Welcome! Meet:

Rachael + Andrew

Orthoptist / Respiratory Therapist

Minnesota

Caucasian

None / Christian

All About Rachael & Andrew
Why Adoption?
Gallery
Family and Home
How We Met
Advice to Future Child
Perspectives on Open Adoption
Favorites

All About Rachael & Andrew

Hello, thank you for taking the time to learn more about us. We are excited to grow our family through an adoption and look forward to working with you to raise a child. It is our top priority to love and care for your child.

We have been together for sixteen years and married for eight. We grew up in a small town but now are living in a charming, older home in St. Paul, MN with lots of plants and our two hypoallergenic cats. We both work in health care and are very passionate about taking care of the people in our community. For fun we enjoy exploring the Twin Cities, trying new types of food, community events and taking advantage of the bike paths. Being outdoors and getting in touch with nature is very important to us. Some of our favorite time spent together is spent hiking, camping and at our family cabin.

As a couple, we encourage each other to grow and to be our best selves. We are very excited to become parents and look forward to providing a stable but fun environment for a child to grow. We can't wait to work with you to help them become their own, happy and unique person.

Why Adoption?

We both have always known that we want to be parents and are excited that adoption will be part of our journey. We love the idea of people from different backgrounds coming together to create a loving family. Having children biologically didn't happen naturally for us. When that happened we knew the right path for us was to continue our plan to grow our family through adoption. In fact, we both have loved the idea of providing a loving and nurturing home for children through adoption since we were first married and began planning our lives together. We each are incredibly fortunate to have been raised in families that value togetherness and inclusion and we hope to pass these values on to a child. We support all cultures and genders and celebrate diversity and promise to provide a model of empathy and compassion. As we move forward growing our family, we are excited to provide never-ending love and support to a child.

Family & Home

Our beautiful navy blue home was built 1904 and has been around for so long that we feel we are part of the house’s story. Our home is a remodeled one and a half story, with all bedrooms upstairs. We live on a quiet street with many young children that play outside together. We have a fenced in backyard where we grow both flowers and vegetables. We love living in a diverse community and look for opportunities to learn about different cultures. Also, we live near several parks and have access to many bike paths.

We are both very close with our families and are fortunate to have a strong support system of both friends and family that live nearby. Both of us have brothers that live with their families near us. We enjoy being an aunt and uncle and like to help take care of our niece and nephew. Both sets of our parents are incredibly supportive of our adoption plan and look forward to being grandparents of our future child. Rachael’s mom is a labor and delivery nurse and works with expecting mothers and infants. Andrew’s mom is an elementary school teacher, she is an expert at child development and is currently collecting books to read to her grandchildren.

How others describe me

About Rachael (written by Andrew)

Rachael is very compassionate; she is a respiratory therapist that works in a metro trauma hospital. Rachael is calm and keeps her patients breathing under the most stressful of circumstances. Rachael works three days a week and looks forward to being home with children part time. Rachael is very nurturing and creative. She loves to grow beautiful plants and to work with her hands. She also loves to cook and create new recipes for family and friends. One of Rachael’s favorite pastimes is riding her horse Cody. Cody is very sweet and loves to give her friend’s kids pony rides. Rachael is the kindest, smartest and most thoughtful person that I have ever met. I know that she is going to be a remarkable parent.

About Andrew (written by Rachael)

Andrew is an orthoptist, which is a clinician that works with children and specializes in the treatment of “lazy eyes.” This is the perfect job for him because he's so much fun and pretty much a big kid himself. Andrew is very hard working and can fix pretty much anything. He is very reliable and is the person that his friends call to help them with house projects and broken cars. Andrew loves to bike and looks forward to pulling a child around in a bike trailer. He is very sweet and encouraging, simply being around him makes you feel better about yourself. He strives to make sure his loved ones are happy. I am so excited to see him become a father. His kind, fun and nurturing spirit will help a child feel very loved and encouraged.

How We Met

To be honest, neither one of us knows the exact day or time that we met. We have known each other since middle school but did not become interested in one another until high school. In high school we were both on the same leadership team with our youth group. We had similar interests and found our paths crossing at sporting events with both of us performing with the pep band. We were inseparable during our final years of high school and continued our relationship while attending separate universities and spent as much time together as we could. After graduation we became engaged and moved in together. We were married shortly after and still value spending as much time together as we can.

Advice to Future Child

Always remember you are a wonderful and unique person, your opinion matters. Figure out what you're passionate about and go for it. It's okay to make mistakes along the way, you can use those experiences to grow. We are here for you along your journey and will always love and support you.

Perspectives on Open Adoption

We would like to pursue an open adoption, we think it is important that our child maintain a connection with their birth parents. We plan on including the birth parents as much as they would like and will let them lead the openness of the relationship. Allowing someone else to care for your child is the greatest gift you can give; birth parents will be honored and respected in our home.

Favorites

Rachael

Favorite Movie: Second Hand Lions
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Getting our Christmas tree. Growing up Andrew had a neighbor with a tree farm. Every year we go back to that neighbor's tree farm and pick out a tree. When we get home: we order pizza, put on some comfortable pajamas and listen to Christmas music while we decorate our tree. We love to decorate with ornaments that we have from traveling together and those that we've picked out for each other over the years.
Hobbies/Interests: hiking, camping, really anything that gets me outdoors. I love to go horseback riding and cook new recipes for family and friends
Dream Vacation: Thailand
If I Could Choose a Superpower: Fly, so I can see the world.

Andrew

Favorite Movie: Hot Rod
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Every year on the Fourth of July, my whole family gathers at our family cabin to decorate our pontoon and enter the local boat parade. We dress up in costumes depending on that year's theme and spend the weekend making jokes and enjoying our time together.
Hobbies/Interests: bicycling, hiking, camping, and cross country skiing, cooking with Rachael, attending local concerts and plays
Dream Vacation: I don’t have a specific dream vacation, my goal is to see as much of the world as I can. I believe that it is vital to immerse yourself in other cultures.
If I Could Choose a Superpower: Teleportation, to cut down on travel time when exploring the world.