old daughter who now attends UC Berkeley, we embraced every opportunity to share in her life and to be there for her constantly. We believe that children should be given every educational opportunity and exposure to arts, music, and sports. We believe broad exposure allows children to develop into the unique people that they will become. We believe life is not only about providing for your child, but also teaching values, celebrating successes, helping cope with failures, and to simply always being part of their daily lives whether its through sitting together at the family dinner table each night or through family traditions such as our Wednesday Pizza Nights. We will provide a happy and loving home for your child. Your child will be the center of our world and we will shower them in love, support, and laughter.
We realize that an important responsibility of being adoptive parents is sharing the adoption story with your child and we will respect your wishes as to what you want us to share with your child as he/she grows. We view adoption as an act of love and we will ensure that your child knows that there are two sets of parents that want the best for them and include them in their prayers.
To care for your child, Shinar will take a leave of absence from work to raise the baby. Scott's parents live nearby, and so your child would see his/her adoptive grandparents often. We were strongly dedicated to Janna's education and activities and we will ensure that your child is given a superior education. We look forward to helping them with their homework, cheering during their sports activities, and watching them develop their musical and artistic talents. We also look forward to enjoying family activities. We will frequently take day trips with your child to some of our favorite spots such as the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Legoland, and Disneyland. Given that we are within seven miles of the beach, we'll surely spend a lot of time swimming and boogie boarding during the summer. One of our passions is to travel, and we will take many trips within America and internationally to expose your child to history and other cultures. We want to raise your child to be a confident, well educated, and happy child with courage to jump at each opportunity with the comfort in knowing that we'll be there to catch them if they fall.
We thank you for considering adoption and reading our profile.
Warmly,
Scott and Shinar
Snapshot of Us |
|
Scott |
Shinar |
Job Description |
|
Senior Director of |
Senior Scientist |
Education |
|
Ph.D in Computational & Theoretical Physics |
Ph.D in Mathematics |
Food |
|
Pepperoni Pizza |
Jambalaya |
Form of Exercise |
|
Hiking |
Yoga |
Hobby |
|
Exotic Cars |
Dance |
Quality About My Spouse |
|
Her Kindness & Humor |
His Empathy & Wisdom |
Sports to Watch |
|
Baseball |
Ice Skating |
Children |
|
Janna (19) (from Shinar's previous marriage) |
|
What it Means for Us to Be Parents
We chose adoption after many failed attempts to have a second child, including a series of very difficult fertility treatments each followed by repeated failures. We very strongly want to continue to parent, particularly as Janna is now grown and gone to college. We have many friends that have adopted children and we know that adoption can be a wonderful choice for adoptive parents like us looking for a child to love and birth mothers looking for loving and nurturing home for their child.
For us to be parents is to have a complete family with children in it, to bring meaning and joy into our lives by raising a child from a young age, by passing our values, by giving the child a strong base and family ties when they are ready to enter an adulthood.
We are still young and able to keep up with energetic little ones and both have a silly lighthearted nature that can make each day fun and delightful. Shinar will sing beautiful lullabies, cook delicious meals, sew Halloween costumes and knit sweaters, read Hans Christian Andersen's tales, watch Disney movies, and play boardgames. Scott is very creative, playful and affectionate as well. Scott will love playtime, take the child fishing and play video games with them. We also love working on our house so that it will become a very comfortable home for children, but most importantly we love children. We hope we find a match so that we can provide every ounce of our energy, love, and devotion to your child.
Our Extended Families
Scott: My sister and I were raised in a traditional Catholic family in a small rural town in the Maine woods. We loved Maine although made frequent trips to see the rest of America and to visit family in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. My entire extended family is supportive of our wishes to adopt a child, and my sister's family is currently exploring adopting a second child. My family in Pennsylvania includes my two adoptive cousins and their families.
My sister and her family lives in New Mexico, only a short plane flight away and we see each other 3-4 times a year. We see my parents more often as they live two hours away by car. We all enjoy day tripping to popular destinations in Southern California. Our extended family also likes to take family vacations together; the most recent trip was to Maui, Hawaii.
