Hello there! We are Elisa and Daniel from Riverside, California. We would like to start by thanking you for taking the time to read about us and for considering us in this challenging and emotional process. We cannot imagine all the emotions that you are feeling but we want to be there for you, and we hope that our lifestyle and values fit with your hopes and dreams for your child. We will be honored if you select us as your child's adoptive parents.

Although we have dreamed of becoming parents for years, we have not been able to have children throughout our marriage. We hope you can help us fulfill our dream of raising a child. We are committed to providing a loving, stable, and nurturing home for them. We are both biologists and university professors and will first offer stability and protection, and then many happy moments to this little human being that will grow up with us.

We met in 2011 in a small town in Australia, where we attended a conference on herpetology (the study of amphibians and reptiles). We immediately knew that we had a common passion for animal biology. We were a couple of nerds in graduate school who loved doing scientific research on wildlife, and who were adventurous enough to be very far away from our home countries. In that meeting and shortly after, we discovered that we also shared a love of joking, hiking, camping, dancing, cooking, and exploring other cultures. We had only three months of in-person dating time and after that we had a long-distance relationship for a few years. We were connected, our love was strong, and we visited whenever possible. We got married in Mexico City in a beautiful traditional celebration and moved to the USA in 2015 to start our life together.

I was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and I have only an older sister. I come from an extended family of farmers, so I spent a lot of time outdoors when visiting my grandparents and I loved it. As I grew up, I participated in team sports, but ultimately I was drawn to solo sports outside: running, biking, hiking, swimming, and rock climbing. I also was involved in music, singing in the choir and playing trumpet and piano. While I no longer perform, I love music and enjoy listening and singing in the car or dancing. I enjoy eating good food and traveling to foreign countries, where I like to interact with local people in their languages. I love to spend time with my wife and now that we are settled in Southern California, I like hosting family members and friends at our home. I love preparing and sharing food and beverages, and we often play music or watch a good movie. I am so excited to bring a child into our lives. As a father, I will provide them with love, protection, education, and memorable adventures!

Daniel is a very intelligent, sensitive, generous, disciplined, and hard-working guy. Daniel has many interests and if he likes an activity he goes very deep into it. In addition to English (his main language), he speaks perfect Spanish plus very good French, German, and some Chinese. He loves talking to people from different cultures in their languages and he respects their traditions and lifestyles. Daniel enjoys the weather in North Dakota and he likes outdoor activities in the snow, but he has experienced all types of conditions and environments and he celebrates finding more wild animals in warm regions. Daniel is a great baker and can make delicious pastries, pies, and cakes. He can build furniture and can do plumbing work as well. But much more important than his talents and skills, Daniel has a huge, beautiful smile, he is kind with all people, and he likes to help others. He enjoys playing and interacting with kids, he responds kindly to their questions, explains curious facts, and kids love him. I know Daniel will be an incredible father.

I was born and raised in Mexico City, where I grew up playing board games, soccer, and volleyball with my older brother and protecting my little sister. My parents and grandparents are from rural villages, so I spent time outdoors playing with dirt and with domestic animals during my childhood, which I enjoyed. I liked wearing traditional local dresses as well. I love Mexico, my family, and my friends, and I can spend hours talking, laughing, or singing with my loved ones. Some years ago I needed a challenge and I won a scholarship to do a doctorate in Australia. This was my first time living away from home and in the process I grew up personally and academically. I also found the love of my life there. Daniel and I have had a solid loyal relationship and marriage living in Oklahoma for 8 years and now in California for a year and a half. I am excited to take on the duties and joys of motherhood. I want to raise a child with love and transmit to them good values, such as respect and care for others, and a love of nature.

Elisa is a kind, loving, intelligent, fun, and beautiful woman. I fell in love with her free spirit, her love of and loyalty to family and friends, and her immense capacity to love me for whom I am, despite my teenage sense of humor! Elisa is adventurous. She is the only person in her immediate family to live, and the first to even travel, outside of Mexico—from Australia to Spain and now making a home with me in the USA. While it has often been very hard to live far from family, she has kept very close to them. Elisa is a great cook, I love every dish that she makes, and I request my favorites on my birthdays. Since we got married we have been waiting for the opportunity to have a new special person in our lives. I very much look forward to raising a child with such a loving, caring woman. We speak both Spanish and English at home and at work, and I envision us raising a child that does the same; a child who will feel the love of my wife, will see her smiles, and will learn to have a warm, loving heart like Elisa does.

