Hi! Our names are Laurel and Andy. We are a happily married couple who live in San Francisco, California, and spend a lot of time at our second home in the redwood forest and countryside nearby. We are both artists who work from home, and we look forward to being stay-at-home parents together.

Thank you for reading our letter and considering us as potential parents to your child. We hope you find the right decision for yourself and your child, whatever that might be. Making this choice either way takes strength and bravery. We all start out with an idea of how we expect our life to be, but quite often it’s not exactly what we planned. We know that you want the best possible future for your child, and we’d like to tell you a little bit about ourselves and hope that you will consider us in your decision.

Please know that if the opportunity arises, we so look forward to offering your child all of our love and support to thrive in our nurturing, caring home full of love, learning, and adventure.

About Us

We met 14 years ago while helping a friend with a community art project, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. We were together for 11 years before we got married and will be together the rest of our lives. We knew that we had found true love and commitment when we combined our childhood Lego collections into one big pile - you can’t go back from that! Since then we’ve helped each other grow more closely into the people we want to be, and we have built a great life together.

We both love adventuring, reading, dancing, and making things--all kinds of things--sewing new pillows for our couch, building a chicken coop, gardening and cooking, making jam and pies, or building a new table or bed for our home. We look forward to a future of building with our child--tree houses and dollhouses or whatever fits our child’s personality--with them helping and learning all the way.

We have had a lot of adventures so far!  

• We followed our dreams and left our first careers (Andy was an engineer and Laurel was a Park Ranger) to become professional artists.

• We bought and re-built an old house together and built an awesome chicken coop, a workshop, and a giant garden.

• We’ve traveled in the US, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Europe, both for work and for fun.

• We cried together when our old dog died, and picked out and raised a puppy together.

• We collaborated on art shows together in galleries and museums all over the world.

We feel incredibly lucky to have each other as supportive partners, and to have built a really good life – but...

we would love to share all this love and adventure with a child and learn all that our child has to share with and teach us.

Our Homes

We live in San Francisco, but also spend a lot of time at our second house in the redwoods. We love the art, music, food, culture, and community that are available in the city, but also love the nature, beauty, and freedom of the countryside.

In San Francisco we live in a large, sunny, colorful 2-bedroom apartment with a big bedroom that will be our child’s room. There is a comfy sofa perfect for story-reading and the occasional nap. We often hang out at the cozy kitchen table, talking about our day, making plans, and cooking together and can’t wait to have our child there with us. There’s plenty of space both inside and out for play and projects. Our art studios are in the building, so we can easily share child care while working at home. There are parks, playgrounds and a recreation center all within walking distance. Our child will grow up in one of the most diverse and interesting neighborhoods in San Francisco.

In the country, we have redwood trees, a giant vegetable garden with fruit trees, pet chickens, trees to climb and build forts in, and a seasonal creek.  We get fresh vegetables and eggs for everyday meals! Thanks to Laurel, there’s already a play structure with a slide and a tire swing waiting for our child to play on with their friends.

We have a friendly little cat named Goblin and a medium-sized dog named Keeper, who we love very much. Keeper likes kids – especially kids who are willing to throw a ball--and she is extra gentle with little kids!

Our art studios are at our houses, so we work from home and will be able care for our child at home. Both of our moms live close by and are excited to help with child-care, too. We usually spend holidays and vacation with Andy’s loving and supportive family - we all enjoy cooking family meals and traveling together, so our child will grow up surrounded by people who love them.

About Laurel

Mother-to-Be 

Laurel loves children, and they love her! She worked with children in a pre-school and as a nanny before she was a Park Ranger and an artist. She is looking forward to reading stories with our child, snuggled up on the couch for stories on rainy days and before bedtime.  Her Park Ranger background means that she knows a lot about nature, and she looks forward to sharing this with our son and/or daughter, exploring the world hand in hand, teaching them about plants and animals, taking trips to the zoo and the beach, helping them grow their first garden, first bike rides at the park, and camping together. She’s also a great cook, whether it’s baking cookies or cooking from scratch with herbs and veggies from our own garden. She can’t wait to do arts and crafts projects together. She’s already hung a tire swing and a rope swing in our yard for our friend’s kids to play on when they come over, and looks forward to the day our own child plays with them.

