We’re so grateful for this opportunity to start a family, and we truly honor the strength and love behind the path you are taking. Our dream is to provide your child with a stable, joyful home filled with friends, music, learning, love and support. Thank you for taking the time to learn about us, we are excited to share our story with you.
We have always known that adoption would be how we started our family. For us, this wasn’t a backup plan—it was what we wanted from the early years of our marriage. We are excited to be on this journey and to experience the joys of parenting.
Our commitment is simple: to provide your child with a loving, safe, and stable home where they have every opportunity to thrive and pursue their dreams. We believe adoption makes the world a better place by honoring womens’ agency and choices. We feel privileged to walk this path with you and we deeply respect your journey.
Our story began 16 years ago in graduate school, where we met at a community service event. We spent two years becoming close friends, then eventually started dating. Today, we’ve been married for nearly 12 years. The strength of our relationship comes from the things that made us friends: shared values, common interests, and a desire to live life intentionally and thoughtfully.
We’re part of an amazing community including dozens of friends and neighbors of all ages who we see almost daily (we really can’t leave the house without running into someone we know). We are also proud godparents to two amazing nine year old twins.
The people in our lives share many of our passions: good food and wine, activities like hiking swimming and cycling, seeing live music, visiting art museums, or just taking the kids (and dogs) to the park.
We enjoy a very active lifestyle. We love swimming, hiking, biking, running, skiing, yoga, and other activities, and we’re often joined by friends. Erin is a former lifeguard and has loved teaching our friends’ children to swim, that’s something she’s looking forward to doing with our own child.
Food is a big part of our lives. We love cooking with friends or trying new restaurants in town. Many of our friends actually work in the restaurant or wine industry, we seem to fit in well with people who love hospitality.
We like visiting art museums and local music venues. Josh plays the saxophone and can regularly be heard practicing in the garage or playing jazz at a local club with his musician buddies. Whether our future child plays an instrument or not, they will certainly be raised in a home full of music.
Travel has always been a big part of our lives, both in the US and abroad. Josh has now been to 46 states and counting, and we try to go overseas when we can. We’ve been lucky enough to visit Europe, Asia, India, and Africa over the years and want to take our child on these trips one day to experience parts of the world we’ve enjoyed the most.
I grew up in the beautiful chaos of a huge extended family, where we always showed up for one another. This foundation inspired my career of helping others; my parents (a nurse and a lawyer) were my first examples of community contribution. I studied social work, advocated for healthcare policy in DC, and now work as an attorney serving health care providers for patients with complex needs. We are fortunate to be part of a vibrant San Francisco community. I love planning weekend trips and dinners with friends—I’m the person our friends tease for being so “organized.”
I can’t wait to share this life with a child. I want them to grow up surrounded by that same deep-rooted support—a “village” of friends and family who will cheer them on. I want them to feel safe enough to try new things, explore the world with me, and always know they are loved by a whole crowd of people.
Everyone in the world loves Erin because she is a tender, kind, and fiercely supportive friend. She is also an incredibly hard worker, a trait that propelled her to the top of her law school class and her profession. These things also make her an incredible life partner, someone who I can always count on. People frequently confide in Erin, especially when something difficult is happening in their life, because she is so thoughtful and understanding. Erin loves good food, and if she’s not cooking she is the person finding a cool new place we should go to eat. She loves to swim and hike, and has taught many of the kids in our friend group their first swimming lessons.
Erin is known in our family as a “baby whisperer” because she’s so good with little infants. I know her strength and kindness will make her a wonderful mother and I feel so lucky to share my life and this new chapter with her.
Thanks to my parents, music was a big part of my life growing up. I played the saxophone from an early age and started playing professionally at 15. I eventually became a full time jazz musician, but my path changed after a severe car accident while touring with a band. The hospitalization, operation, and rehabilitation made me want to go to medical school. Over the years I’ve practiced medicine and later public health, but music remains a constant presence in my life—both listening and playing it myself.
Beyond the professional world, I’m super active. You can find me cycling, running, or hiking, usually with friends. In fact, I’m generally the person finding new outdoor “funtivities” for everyone. I really want to share these passions and this beautiful area with our future child.
Josh is the anchor for me and all the people close to him. He is a loving and dependable partner and friend who prioritizes people in his life. He is the one who his friends call when they need to work out their toughest problems—he’s thorough, thoughtful, and compassionate. Josh can’t help but take care of everyone. He always does the dishes after a dinner party, brings his expertly homemade coffee on roadtrips, and repairs friends’ bikes. Josh also loves building community and welcoming new people. He started a biking group in San Francisco that meets up once a week, and also gets together for dinners and picnics in the park. Josh is always bringing new things into my life and our community, whether it’s music or a book for us to read.
Josh values shared experiences and making people feel included. His way of making people feel seen and supported will make him a remarkable father, and I know he will encourage our future child to explore the world with us.
We are very fortunate to live in a beautiful neighborhood in San Francisco, right next to Golden Gate Park. We spend our weekends strolling or picnicking in the park, and regularly visit its botanical garden, art museum, and science museum. Our neighborhood is very walkable, and full of cute shops, restaurants and young families. We’ll get ice cream, go out for Korean food or sit outside at a cafe on the weekend.
We especially love taking our godkids—nine-year old twins—to cool adventures in the city, like riding the ferris wheel at fisherman’s wharf, going to the zoo, or seeing the sea lions on the pier.
Sometimes we just get coffee and take the light rail to the beach with our friends and their dogs. Just across the Golden Gate Bridge, the beautiful coastal trails and redwood forests are perfect for hiking and exploring (we got engaged deep in Muir Woods and like to go visit that spot). And a couple times a year we go to the mountains to ski or to bike. We love this place and want to share it with our future child.
Pixie and Cordelia, our affectionate black cats, are a cherished part of our family. They were the last two kittens to find a home from their litter at the local shelter, and they’re inseparable. They are very affectionate, great with kids, and love playing together and grooming each other. They sleep with us every night, one on each of our pillows. They bring so much joy and warmth to our home—friends often come by just to play with them!
Our child will be welcomed into an incredibly supportive “village” that is the defining feature of our lives. We grew up in the Midwest—Erin’s parents in Indiana and Josh’s in Kansas. Our parents still live there, as do Erin’s brother and his family, and they want to be a big part of our future child’s life. We are really lucky that they love spending time together. They almost always coordinate their visits to San Francisco together, or come join us when we make trips back to Kansas or Indiana. It’s really one big family now.
Our local community of friends will be a constant presence for our future child. We love that our friends and neighbors are truly all ages (from 25 to 75!) and have such interesting backgrounds—lawyers, musicians, chefs, healthcare providers, scientists, and more. We have a close friend who adopted her only daughter, who is now ten and thriving. She’s been especially helpful to us as we start our own family. Having such a large group of friends connects us to a lot of the fun, exciting things our city has to offer families. They share a lot of our hobbies and passions and join us on many of our adventures.
Our desire to be parents comes from wanting to share the joyful life we’ve built, including our close-knit community, family, passions, adventures, and life lessons, with a child. It’s something our parents gave to us, and we’re ready to pass that on. We’re constantly inspired by the thoughtful, wonderful people our friends’ children are growing up to be. We’re excited to introduce our future child to this world of people, places, and possibilities, and to watch them discover what truly excites them. To us, parenting is both a lifelong commitment and a lifelong adventure.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our story. We understand this may be the most important decision you will ever make, and we respect the strength, courage, and love behind your choices. We genuinely feel we have so much to offer a child, most especially our love. They will grow up knowing their story, surrounded by community, opportunity, and support. We hope our paths connect soon.
