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Brittany and Brandon
Dear Expectant Parent,

It means a lot that you have chosen to take this time to get to know us and we hope that you feel our loving and supportive vibes through these pages. We have always planned to grow our family through adoption, and we are hopeful that this is a journey we can share with you. We recognize that what is a gift to us, is an entirely different situation for you. We truly admire your strength as you make this difficult decision.

We promise to provide a safe home and to unconditionally love your baby. We also promise to honor you every step of the way. We hope we can have the chance to get to know each other soon and are always happy to answer any questions you may have for us.

Thank you for considering us in your adoption plan!

With love,
Brittany and Brandon

OUR ADOPTION STORY AND OUR PROMISE TO YOU

We promise:

Unconditional Love: Your child will always know they are loved no matter what. Your child will always feel seen and important. Their happiness will always be our priority.

Education: Education is important to both of us. We live in an area with great schools and Brittany (an American Sign Language teacher) knows the ins and outs of the school system. We will read to your child every night. We will encourage their curiosity and their imagination.

Support: We will support their unique dreams and ambitions. We are excited to learn about your child's passions so we can be "those parents'' at every game, rehearsal, or show. We will provide a safe place where they can make mistakes and grow.

Community: Your child will be surrounded by people who love them just as much as we do. They will have strong role models to look up to and children their age to play with.

Our Family

We are lucky to have some of Brandon's cousins just a few miles away from us in Virginia and Maryland. We often do Sunday get-togethers at their home to cookout and spend time with their young daughter, Harper. Brittany's dad and younger sister live on Long Island, NY and her younger brother lives in Beacon, NY. We see them over long holiday weekends or when her dad travels to DC for work. Her mom passed away from Breast Cancer in 2012 and while we miss her dearly, we know she is with us every day.
Brandon's mom, dad, and older sister all live in Buffalo, NY. His sister is married and has three young girls. We are the Godparents to her firstborn, Lucy. His family visits us in DC and we usually spend a couple of weeks visiting them each summer in Buffalo.
We both come from big extended families. Getting to see our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins is one of our favorite things to do when we visit home.
Our whole family has been incredibly supportive of our decision to adopt. They are so excited to welcome your child, love them, spoil them, and provide guidance as they grow up.

About Us

We met in our freshman year of college at Rochester Institute of Technology over 14 years ago. Our relationship grew with every late-night study session, snowball fight with floormates, and critique of the exquisite dining hall food. We call ourselves Yin and Yang because we are opposite, but perfectly balance each other out. Through our many years together, we have supported each other through high highs, low lows, and the boring everyday monotony. We have learned so much about ourselves and how we function as a team. While our personalities are different in many ways, we love a lot of the same things.
We enjoy live music and theatre, and we have gone to everything from small local cover bands to big concerts and Broadway shows in New York City.

Most weekends you can find us exploring DC with friends and family. We like to find new restaurants, go to wineries, and attend our local sports team games, the Washington Nationals (baseball) and DC United (soccer).
At home, we cook meals for each other and then settle in to watch the latest shows on TV or Netflix. Brandon's signature dish is his spicy chili and Brittany makes the best lasagna, but we also love testing out new recipes and finding new favorites!
Meet Brittany

The yin, Brittany is spontaneous and outgoing. Her biggest passion is her job, teaching American Sign Language to high school students. She has a motherly love for her students and often refers to them as her kids. Her favorite part about teaching is watching them grow into kind, curious and independent young adults. She treasures the honor of keeping in touch even after they graduate.

Brittany is fiercely protective and loyal to those close to her. She is from Long Island and has that New York sass along with a love for pizza. She loves to have fun with her friends, and her signature karaoke song is Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. She is always up for an adventure whether it be shaving her head to raise money for St. Baldricks, cheering at a Drag Show, or learning to Salsa at a Latin dance club. Brittany considers herself an activist and finds inspiration when she goes into DC to join in protests. She is also involved in the local Deaf community to advocate for civil rights and equity. As active as she is, you will just as often find her curled up on the couch, up way past her bedtime to find out what the twist is in a book she has been reading.

Brittany is the aunt that finds the kids way more fun than the adults. At family events you can find her being silly at the kids' table, running around playing tag, and attempting to coordinate games of hide and seek. Brittany embodies her own mom in her young-at-heart enthusiasm for life. Brittany will be a very warmhearted mother. Her openness and willingness to accept anyone as they are means that your child will grow up knowing they can talk to her about anything. Brittany's love language is physical touch so your child is sure to be showered in hugs and know that they are loved.

Meet Brandon

The yang, Brandon is very organized and logical. He is a Software Support Engineer working on a platform that helps reduce energy and leave a positive impact on the environment. At work, he helps train and develop new engineers on his team. He loves learning and will read books on different topics so he can relate and contribute to any discussion.

