- Illinois -
Hello, we are Ben and Rachel. Thank you for taking the time to get to know us today. We met in 2014 at a town festival when we struck up conversation after ordering the same drink at the bar. We went on our first date the following day, which was followed by a date every day for the next three days. It’s safe to say that we knew very quickly that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. We dated for a couple of years, and got married in 2017.
About Rachel by Ben "Rachel an is amazing when it comes to interacting with children. When visiting with friends who have kids, she is caring and enjoys spending time with them. She always willing to play games with them and do whatever is important to them. She is known as "Auntie" Rachel to many of our friend's children. Seeing Rachel's loving nature with children makes me look forward to our future parenting a child together."
About Ben by Rachel "Ben is easy-going, has a great sense of humor, and is the most caring person I have ever met. Ben is often spending time helping our families with projects around their houses and lending a hand to neighbors when needed. Ben would make an amazing father and I can't wait to see his caring nature with a child. I know that he will be involved in whatever they need. I can picture him teaching a child how to play sports, working on homework, or taking a trip to the park."
Dear Expectant Mom,
We are thankful you are taking the time to get to know us. We are in awe of your strength, and we will support you in whatever decision you make. We know that, in the end, it will be the best decision for you and your baby.
Words can’t describe how grateful we are to be considered as adoptive parents. We are so excited about the idea of raising a child in a loving, supportive, and open environment. The child that we adopt is already loved by us and our network of family and friends.
If you choose us as the adoptive parents, we want you to know that we are comfortable with any level of openness in our adoption. We are ready to follow your lead, and understand that your needs in terms of openness may change from time to time. We are more than willing to go with the flow. We plan to support this baby in maintaining a connection to you throughout their life and making sure that they know how strong and brave you are.
We believe in being the most supportive parents we can be. We want to be involved in a child’s life and doing activities with them. We want to give a child every opportunity to explore different activities and have a variety of experiences so that they can find out what they love. We can’t wait to spend weekends as a family going to the park to play on the playground, listening to music together, and reading books every night before bed.
We plan to always be open and honest with a child and believe in creating a safe space so that they can come to us with any problems. We feel that as long as we can communicate with each other, we can solve problems together.
We moved into our four-bedroom, split-level home in the spring of 2020 and have been working hard to make it our own. We fell in love with this house because of the dining room. We love hosting our families and friends for holidays, celebrations, and game nights, and the dining room has plenty of space for this. We cannot wait to share holidays, family dinners, and game nights with the child that we adopt!
We live in a friendly neighborhood in a wonderful school district. There is a park just down the street from our home and several forest preserves nearby. The park has a playground, basketball courts, soccer nets, and baseball diamonds. We love going for walks or bike rides through the neighborhood and hearing families cheering on their team and kids laughing. We enjoy taking our dog, Molly, to the forest preserves to explore and experience the peacefulness of nature. We often picture ourselves going on walks and bike rides with a child; our hearts feel full thinking about this!
We are located in a suburb of Chicago and are able to enjoy the city without having to live in the city. Being just a train ride away from downtown Chicago gives us so many opportunities for fun activities. We enjoy going downtown to visit museums or listen to live music. We can’t wait to explore all of what Chicago has to offer with a child someday.
We started to set up a nursery, but made sure that things are neutral enough that they can be changed later on. Although we intend to leave things mostly the same for a while, we would love for the child we adopt to be able to express their style and help to pick out things they love in their bedroom someday.
We have one dog, who is a miniature dachshund named Molly. Molly loves to go for walks and play fetch, followed by cuddles and a nice long nap. Molly has been around children for most of her life and loves them!
Our family members include our parents, our brothers and sister-in-law. We are fortunate enough to live within a 15 minute drive of our families. This allows us to see everyone for the big occasions like birthdays and holidays and have just the ordinary weekend BBQ. We also consider our friends to be our family and are lucky to have an amazing friend group nearby.
Having family and friends nearby means that the child we adopt will be surrounded by a support system who already loves them. Our family and friends are thrilled about our plans to adopt and are ready to welcome this child with open arms.
We both grew up going to schools with music programs and the area we live in has wonderful programs as well. Although we didn’t know each other during this time, we both have memories of walking into band rehearsals every day and seeing rooms full of different instruments. We often reminisce together about different concerts we have performed and talk about our experiences. We have both felt a connection to music throughout our lives and have continued to play our instruments. This has also connected us as a couple as we often play in music groups together. Our home and lives are still full of music and we can’t wait to share this with a child. We hope that whether they choose to play an instrument or not, that they will always be surrounded by music in our home.
