Welcome! Meet:

Ryan + Candice

Assistant Director of Career Readiness Services / Assistant Director of Admissions and Outreach

Minnesota

Caucasian / African American

None

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

All About Ryan & Candice

Hello! We’re Candice and Ryan and we live in a suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. We enjoy time at home working on our hobbies or doing projects around the house. When it’s nice outside, we like finding new places to take walks and working in our garden. We love adventures and traveling, and we also like cozy nights in with board games or Netflix.

For the past year, we've been completing trainings, filling out paperwork, and doing a lot of research about bringing a child into our family. We’ve talked about adopting even before we got married, and are excited to now be home study approved and ready for placement. We’ve done a lot of work on our house to make sure it's ready for our growing family.

Why Adoption?

We want to adopt to give a child a safe, loving, and supportive home. Candice has always wanted to adopt children, due to the comparatively worse maternal healthcare outcomes for black women. For Ryan, adoption is something he has always wanted to do. We can’t wait to be parents! We both have always wanted to grow our family and share our adventures with an amazing kiddo.

Family & Home

We live in the northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. We moved into our home in 2021. When looking for a house, it was important to us that the home have multiple bedrooms all on the same level, have a big backyard for children to play, and be in a diverse area. Our neighborhood is very quiet, yet still close to Minneapolis and St. Paul and all they have to offer. We are close to many parks, lakes, trails, museums, a community center, libraries, and other fun places to take children. There is a big garden in our backyard where every year we plant a variety of vegetables. We worked really hard to find a perfect home to start our family and hope we can welcome a child here soon.

Candice grew up in a suburb of the Twin Cities with her mother and has two half brothers, as well as three nieces and two nephews. Candice is close with her family and loves taking her nieces and nephews on fun adventures.

Ryan grew up in St. Cloud, MN and has a brother and a sister, as well as two nieces and four nephews. He is close with his family and often spends time with his brother who lives nearby.

How others describe me

Candice is caring, compassionate, loyal, and quick to laugh. Although she enjoys many crafts like knitting, crocheting, and sewing, her latest obsession is making polymer clay jewelry. She has even started her own business and sells her items at local craft fairs. Candice also enjoys being outdoors and loves animals. She has a big heart and is always cheering others on.

Ryan is patient, kind, funny, and smart. He enjoys Star Wars, board games, and his latest obsession is painting miniatures. He is also into sports such as hockey and football. Ryan never misses a St. Cloud State University hockey game. You can also find him watching the Vikings every Sunday. He is a great partner, a kind soul, and a calming presence.

How We Met

We met in 2016 when we both worked at the same community college. We got to know each other when we worked on a team project together. After a few random run-ins in our neighborhood park (turns out we lived less than a mile from each other), Candice took a liking to Ryan and after many nervous conversations with friends, decided to ask him out. It took a few dates for Ryan to warm up, but we pretty quickly clicked and learned that we are both laid back people who enjoy similar things such as board games, crafts, and plants.

Advice to Future Child

We have many values we'd like to share with a child, including kindness, compassion, responsibility, respect, and honesty. We also highly value education. We both have worked in higher education for over ten years and believe education is very important. We also believe children should forge their own path and therefore we will encourage our child to pursue their own interests. We will embrace and support our child in exploring their identity. Our advice to our future child is to love yourself and know that we are always here for help, love, and support.

Perspectives on Open Adoption

We are supportive of an open adoption that would allow us to have a lifelong relationship with the birth parent(s), and more importantly, allow our child to have that with her/them as well. We would love to have a discussion about what all of us would be comfortable with. At a minimum, we would love for our child to know their adoption story, history, and heritage. This may be in the form of sharing stories or pictures, having conversations throughout the year, or even visits. Whatever plan we all decide on, the birth mother will always be respected in our home.

Favorites

Ryan

Favorite Movie: My favorite movie is Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I remember watching it repeatedly as a little kid at daycare and it always brings back good memories of my childhood.
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: My favorite holiday is Christmas. I just like that it’s a time of year where you can finally slow down and spend time with family doing fun things, like making cookies, playing games, and watching movies.
Hobbies/Interests: I enjoy playing board games and painting miniatures. When it’s nice outside, I like to get out on my bike. I recently got a 3D printer, and I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with it.
Dream Vacation: I’d love to visit Tokyo, Japan!
If I Could Choose a Superpower: That’s tough! I’d like to know every language ever made so I can travel anywhere and easily communicate with people.

Candice

Favorite Movie: The Barbie movie is my current favorite movie. I really enjoyed the heartwarming storyline and laughed the whole way through.
Favorite Holiday/Tradition: Although I don’t like winter, I do like Christmas time. My favorite thing to do is drive around and look at the decorations and twinkle lights on houses.
Hobbies/Interests: Any and everything craft related (knitting/crocheting, sewing, making polymer clay jewelry, painting, pottery, and more!) I also love animals and am frequently at the local cat cafe playing with the rescues.
Dream Vacation: The beach. I love warm weather and getting to relax and take in the beautiful scenery.
If I Could Choose a Superpower: Teleportation. It would be great to not have to commute to work, and I could easily and quickly go anywhere in the world.