Choose A Family : Parent Profile
Donald and Jennifer
Hello to the person who may make all our dreams come true! We are jumping up and down and waving our arms in the air screaming “Check us out! We would be AWESOME parents! Pick us!” We are SO ready to open our hearts and home to a little crying, pooping, messy little bundle of joy, sleepless nights and all. We want this process to be as organic and “right” as possible, so we get the child that is SUPPOSED to be in our arms, and you feel as though you have done the very best job of choosing a family to provide the kind of life you want for your child. We can’t imagine how hard this process must be for you. We are truly blown away by the selflessness and unconditional love you have in your heart to be able to choose adoption for your child. If we’ve caught your eye and touched your heart, please read on! We welcome the opportunity for you to get to know us better and hopefully you’ll see in us the qualities you dream of in parents for your special gift of life.
Us:
We are Jennifer and Donald. We live in the Bay Area, just outside of San Francisco, in Northern California. We met on a blind date set up by mutual friends on May 5, 2005. EXACTLY a year later we were engaged, and EXACTLY a year after that we were married! We love that our anniversary is on Cinco De Mayo because we’ll always be able to find a good party! We have been trying for the three years that we have been married to conceive a child, but have been unable to do so due to infertility. After many procedures and treatments, we decided enough is enough! We just want to parent and love a child! Adoption has become our salvation from the trials and tribulations of infertility, and we couldn’t be more excited to be on this journey! I have a biology background and went to college in Massachusetts, and I’m also a Certified and licensed massage therapist and health educator. Donald is an engineer who went to college in the Bay area. He is a software engineer for a communications company in the Silicon Valley, and because he makes a very good living I have the luxury of staying home and taking care of the house, and of course when we are blessed with a child I will be a full time stay-at-home mom.
Family and friends:
We are lucky enough to live close to most of our family, and we spend lots of time with them. Donald has 2 older brothers and an older sister. His sister has three daughters, and one of her daughters already has two children of her own! One of his brothers has experienced adoption first hand by adopting a little boy from Guatemala, so our child or children will have a cousin who they can relate with. Don’s parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and we strive to have that kind of long lasting love! I have one younger brother who has two children of his own and lives in southern California with his family. My parents, who are also still married, split their time between the Bay Area where my father owns a computer company, and southern California to spend time with their grand children. When not spoiling their grandkids, my parents love to travel the world and go boating. Both of our families are beyond excited that we have taken this step towards adoption and they can’t wait to meet the newest member of our large and loving family!
Our child will be loved and spoiled by both sides of the family, but mostly by my mother and Don’s father! We see Don’s parents every week to have dinner with them, and with such a large family and an even larger extended family there seems to be a family function or party almost every weekend! We are very close and it’s wonderful to have such a great relationship with both sides of the family. As well as spending time with our family, we love to spend time with our friends, and we are lucky enough to have a core group of friends that are amazing! We get together on a weekly basis, and it’s always a fun filled night of pizza, board games, and maybe a movie. Our friends were SO excited for us when we told them that we were going to be adopting a child!
Activities and Lifestyle:
As far as activities and things we like to do, we love to travel, Hawaii is our favorite! We own a timeshare in Hawaii to make sure that we go there every year, and we absolutely love it! We have regular “camp outs” in our living room where we buy all kinds of snack foods, push aside the coffee table, set up sleeping bags and watch movies all night long until we fall asleep, then start back in the next morning when we wake up! That is something we can’t wait to do with our kids! We also love to go on road trips. For example, last year on our anniversary Dave Matthews was playing in New Mexico and we drove out for the concert and it was incredible! It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to see one of our favorite bands playing on our actual anniversary day and we couldn’t pass it up! The drive there and back was almost as much fun as the concert! I am a HUGE music fan, and have an uncanny ability to remember the lyrics to almost every song I have ever heard, which really comes in handy during trivia games! Don is a proud geek, and loves to build things, and has a Lego collection that would make any 8 year old green with envy. I am a self proclaimed “World Class Home Cook” and am constantly trying out new recipes on Don and our friends, most of which receive rave reviews.
