Being a parent means loving and nurturing a child as your first goal and responsibility. It means watching them grow and taking pride in their accomplishments.

We believe that the most rewarding part of parenthood will be making memories together as a family. We both remember our own childhoods fondly and want to share that same joy.

Ralph can't wait to spend time playing together with a child. He loved playing with action figures, stuffed animals, and Lego as a kid and wants to share that playfulness. He still has a huge Lego collection that he can't wait to pass on to the next generation.

Mary has always wanted to be a mother. She loves to spend time with children playing, reading, or just being present. She looks forward to sharing her love of books and stories. As a child, her mother both read to her and made up her own stories, and that is something she looks forward to being able to do with a child.

We have a variety of hobbies that we participate in both separately and together. We love getting together with friends to play board games and tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeon & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Call of Cthulhu. We are also passionate about food and so are many of our friends, so our get togethers often include a lot of homemade snacks and desserts.

We love to watch professional wrestling together and see it live when it comes to town. We also love to watch other TV shows especially anime, cooking shows, and anything fantasy or sci-fi. Another activity we do together is play video games. Pokemon is a favorite for us to play together, but we will also play the same video game separately and discuss our progress and favorite parts with each other. We recently played Dragon Age like this.

Ralph enjoys going out to the movie theater with friends, especially for late night horror movies. He also builds Gundam model kits and Lego kits. Ralph also loves to take walks in the nearby historic cemetery and take photos of the wildlife there. Mary enjoys weight lifting. She is a member of a women's weight lifting gym and also likes to lift with several friends at a home gym. She is also an avid reader of fantasy and romance novels.

One of our biggest family traditions is how we celebrate Halloween. Every year we decorate the house inside and out. We add on to the decor each year. Close to Halloween we throw a party at our house for our friends. Everybody comes in costume, and we make a lot of homemade snacks and desserts to share. We usually play horror movies with the sound off to set the mood while we chat.

On Halloween, we love to hand out candy to trick or treaters. We both remember how much fun trick or treating was as a kid, so we are thrilled that our neighborhood has a lot of kids that come by our house. We love seeing the costumes, and we look forward to the day we can take our child trick or treating.

Halloween is also our wedding anniversary! Since it is such an important holiday to us, it made sense for that to be the day we got married. Our wedding was our biggest Halloween party, and we got to have all of our family and friends there in costume. To celebrate our anniversary, we order a ghost shaped pizza from a local pizza place to eat while we watch Halloween movies and hand out candy to the trick or treaters.

We live in a very family-friendly city neighborhood. Our house is right down the street from an elementary school, so we often see children and parents walking nearby. We have many neighbors with children including our close neighbors in our townhouse community. The neighborhood has a lot of community events like craft fairs, music fairs, street festivals, and a farmer's market. We also live only a couple of blocks from a public park that includes a great playground and a swimming pool.

Our house is a townhome in a small community. We have spacious living and dining rooms and a really great kitchen. We both love to cook, so the kitchen is probably our favorite room. There are two bedrooms upstairs, and outdoor patio space. Our neighbors are all friendly and work together to make the community awesome. We recently participated in creating a native garden together.

One of our favorite things about our neighborhood is how walkable it is. We could walk a child to school, parks, the grocery store, activities, etc. We also live within walking distance of several of our closest friends, who all look forward to us welcoming a child into our family.

We are close with our parents and families. Ralph's mom, brother, and sister live nearby, and we enjoy spending holidays with them especially when we get to host. Christmas Eve is one of our favorite times with family. Everyone comes over in the evening and we eat snacks and appetizers while opening presents and then take time to play games and watch a movie together. We spend a lot of time with Ralph's mom exploring the city and having tea. We like to play with our nieces and nephew, especially family games like Drawful.

Mary's family is out of state, but they visit often. We like to play board games and cook together when we see them. We also often will vacation with Mary's dad and stepmom and siblings. Our usual vacation spot is in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we spend a lot of time playing on the beach and cooking seafood. We also visit Mary's family in New Mexico where we like to go hiking.

Our families are super excited that we are adopting and can't wait to welcome a child into our lives!

Thank you for considering our profile. We know that choosing the right adoptive family is a big decision.

We have been together for over eight years and married for over four years. Both of us have known for a long time that we wanted to be parents, and we have discussed how we wanted to build our family a lot over the years we have been together. We know that adoption is the right choice for us, and we honor your decision to choose adoption as well.

Both of us have those we consider family in our lives that came through adoption or fostering, so we understand that the most important bond in a family is love. Love is the commitment we make to any child we raise. We are a pair of nerdy adults that live life for the joy it brings us. We are playful and caring and want to share the world with a child while also viewing the world with new eyes through them.

One thing we believe we have to offer a child is not just ourselves as parents but the community around us as well. We have a strong support system of family and friends that are excited for us to take this journey to become parents. Any child we parent would also be part of that community, receiving love and support from them as well as from us.

Mary has known she wanted to eventually become a mother for a long time. At the same time, she also knew there were hurdles due to a genetic condition that would make pregnancy dangerous for her. Adoption has been something she considered for a long time and is excited to be pursuing. She comes from a family that always taught her that blood relation isn't what makes a family - it is instead love and respect and creating memories together that bind a family to each other. She is eager to add a child to her family but also would extend that familial bond to you as well.

Ralph has always known that there are many ways to make a family and blood relatives are just one of them. He has built a community of strong friendships that rely on each other for support as well as for fun. He is approaching adoption with an open heart and great excitement.

We understand that choosing adoption is a big decision for you, and we know it is one you are making with love and consideration for the future. We know that the commitment you are making needs to be balanced with commitment from us as well. This is why we happily promise to keep in contact through letters, photos, texts, and emails. We want you to feel included in the growth and milestones of the child. Additionally, we would be happy to visit you in the first few years, so you can see in person that same growth and love.

We feel in our hearts that we are both ready to become parents. While we've know we wanted a child for a while, we also knew that waiting until we were sure we were ready was also important. We have built a life that is stable and fulfilling for us, so we are confident we can raise a child with that same stability and safety as well as with our love.

Whatever your ultimate decision regarding our profile, we hope that you find peace in this adoption journey.

Ralph & Mary