Angie and Paul
Location: Ontario, Canada

You can reach us at [email protected]

A big, warm Hello from Angie, Paul and Zachary!

We believe that children benefit from loving, nurturing parents, and a home filled with warmth, laughter and compassion which is how we live our lives. We also see a great benefit to a child growing up with a brother or sister with whom to share family memories, vacations, walk to school with, run around the house on weekends after they both jump into Mom and Dad’s bed to wake us up for our family playday! We’d love for the child you are carrying to grow up in our loving family, alongside an awesome big brother, Zac, to share such wonderful moments with, as our hearts and home wait to welcome our next precious child home and into our loving embrace.

Hello and what a privilege to be able to connect with you. We have written this birth parent letter with great love for the child we hope to adopt and with great admiration for you who are making a loving life plan for this wonderful little baby. We hope you enjoy getting to know us. We are opening our hearts and our family to you in this little intro letter, and hopefully one day in person as well.

Hello from Angie
Hi dear amazing person who we hope to get to know. I am Angie and am honoured to have the opportunity to write to you. Before even meeting you I know that you are brave, loving, and unselfish to be making an adoption plan for your little baby, life’s greatest gift.

My love for my awesome husband Paul is too profound to sum up in a few lines, so I will do my best to give you a glimpse into his great qualities in this letter, though our "family photo album" will better reflect the person he is and the life we lead—the life into which we would love to welcome a little baby to share our home and love.

My Life and Kids
I adore children and have dedicated my life to kids, which is why I fulfilled a lifelong dream going to Haiti to care for orphaned children in schools, hospitals and Mother Teresa’s orphanage. As a teacher, I was able to bring some high school students with me to care for children in need of food, clothes, toys, but most of all, love.

Holding these little ones in my arms felt so right; I hoped to bring them some comfort knowing that someone cared enough to try to make a difference—to bring a smile to their beautiful face. I decided, “If ever I can’t have children, I will adopt”, for I have a great love in my heart for God’s greatest creation children.

I wasn’t even engaged to Paul yet, so little did I know it was

the way God planned for me to create my family all along. I had no idea the many fertility treatments I would endure. Then came the adoption of Zachary Gabriel, our precious son and our life’s greatest gift. It finally all made sense; it was all meant to be. Now I understand the purpose of my infertility—if anyone asks "did it work? (referring to the fertility treatments), I respond "Yes, absolutely!—it worked by not working!! otherwise I would never have my beautiful Zachary, my meant-to-be child." Yet, our home and heart still await another child to love and nurture. We hope you have the chance to learn our story, so you can see for yourself how much this baby will be loved by our family of three eager to become a family of four.

Coming from a family of wonderful nurturing parents myself, Nonno Romeo (my dad) and Nonna Anita ( my mom) are so in love with Zachary and are eagerly praying for and hoping for another grandchild to love, play with, vacation and hang out with at least once a week like they do with Zac.

My sister has two twin girls and two boys who can’t wait for more little cousins to play with. We’d love for the child you are carrying to grow up alongside an awesome big brother (Zac) to share family memories, vacations, walk to school with, run around the house on weekends after they both jump into Mom and Dad’s bed to wake us up for our family play days. More on family play days and the many activities, vacations, sports we love to do a little later in our letter…first, Paul would like to say "Hello!"

Hello from Paul
So much to say so little space…my feelings for my wonderful wife, Angie, need more space than this small page allows. So, I will give you a little insight into my life while inviting you to view our Photo Profile, where you will see a reflection of how I met the woman of my dreams—helping others—she is all heart…and lots of fun!! Angie is an amazing teacher, humanitarian, wife, adoptive mom, best friend.

A Peek into Paul’s Life
Born into a family of six, I grew up surrounded by loving parents and playful siblings. Years later, I met and fell in love with my soul mate, Angie, while we both volunteered helping the homeless through the Out of the Cold program. We both have a soft spot for those in need. We also love to raise and mentor children, so we were beyond ecstatic when we received the gift of our son Zac.

He made us a family, and helped solidify our already strong home filling it with more love and joy. But our love does not stop here…it is endless. This is why we long to adopt your child. Like the large family I was born into, our family of four will play and sing together, share life’s beautiful moments, and support each other always. One of my favourite things about being a dad is just being called "Daddy".

I will be overjoyed to be called Daddy by not just one but two children. That would be a prize worth more than any other in the sport of life!

Hello from ‘lil Zac—Eager to Become Big Brother Zac
This new baby will instantly have a great big brother in Zac who is eager to care for a baby sibling. When he grew out of his tricycle, Zac said, "Mommy, don’t give that away…please save it for my baby brother or sister."

He keeps telling us to save all his favourite toys, cute outfits, and story books for his baby sibling that he keeps praying for! Most of all, he wants to play with a little brother or sister in our fun backyard, at the neighbourhood park, on our adventurous vacations, and he wants to walk to school together, share stories, and just hang out on the couch watching TV and munching on popcorn with a buddy bro or sis.

Being very athletic, he is eager to teach them how to swim, play soccer, hockey and ski. He looks forward to challenging them on the Wii and DS games. Zac also does some modelling and acting, and plays a bit of piano, though his greatest passion is sports and he was scouted to a rep soccer team the first year he was old enough to play.

He hopes for another little playful kid to join us at the table when we have family boardgame night. Most of all, he wants a sibling to love who is part of his family—not all adopted children have the benefit and blessing of a sibling to share all these hopes and dreams with…we are hoping that by adopting your child, both children will benefit from the relationship of another little person growing up in the same home together with Mom and Dad.