hanksgiving dinner is my specialty and it has been pronounced by my family that I am now the designated “Chef for the Holidays”, taking over the torch from my very grateful and tired Grandma! We love to go to amusement parks, and are actually planning a trip to Disney World for this coming Christmas, and if we are lucky enough to be matched before then, and have our baby as well, we will spend babies first Christmas there! There are two amusement parks within an hour of us, and we have been known to drive 4 hours to Magic Mountain on a whim! We also love sports, me more than Don if you can believe it, and we have season tickets to the 49ers. Living in the Bay area is great for us because we have so many sports teams around, all within close distance so it’s really easy to catch a baseball game in San Fran, or go to a Hockey game in San Jose. Another great thing about living in the Bay area is that it affords us the opportunity to enjoy San Francisco and all the great culture, museums, concerts in the park, and wonderful restaurants it has to offer, with just a short drive. We are also just a short drive away from great skiing in Tahoe, lakes and state parks where we love to go with the RV and go boating. The Bay Area also offers lots of great educational opportunities with many of the country’s best schools located here. We are both big on education, both honor students who know what an education can do for your life, and we hope to pass that on to our children! There is so much to do and see here, it’s really a great place to live and raise a family. We enjoy living in the Bay area so much, and we can’t wait to share everything that is wonderful about northern California with our child!
Our Home and our “Furry Kids”:
We live in a comfy and charming 2 bedroom bungalow in the Bay Area. Donald bought the house 10 years ago, and what was once a bachelor pad has become our beautiful home! We live in a wonderful, family friendly neighborhood, packed with parks, lakes, award winning schools, and lots of activities to keep a family busy! In fact, the park and lake where Don proposed is about a 5 minute drive from our home! We have a wonderful farmers market within walking distance that we love to go to on Saturdays, and we can’t wait to bring our baby! Anything you can think of, malls, movies, great places to eat, it’s all here, and close by. And our town has the greatest annual art, food, and wine festivals; we are truly blessed to live here! We also live literally 2 minutes walk from the church we attend, and got married in, and hopefully will have our child christened in! We have two “furry children”, Blue and Nani. Blue Valentino is a full blooded Husky, white and tan fur, with icy blue eyes (we weren’t very creative with his name!). Nani is a rescue from a husky group here in the bay area, whose mother was a husky, but they don’t know what kind of dog her father was. She is black and tan, and has the sweetest brown eyes. Her name is Nani Inoue (which means Beautiful June in Hawaiian). Blue got his name because we bought him on Valentine’s day, and Nani joined our family in June, a month after we got home from our honeymoon in Hawaii. They are super friendly, sweet, and spoiled! They are taken to the local dog park on a daily basis by their father, and are my constant companions during the day! They are so sweet we joke that if we ever had intruders they would greet them and show them where we keep our silver! They are a big part of our family, we love them very much! They have been exposed to children since they were puppies, so we know they will be great with our children. Our friends have children and our dogs LOVE them! We know that they are going to be a great “big brother and big sister” for our little one!
Jen and Don growing up:
I grew up from kindergarten through high school in the same town, and had all the same friends growing up who shared all my “growing pains” with me. I was a nerd and a jock in high school, playing Varsity softball and soccer as well as being on Student Counsel, being an honor student, and being a cheerleader. I also loved to sing and dance, and was in many plays and musicals. My mother is half Chinese and half Japanese, and my father is ALL Caucasian, I call him the whitest white man on earth! Seriously, the man used to wear tube socks pulled up to his knees, the tightest shorts he could get on his 6 ft 4 in body, tennis shoes, a tank top and a HUGE straw hat to the beach…TO THE BEACH! I was mortified as a child, but now I look back on it and laugh and realize that my father and his strange ways are probably where I got my sense of humor. My parents met while my father was stationed in Taiwan while he was in the air force. Don was an intellectual and he wrestled and played basketball in high school. He didn’t have many long term friends till college because he was always moving. Don’s father had a job that sent him all over the world, and he took his family with him. His family’s home base was always San Fran, but by the time he was a junior in high school, Don had lived and gone to school in England, Holland, and Spain. Growing up in so many different countries and cultures was a great experience and has fueled Don’s love of travel. Don’s parents are both from Nicaragua. They grew up within the same town in Nicaragua, but didn’t meet till they both moved to the US and had become citizens! His parents have been together for 50 years, and they are just as in love today as they were 50 years ago. They are such wonderful people! His mother is the sweetest person I’ve ever met, and his father is very, very funny. We are lucky to have the diversity and the love that our family provides!