Shinar: I was born and raised in Kazakhstan, an independent country in Central Asia, in a large family with four children. All four of us are successful professionals now, have families and are raising children. We were raised to have strong family ties, raised to respect elders, and honor the traditions of hospitality.
My two older sisters and my older brother have two children each. Together with our daughter Janna, it makes seven cousins that are very close. Recently we visited Kazakhstan for my nephew's wedding. My entire extended family was there to celebrate. We saw three generations of the family; there were so many children. The older children sang, danced, and recited; while the younger ones were the subject of everyone's affection. When I watched the youngsters perform, I dreamed of the next child who would share their childhood with so many nieces and nephews.
House and Neighborhood
We live in sunny Southern California. We own a three bedroom, two bath, one story home built on top of the hill with beautiful views onto a canyon. Our upper-middle class community includes a great diversity of races and ethnicities, and your child will have many neighborhood children to play with. The school district is superb with all the supporting amenities of music teachers, karate classes, dance classes, little league teams, soccer leagues, and lots of activities for school aged children. Within a couple miles of the house, we have an ice-rink, movie theater, YMCA, and a public library.
Our neighborhood is surrounded by a canyon open space preserve that offers lots of trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding. The weather is usually warm and sunny allowing year-around outdoor activities. When our daughter was growing up, she volunteered at the neighborhood stables and rode horses. Close by is also a skateboard park and a couple of recreational centers with swimming pools, tennis courts, football, basketball and baseball fields. Our home is within few miles of the beach and so summer is filled with boogie boarding and swimming.
Once a year our community hosts Fiesta festival when several streets are blocked for a full day of food and fun. At Christmas our neighborhood is known for its Christmas Card Lane where more than 200 households participate in a holiday light display with giant greeting cards in the front yard from favorite cartoon and storybook characters. We have our own fireworks on July 4 at a local high school. Our neighborhood is a delightful place to live with real people having real honest jobs and raising good kids.
Our Leisure Time
We are domestic people, and most of our leisure time is spent around our comfortable house. On weekdays we enjoy a home cooked meal, sharing details of our day at the dinner table, going for a walk with our German Shepherd, Verlandra, and planning the weekend. To relax from work Scott likes to play video games and do house finances. Shinar loves to read, organize our family pictures into photo albums, and occasionally sew or knit.
On the weekends, we like to work around the house; every inch of our house was worked on with our own hands: tile, bathrooms, paint, plumbing, you name it. Outside of our house Scott, Janna and Shinar enjoy going for car rides on Sunday mornings after church as well as going for small evening hikes in the neighborhood hills. We will sometimes take our dog on our hikes. On a sunny weekend day, Scott enjoys grilling steaks or hamburgers in the backyard and often we will invite work colleagues or friends over to join us. On an occasional chilly evening, we enjoy seating around our backyard fire pit and cook smores. Throughout summer and deep into the fall we enjoy going to the beach; Janna loves sun bathing and reading while Scott spends all his time in the water like a fish. All three of us also love the zoo, so we purchase yearly memberships so we can enjoy going to the zoo any time we feel like it. When Janna is visiting for a school break, Janna and Shinar love taking yoga classes together. Finally, our favorite weekend evening activity is renting a comedy and enjoying apple pie with tea afterwards.
Travel is our Passion
When we do travel, one of our favorite vacations spots is Hawaii. We enjoy taking in the surf and natural beauty of Hawaii with its various waterfalls, lush vegetation, and incredible beaches. We rent a cabin when we visit so that we can pretend that we live on the Island by making our own meals, enjoying the cabin grounds, and having a quite retreat after a day of active sightseeing. The other favorite vacation activity for our family is traveling internationally. We have thoroughly enjoyed visiting Paris and Rome with Janna, visiting historic sites, famous museums, and being exposed to different cultures, experiences, and ancient histories. Janna also traveled to Switzerland, Russia and Japan during her teen years. Visiting Europe tends to be more hectic then kicking back in Hawaii; but we found it very rewarding to expose Janna to other nations.
If you would like to speak with us about adopting your child and have any questions for us, please contact one of our Adoption Advisors at AdoptHelp by calling the toll free number 1-800-637-7999.
Thank you.
Check Our Rating