Little Zac keeps reminding us, "I will love our baby so much. Let’s not give up Mommy and Daddy, until we get our baby"!!! We agree with ‘lil Zac, so we will not give up our hope to adopt another child who we will all love and cherish dearly. Our hope is real because we believe we were destined to cross paths with you and to welcome and embrace another child into our warm, cozy home and loving family.

Our Family Interests and Activities
Some activities our family enjoys regularly are: Soccer, skiing, swimming, cycling, mini-golf, hockey, travel vacations and charity walk-athons, music, piano, photography and movie night out. Also, we live on a pond (our backyard), so we take many family walks to feed the ducks etc. after Saturday morning breakfast on the deck on our Muskoka chairs.

We also like anything comedy as we love to laugh. Loving sports and the outdoors, other activities we participate in include kayaking, stand-up paddle boating, kite-flying, hiking; we even climbed a Volcano during our 10 year anniversary vacation to Hawaii—Zac too (we take Zachary on every vacation with us—yes even to Kilauea and the rest of Hawaii on our 10th), and now we hope to travel with two children—Zac and hopefully our soon to be second child!

So, for a little window into our family vacations, some of our travels have taken us to Maui, Waikiki, Kauai, Big Isle (We went Island hoping in Hawaii, so seven planes in one summer!), Turks and Caicos Islands, Sauble Beach, Deerhurst Resort, Horseshoe Ski Resort, Quebec, Great Wolf Lodge, Cuba twice; one of our Cuba trips was a treat from Nonno Romeo and Nonna Anita (Angie’s parents) as it was their dream to take all their grandchildren on a beach vacation with them so they made their dream come true by treating the whole family!!

Other travels have included Greece, Antigua, St. Lucia, Bahamas, France, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Egypt, Philippines, Brazil, and Haiti. Many of these adventures you will see in the accompanying pix. We also continue to thank God for our blessings, so to give back to the community Paul and I now teach the Children’s Liturgy at our Church as Zac both attends with us and helps out.

We continue to help out at food banks, and find many opportunities to offer help as the need arises. As we’d love to share much more with you, we hope we can do so through the photos we have selected to let you into the story of us, the story we hope your baby will soon become part of as we collect memories and mementos of his or her life. And if you like, perhaps we can meet you in person and chat with you face-to-face about our mutual hopes, especially for baby.

Our Home and Work Life
Angie is a teacher. She is also an author, musician and photographer, and loves sports, though these are mostly part time hobbies as teaching and being with kids is her passion. In order to stay home with Zachary she took an extended leave of absence until Zachary was ready to start kindergarten.
She spent those four years at home with Zac to nurture and care for him daily during these very important years of early development. This enabled her to take Zac to Aquatots when he was only a few months old, as well as Ontario Early Years programs, and tons of Moms and Tots programs at local community centres, kindergym, Musical Munschkins and many other Mommy and Baby/Moms and Tots programmes for lots of one on one time with ‘lil Zac as well as lots of playdates with little friends his age.

This is Angie’s intention with our next child as well. Once Zac started school, Angie went back to teaching part time, only one-two days per week, switching from being a classroom teacher to a music and gym teacher so she could still be involved in Zac’s school life by volunteering at his school, supply teaching at his school, joining the parent council etc. Today she teaches two and half days per week and dedicates the rest of her time to Zachary and our home and doing charity work in the community.

Paul is Finance Director at a downtown firm. He loves sports, played on a men’s soccer team, and is also a musician, both just for fun and recreation. As hardworking as he is, Paul always makes time to play with our family, be it on a weekend ski getaway, or summer weekends at Canada’s Wonderland on our Season’s Pass, and definitely to cheer on Zac at all his soccer games and tournaments.

He is a fun and loving Dad, who does the nigthtime routine in our home so that he and Zac can have their own little bit of quality time at the end of each day. Usually it’s a little game of soccer in our walkout basement, some street hockey with Zac and the other neighbourhood kids and Dads, or a challenge on the Wii, and then bedtime story, prayers and Daddy is looking forward to reading bedtime stories and snuggling up with two kids, one on either side—something Zac longs for as well as he practices reading books to his little brother or sister. Both Dad and Zac are also eager for our next child to join the neighnourhood team during our street hockey, backyard soccer, or basement Wii challenges; Mom also joins in the fun with our community bike rides, swim time, and of course, our fun adventure vacations to take a break together as a family!

Our Relationship with You
Our relationship with you would be based on gratitude, admiration, and love. We would be connected by the greatest gift of all, the love of a child. Our relationship will be one of respect which will always hold the best interest of this little baby as our number-one goal.

Since we have already experienced adoption with Zac, we can speak to you honestly and truthfully about the great love we have for both our child and his birth parents. Our relationship would be as open or as limited as you feel comfortable.

We will dialogue with you in person, through e-mail, sending pictures, by phone calls, visits, whatever you feel is the most appropriate and would make you feel at ease. We can make a plan together based on your desire and our mutual level of comfort while always considering the needs and best interests of darling baby. We can discuss and make plans as life goes on as well, as our relationship evolves over time.

Closing Comments—which Hopefully is an Opening to the Next Chapter of our Lives and Yours

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share our lives, hopes and dreams with you—and hopefully, our home with the child we are so eagerly waiting to welcome home and into our loving arms.

We genuinely hope that we will have the opportunity to meet you and thank you in person (if you wish) for the very brave, loving and unselfish life choice you are making for this beautiful baby and the wonderful life he/she is about to begin…

With gratitude.

Angie, Paul and big brother Zachary Gabriel