Jen’s thoughts on Don:
Donald is the yin to my yang, the ice to my fire, the Dr. Jekyll to my Mr. Hyde…ok I think you get the point! Opposites truly do attract and we are prime examples of this! I am the outgoing, friendly person who can walk into a room full of people that I don’t know and make the best of it, where Don is more conservative and shy. I am the person who sits in the bow of the boat screaming “Faster! Faster!” as Don sits under the cabin wondering when we’ll see dry land again. He may be more conservative than I am, but he gets my sense of humor, and we laugh so much together! He has calmed me down a bit, but I would never say he has dampened my spirit and zest for life! We really work well together and balance each other. I bring him to places and experiences he may not have ventured on his own, and he brings my head down from the clouds when I start to get a little too light headed! I can’t wait to see him as a father, because I know he will be the most loving and wonderful Dad! He is kind and gentle, and has a wonderful way of making you feel that everything is going to be ok. He is a rock in the storm, he is my love, and he is my life. I am so blessed to have met and married such a wonderful man! I didn’t even want children before I met him, and now I can’t imagine our lives without parenting and loving a child together. He is going to be the soft spoken, quiet father who the children will adore! He will be their biggest fan, and he will support them in anything they want to do. He has made me see that love is truly unconditional and can overcome anything, and our children will learn the same. He will teach our children so much about the world, and how to walk in it with dignity and honor and how to be wonderful human beings.
Don’s thoughts on Jen:
Jen is the center of my life. She means everything to me and everything I do, I do for her. It’s cheesy, but we really do complete each other. She has the most wonderful sense of humor and this smile that lights up a room. She is the super adventurous person, who lives to try new things and go to new places, and I’m a turtle in his shell that is along for the ride, and it’s been the best ride of my life. When I think of Jen being a mom, all I can think of is that she is going to be great at it! I have this vision of her being this super supportive mother, cheering her child on from the sidelines, a confidant, but also a disciplinarian when she needs to be. She is a wonderful teacher, and I know she can’t wait to teach the kids all about the world, the good and the bad. She has an ability to be tough when she needs to be, soft and nurturing when she needs to be, and a huge goof ball pretty much all the time. She will be the mom who makes the house so fun all our kids’ friends will want to be at our house! She has a way of making even the smallest occasion super special, and somehow makes chores and work a great time, full of laughter. She will be the embarrassing mom, demanding hugs and kisses their first day at high school, and dancing all night when she chaperones the prom. I just know that she will be a great mom, and I can’t wait to see it, and share it with her.
Our Promise to our child:
We promise to love you unconditionally, always, no matter what! We can’t wait to show you this big and wonderful world that we live in! We will do our best to shelter you when you need to be sheltered, teach you when you need teaching, discipline you when you need to be disciplined, and love you ALWAYS! We promise to expose you to all the beauty and wonder that is this world and human existence, through culture, travel, food, and FUN! We are new to this thing called “parenthood” so please be patient with us, and we will always be patient with you! We believe that spilled milk and broken things are not the end of the world, and you will never be punished for being a kid. We promise to be at every soccer game and recital, every school play and ceremony, camera in hand and ready to embarrass you in front of you friends! We want to raise you to be aware of the world around you, and not turn a blind eye when you see someone in need. We will give you all the tools you need to be successful; love, encouragement, support, educational opportunities, enough discipline to make you aware of consequences, and enough freedom to grow and become whoever you want to be. Lastly, we hope to be able to let you go, when the time is right, and let you spread your wings! We want you to fulfill all your dreams and deepest desires! We hope to show you through our relationship with one another that love is lasting, as our parents have shown us.
Closing:
We are a quirky couple, who love to laugh, spend time with family and friends, and can’t wait to share our lives and our love with a child. We plan on telling our children from the beginning their birth stories and how they have come to be in our family! We will strive to make sure they have pride in knowing that many people loved them and came together to make sure that they had the very best life they could possibly have!
We hope that you have enjoyed getting to know us a bit better and we hope that you are the one that can make our dreams of a family finally come true, and that we can walk down this adoption road together!
With Gratitude,
Jennifer and Donald
If you have an questions for us, or would like to talk to us about adopting your child, please contact an AdoptHelp advisor by Calling 1-800-637-7999 or clicking the “Contact Us” button below.
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