Having grown up in Buffalo, NY, he is very passionate about the Bills and Sabres. He loves to watch games with friends and family and tries to attend at least one game a year. He traveled to Jacksonville with his cousin and friend in 2017 to see his beloved Bills play their first playoff game in 17 years. The Buffalo connection also comes through at karaoke where his go-to song is Black Balloon by the Goo Goo Dolls.
Brandon grew up playing soccer in high school and college, and still plays in an adult league today. He also loves to golf, although his scores don't quite match the passion. He will get in a few rounds each year with family or whichever group of friends he can convince to play.
Brandon enjoys hunting, but like his golf game, he is in it more for the social aspect than for sport. He spends a weekend or two at a family cabin each year with his grandfather, dad, and cousins hunting deer (or more often, having fun playing cards).

Brandon will be a very involved father. He is excited to encourage and support your child in whatever activities they are interested in, like his parents did for him. He loves board games and his uber-competitive nature is sure to make for some fun family memories. As logistical as Brandon is, he has a creative side too. He creates fun activities out of almost anything, like spaceships out of boxes or obstacle races around the park. Brandon's love language is acts of service and your child will know they are loved by all he will do for them.

Our Home

We own a two-bedroom condominium in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington DC. Our condo is a nice starter home with space for our future family of 3. As we grow, we plan to find a nice single-family home, with a great kitchen, family space, and a yard. We want our future home to reflect our family's cultural and educational needs. This will still be a community in Northern Virginia because we value the diverse neighborhoods here. In our condo, we love to host family and friends for dinners and play board games around the dining room table. Our fireplace in the living room is our favorite gathering place during cold winter days as we lounge and do puzzles. Our walls are decorated with pictures of our adventures together, our family, and our friends. We are so excited to convert our guest bedroom into a room for your little one. It is big and comfortable with a lot of natural light. There are tall bookshelves that are filled to the brim with everything from Shakespeare to picture books for when our nieces visit. A short walk down the street is our town center. There is a Farmer's Market every weekend and a bunch of family events throughout the year. There are a lot of local parks, plus we love to go into the city to visit the Smithsonian museums and see the monuments. There are a couple of National Parks close by as well, Shenandoah and Great Falls, where we like to hike.

Our Friends

We know with all of our hearts that family is more than blood-relatives and our tight-knit group of friends has turned into our own chosen family. We both have friends of 20+ years dating all the way back to elementary school. We had the honor of our closest friends standing at our wedding in 2015 when we said our vows back where it all started in Rochester, NY.
Our life-long group of friends from college often join in on our adventures when we travel. We recently all went out to Colorado where we rented a big house and did some hiking, swimming in a glacier lake (brrr) and rafting. Everyone is thrilled for our family to grow and welcome another child into our group. These relationships are important to us whether it is with friends from our childhood, friends we made along the way, or new friendships we will make with families in your child's life.

Adventures

We love to travel and experience new cultures through food. We have traveled around the United States from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Boston, and abroad to places like Italy, England, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and Cuba. Brandon got to experience the fish market in Tokyo where he ate the freshest tuna and Brittany will never forget the most delicious pasta in Sicily. We value experiences over presents and often will forgo gifts to each other for events and trips. We celebrated our 6-year anniversary by skydiving in the Florida Keys together! We are looking forward to having new adventures with your child one day.

Traditions

We have quite a few traditions and are excited to start new ones when we are lucky enough to grow our family. A couple of them that we have started are:
On Christmas Eve, we enjoy a big seafood dinner which comes from Brittany's Italian heritage. We also plan to continue a childhood tradition of ours and attend candlelight church service. On Christmas Day, instead of gifts to each other, we donate gifts to local charities, and take a staycation to spend quality time together. Every January, we spend a long weekend in Buffalo, NY where we celebrate a belated Christmas and two of our nieces' birthdays. We bring them new books and crafts that we all do together. This is time we cherish together.
On Thanksgiving, our love of cooking comes out on full display. We will either host friends and family at our home or visit James, Brittany's brother, and help him whip up a big feast. Coincidentally, both of our families went camping every summer growing up. We have continued this tradition and are looking forward to teaching your child how to toast the perfect marshmallow!
CONCLUSION

Thank you so much for reading our book. We hope this gives you an idea of who we are, how ready and excited we are to become parents, and how your child will fit into our family if you choose us. You are on the last page of our open book but if you want to read more, we are happy to answer any questions you have for us. No matter what you choose, we know that whatever decision you make is what is best for your baby.

With love,
Brittany and Brandon
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