We cook every day and try to eat healthfully. That includes foods from our garden, which we enjoy cultivating—from tomatoes to peppers to herbs. We consider cooking for others a great expression of love and we cook or bake for our loved ones. If we are in a busy period, we take turns and cook for each other. We like reading and writing and both activities are also important in our jobs. We both exercise, but Daniel takes exercise to a high level and has run marathons a few times. We love traveling, spending time with local people, and tasting traditional foods in rural areas, so we do not stay in super fancy hotels or resorts. We love taking pictures of landscapes, plants, and animals (wildlife photography), and we love handicrafts. We have art made by people from different parts of the world, and we also collect pins from different locations. We would like to keep discovering places and cultures with a child. We will share our histories and adventures with our future child, and we will wait to see if they are interested in exploring other spots or choose to be mostly at home.

We do scientific research on wild animals and publish our findings. We also work with lots of college students. We teach about ecology, animal behavior, environmental biology, and more, and we love to plant curiosity in the minds of our students. We like to be part of the pathway that leads them to discover their passion and their potential. We do our best to help our students reach their goals.

We have a beautiful house. Our backyard is large, has a swimming pool, and offers the opportunity to do many exciting activities at home. Our friends' children have lots of fun there. We like plants and have a garden to grow vegetables. We have a ping pong table in the garage and we play frequently! We watch movies or TV shows in the living room, and we have meals together in the dining room. We are surrounded by beautiful mountains, which are great for hiking. We also like foraging (looking for wild or domesticated foods) and can find delicious figs, persimmons, plums, and a variety of citrus in our city. The citrus season in spring brings opportunities to go to festivals where people taste oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, and more. In winter we have the festival of lights in downtown; we love this celebration where families from different backgrounds enjoy the holidays. Our neighborhood is safe and has a multicultural, friendly community. We love where we live!

We both love our parents and love each other’s parents; they are wonderful human beings. We love our siblings, nieces, and nephew, plus our aunts and uncles, so we enjoy spending holidays with our families either in the USA or in Mexico. All our relatives celebrate our desire to adopt. Daniel’s parents live close to us, and are retired, flexible, and happy to visit frequently to help raise their third grandchild. Here in California many of our best friends have kids, and they are excited about our desire to adopt. They will be happy to teach us, to support us, and to help us face unexpected situations. Real friendship is super important in our lives, and we consider our best friends as family. Our best friends are very excited for us. One of them, who is also a scientist, was born in South Korea and was adopted by a lovely American mother. Daniel’s best friend from childhood was adopted too, and he was a very happy kid. His parents are a testament to the love of an adoptive family who raised a kind and happy man. Elisa’s friends from Mexico have always represented close emotional support and they will for sure come to visit more frequently to interact with the little one.

We both love breaking piñatas that have many candies inside; it is one of our main traditions for birthdays. Even when some people think that piñatas are for kids, we really act like kids when we have them, and we would love to make or buy a piñata for our child to break every birthday. We celebrate important holidays with our families: Thanksgiving in the USA, the New Year in Mexico, and Christmas in both places. The last two Christmases and New Years we hosted our four parents in our homes in Oklahoma and then in California.

We love kids' innocence, curiosity, and desire to understand this world. We want to provide love and protection, but also let our child discover the world on their own terms. We wish to teach our values and raise a good, kind person. We will try to instill in them the confidence and tools to pursue their dreams, even when things become challenging. We finish every day asking and responding to the question, “What was the best part of your day?” We will do the same with our child since we like to appreciate good moments, even if a day was hard. We will be ready to read bedtime stories everyday as well; we already have some great ones. We have a lot of flexibility in our jobs. We work at home regularly and can set our office hours, so we can attend school events and accommodate unexpected challenges. We also have 3 months off during the summer, which gives us the opportunity to participate in children’s summer programs and to take family vacations. Overall, we look forward to building a strong connection between us and our future child from the first day and beyond.

We are ready to raise a child and we are excited about the opportunity to adopt. We really appreciate that you have taken the time to read about us and we will always be grateful if you select us as the adoptive parents for your child. We cannot imagine how many feelings and emotions you are experiencing, and we would like to support you in this journey as much as we can. We promise with our hearts to do our best to help your child become a lovely human being.