Colleen and Patrick

Meet Colleen & Patrick

Hello! We are Colleen and Patrick. We want to thank you for taking the time to learn about us. We have spent the past 16 years building a loving home and are very excited to grow our family through open adoption. We value education, adventure, and time with those we love.

We hope that you feel supported and loved no matter where you are in your journey. We look forward to meeting you and learning about the dreams you have for your child.

About Us

Where We Live

San Jose, CA

Favorite Holidays

We love to decorate our home and entertain for Christmas, Halloween and Thanksgivinga time spent with extended family.

Happy Places

Our backyard, any beach or hiking trail

Best Vacation

We took a long trip throughout the Northwest from San Jose to Vancouver, traveling by car, boat, train and bus.

Hobbies

Patrick: woodworking Colleen: cooking, baking and reading We both like to hike, garden and remodel our home.

Our Relationship

We have been married for over 15 years and together for over 20 years. We first met through mutual friends in college and remained friends for more than 4 years before starting to date. After graduating from college, we continued our relationship long-distance for a few years, making the most of our situation by spending hours on the phone, traveling to visit each other, or meeting for weekend trips to explore new places. Having been in each other’s lives for so long we really feel as if we have “grown up” together.

We took our biggest road trip together and moved to California from Pennsylvania in 2006.

We continue to love to travel, exploring new places, and visiting family and old friends. One of the pillars of our relationship has always been honesty and open communication. In our daily lives regardless of how busy our days are we always make time to have dinner together and talk about our day. We hope to share this tradition as our family grows.

About Patrick, by Colleen

Patrick grew up in a rural town outside of Pittsburgh with his parents and older brother. He remains a passionate Steelers fan and always seems to find another fan wherever we are, striking up a conversation and making a new friend. He really is the kind of person that makes new friends everywhere we go.

Patrick loves working in his woodshop, movies, watching football, relaxing at the beach, road trips, and spending time with friends and family. Our family and friends have started referring to him as “Pat the builder” and he is the first contact when they have something that needs to be fixed. He continues to stay in close contact with friends that he has kept for decades despite living far apart.

Patrick is my best friend and I know he will be an amazing father. He is loving, funny, outgoing, kindhearted, and incredibly patient. Kids seem to be drawn to Patrick and the silly and playful pieces of his personality. He has already mastered the delivery of cheesy “dad jokes” making all of the kids in our life laugh. He is looking forward to being an active and involved father, coaching sports teams, playing games, laughing, and sharing all of his world with a child.

About Colleen, by Patrick

Colleen grew up in Philadelphia with her parents and younger sister. She comes from a large extended family who continue to share holidays together. Coming from a smaller family, this was one of the most joyous things to experience. It’s amazing to watch her navigate the room spending time with everyone as if they had never been apart.

She is adventurous and likes to visit new places, try new things and experience different cultures. In the first two years of our relationship, we had traveled more than I had in my life.

Colleen is an incredibly smart, kind, and caring woman who gives others her undivided attention. She will be a wonderful mother. Her ability to nurture, love, listen and teach are just a few qualities she possesses. She supports and champions creativity, goals, and growth, and respect for all people. She relishes the opportunity to carry on family traditions and creating new ones.

She has taught me some important values in life. She has changed my life in so many ways and has made me a better person. She truly is my best friend, the person I can seek advice, find comfort during difficult times, laugh out loud with, and explore new journeys.

Our Home

We purchased our current home over 10 years ago and have spent the past several years renovating and decorating to create a space where we can relax, unwind, and spend time together. Our home has plenty of room for a child to play, explore and the perfect bedroom for a child to grow up in. We enjoy spending most of our time outside entertaining friends, grilling on the patio and tending to the fruits and vegetables in our garden, and watching movies on our outdoor movie screen. We normally watch comedies however Colleen will give in and watch comic book movies that Patrick likes. Every Christmas and Halloween we decorate our home and even won runner-up in our neighborhood decorating contest.

Living in the Bay Area gives us the ability to visit so many different destinations within driving distance. We look forward to sharing all of these experiences, spending time exploring museums, parks, building sandcastles at the beach, and hiking in the mountains.

Our neighborhood is extremely child and dog-friendly with multiple parks within walking distance. We enjoy nightly walks with Mick, and he enjoys all of the head scratches he can get from neighborhood kids.

Our Extended Family

Most of our family still live in Pennsylvania, but family remains a big part of our lives. We regularly travel to visit, and our family definitely enjoys visiting us in California. Our family visits every Thanksgiving when we are all able to cook together, enjoy homemade foods and desserts and play a new game after dinner each year. We travel to Pennsylvania every other year for Christmas and enjoy getting together with our extended family on Christmas Eve.

During the past year when we were not able to travel to visit friends and family, but we were actually able to become closer with some distant friends and family members making time for regular zoom calls where we spent time talking, playing games, and even baking!

Despite not having many family members close to us, we have several close friends that act as extended family to us. All of our family and friends are beyond excited to welcome a new child into our family.

We also share our home with our dog, Mick, who is a miniature schnauzer. He loves hikes, learning tricks, and is constantly rolling down the car window himself to stick his nose out in the wind. Mick is great with kids of all ages.

Our Wish for You

Our hope is that you can see something in us that makes you feel that we are the right ones to love and nurture your child. We can never truly understand what you are going through, your choice and sacrifice to trust another with your child humble us. Choosing to create our family through adoption is the most important decision of our life and we do not take it lightly. After trying to have our own child without success we realized that adoption is the most meaningful choice for us.

We want to have fun with a child, to be unconditionally supportive, and to teach them to be good people. We want to have birthday parties and Christmas mornings, we want to play games, read bedtime stories, travel, go to Disney World, and have all of the days in between.

We promise to share with your child a life filled with happiness, laughter, and unconditional love. We will teach your child to be generous, kind, compassionate, confident, and to respect all people.

We’re so grateful that you would consider sharing the journey of open adoption with us. If you decide to make an adoption plan, we promise to respect you and whatever level of openness and contact you want to have with your baby

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