Choose A Family : Parent Profile
Jennifer and Eric
Thank you for allowing us to introduce ourselves. You are braver than we can ever imagine. Please know that we aren’t perfect but we will love the child placed in our care and forever respect and honor the courageous woman who put them there.
Who We Are:
We're Eric and Jennifer and we met back in the fall of 1992. Jen’s brother Bruce and Eric were friends in college at Virginia Tech. We formed a casual friendship and began keeping in contact. Eventually Jen took a job in Atlanta where Eric lived. We have been together ever since! During our 12 years of marriage, we have lived in Connecticut, California, and Virginia – and we’ve been in Southern California for the past eight years. Our feet are growing roots and we are determined to stay! Bruce is now married and has three children. Eric’s sister, Tracey, has one son with her husband, Bob. Our parents are in excellent shape, and married for 42 and 60 years - and they can’t wait to spoil another grandchild.
Some might say we are odd – but we just think we are funny! You might be wondering, “Exactly what does that mean?” It means when we visit someone's house and they have a set of moose antlers hanging on the wall we take photos of us with them, and then we make everyone around take photos with them. It means that when we are visiting the Australian Parliament, the world’s tallest building with a grass roof – we decide that we should roll down it, much to the delight of the tourists taking our photo. This is not to say that we make fun of everything we see, but we try to balance respect, admiration, and appreciation with the mischievous “what if’s.”
So are we fit to be parents? We are convinced that answer is yes. We are kind and loving people who can’t wait to share ourselves and our lives with a little one or ones!
What We Do:
Eric, three decades later, is still his fifth grader-self at heart. As a kid he was always building airplane models and dragging his parents to air shows. He always wanted to do that for a living, and he has now been designing airplanes for the past fifteen years! Eric has made aircraft design his passion and he has become an expert in his field. Sometimes the work of building airplanes isn’t enough so he helps to design the next generation of air racers. Both of our names are now listed as crew members on the Nemesis air racer that is now in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Because a good education is what got him where he is today, Eric is passionate about math and science education and is on several advisory boards for improving both college and K-12 learning.
Jennifer is the queen of ‘making lemonade from lemons’. Infertility dealt us a cruel hand, and she has taken this and turned it around by working as an advocate for those experiencing infertility and as a coordinator for conferences on adoption. She believes that no one should have to experience the struggle for family building alone so she doesn’t let them. She has chaired adoption and fertility related conferences for the past four years bringing together thousands of people. Jennifer is credited with helping create hundreds of families. We feel so wonderful that now we get to ask this for ourselves.
We both love doing all kinds of things for fun, even if we do them poorly sometimes! Jen is a novice quilter, and Eric is a novice mountain biker. We have taken the same ballroom dance class for years, not being allowed to move to the next level! It doesn’t matter because we have so much fun doing these things together. Jennifer practices yoga, and Eric loves to ski. We both enjoy trying new things. Well, we enjoy it after it starts – first it’s scary – like ziplining, and snorkeling, and at first, dipping our toes into adoption. But, as with everything else, we know we will have no regrets.
Where We Live:
We live in California, in a community of 100,000 people that’s about an hour from Los Angeles. (Eric is from Pittsburgh originally and thanks to DirectTV we are able to watching all the Steelers football games as a family event!) We are only a short drive to mountains, hiking, the beach, and skiing, and all the cultural and sporting activities that a large city like LA has to offer. We have a roomy house on a golf course with a pool in a wonderful neighborhood with lots of trees. Jennifer works from home and Eric’s job is less than two miles away, so Eric can be home in less than ten minutes when needed. We both had stay-at-home parents and want the same for our child.
For most of our marriage we had two cats. One of our cats recently passed away and our remaining cat, Habu, is very attentive, and keeps us out of trouble around the house! She is currently lobbying against adding a rescue dog to our home. She feels that our home will be full enough with children and there is no need to add a dog! We are sure that adding a child to bestow love on her probably wouldn’t hurt her feelings.
What We Hope For:
We hope to extend the love and commitment that we share for each other to our children. We have many friends who have adopted both domestically and internationally. Jennie’s oldest nephew is adopted. We know that adoption is a fantastic way to bring children into a loving house and create the warm home we want it to be. We hope to share vacations and car trips around the country to see how different people live and work, and to see the wonders of our great country and diverse world.
We hope that our children will know our love and be proud of themselves. We hope that they will feel respect for others. We hope that they grow to live happily and to be whoever they decide they want to be. We hope that we can encourage their natural talents and that we can have the courage to give them a foundation of family and the wisdom to become who they were meant to be. Mostly we look forward to years when we can teach them, travel with them, read to them, play with them and - most of all - love them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to consider us. We admire your courage and strength as you consider the best home for your child.
Your careful decision will be forever cherished by some adoptive family!
If something about us interests you - and you would like to speak to us about adopting your child, please contact your adoption advisor at AdoptHelp by calling 800-637-7999.
Check Our Rating