Andy Says:

“Laurel is an inspiration to all she meets.  She is a fearless learner who isn’t deterred by the obstacles life puts in her path.  She taught me how to use a chainsaw and to sew and has been a powerful role model for many girls and women (boys and men too!) to learn to dream, build and grow things.  She has an amazing way with animals and an infectious desire to understand the world she lives in.  She constantly inspires me, not through cajoling and words, but through action.  Children and animals are drawn to her gentle nature and her uninhibited appreciation of the world.  I’ve often watched in awe as Laurel plays one on one with a kid, engaging in some game or story while gently showing them the wonders of the natural world. She will be an amazing mother and friend to our child!”

About Andy

Father-to-Be 

Andy credits working as a YMCA summer camp counselor as a teenager with helping keep him from becoming “too cool for school.” The kids he befriended there reminded him of how interesting and fun the world is at a time in his life when many of his other friends were becoming jaded.

He has a workshop at our house that he builds a lot of our furniture and sculpture in, and he has big plans for tree houses and forts we can build together as a family. He looks forward to reading to our child from both new books and favorites that he saved from his own childhood. He likes to draw, and hopes for hours of drawing at the kitchen table with our son or daughter, as well as building with blocks and Lego, seeing where their imagination takes them.

He’s the master breakfast maker at our house, and turns out perfect eggs or pancakes every morning that we enjoy as a family at a table that he built himself.

Laurel Says:

“Andy is the guy that everyone turns to when they need a helping hand, and they are never disappointed. He has a way about him that makes people feel safe and happy. His strength, kindness, and good humor shine out and warm everyone around him like a sunny day, and our son or daughter will be the center-point of that warmth. He’s constantly learning new things, building new things, and doing whatever he can to make sure that everyone close to him thrives. I can honestly say that I didn’t know that someone so strong of both heart and body yet so gentle and caring existed until I met him. He will be the strongest, most nurturing father I can imagine, and will teach our child to dance, to read, to swim, and to build things with equal skill and love.”

Living the Dream -Our Lives as Artists

Living the Dream! 

When we first met, Andy worked in engineering and design and Laurel was a Park Ranger. Those were good jobs, but we had each been making art for most of our lives, and weren’t totally fulfilled by those careers. 12 years ago, together we decided to focus on art full-time and have been professional artists ever since. This gives us more freedom to learn about new things, think creatively, and use all of our building/making skills, plus learn new ones. We’re both sculptors. Sometimes we work collaboratively on projects, but we each have our own work and career, too. Andy’s work still has a strong engineering and design component and Laurel’s work focuses on the environment and ecology - especially animals. Whether through skill, luck, hard work, or a combination of the three, we’ve been successful enough to show our work at museums and galleries all over the world. Both of us have been honored to have our work included in the permanent collection of The Smithsonian and The Museum of Art and Design in New York among other museums. We are grateful to have merged our passions and careers together, especially now as it will allow us to be full-time, work-at-home parents to our child.

The Future

We have an abundance of love, energy, excitement about the world, and beauty in our lives that we want to share with a child and raise him/her to be the happiest, healthiest, best person we can help them to be.

We were both raised by strong, single, working moms and became friends with our fathers as adults. Having missed out on childhood relationships with our own fathers is one of many reasons we are committed to an open adoption, as we’d prefer to be able to raise our child to have knowledge and pride in where he or she came from.

Should you choose us as part of your adoption plan, we look forward to coming up with a level of openness that is comfortable for all of us and establishing a good relationship for all of the years to come. Some of our best friends are adopted and several friends have adopted children. Not only is adoption not an unusual concept for the families we hang out with, we believe it is a beautiful and loving way to create a family.  We are committed to making sure that our child understands that every choice that led him/her to be raised by us was made with love, and that they should feel pride in where they came from.