More About Us

At the beginning of our letter, we mentioned the beautiful canal outside our house. In the photos, you can see that our house is situated in the historic center, which is lively especially in summer when many tourists from America visit our town. To impress our visitors even more many people decorate their houses with geraniums, which give the city a friendly and romantic atmosphere. As you may notice from the photographs, we are competing with the neighbors as to who can grow the best flowers. So far, we have won that competition using lots of fertilizer! We will raise your child to have faith and to value the importance of being kind to everyone. We enjoy celebrating Christmas and other holidays with our families; it’s a great pleasure to see the children happy and to share happy times with everyone. One of the most fundamental aspects we try to honor is to care for other people like we care for and respect each other. Teaching a child to respect and care for other people will be central in our family, as well as offering your child a good education, exposure to art, music and theater and knowledge about the heritage in the States. This will hopefully provide him or her with some helpful basics to become a loving, sociable and independent person in the future. Since both of us are fluent in English, we will teach the child to speak English from the start. This will enable her or him to read all the lovely postcards and letters from the birthparents. It also allows for telephone calls and conversations during visits to the US.

We both work a part-time schedule (four days, instead of five) and, when a child joins our family, Anco plans to reduce his hours to three days. We are delighted that one of us will be able to be at home full-time with the child, for the first couple of months. After that, the child will be lovingly cared for at home by one of us or an eager loving family member. We consider it healthy to have a stable, nurturing surrounding, with male as well as female role models (particularly the grandmothers and an adoring aunt). Down the road, we might also add a day or so of day care to give the child additional social opportunities, but the child, when young, will primarily be cared for, by us, at home.

We are lucky to have flexible work lives so that we can enjoy our child while he or she is growing up. We also have work that is very satisfying, personally. King is a medical doctor specializing in working, in a hospital setting, with severely depressed patients. Now, you might think that this is a depressing job. On the contrary. It is very rewarding to see patients smile and enjoying their life again knowing that they were previously severely depressed. Anco is a senior policy advisor for the government. He takes pride in taking care of his younger colleagues and coaching them in their careers. Anco learned the use of mediation skills from his parents, who run a hairdressing salon in their home town. He learned, from the family business, how important it was to make everyone feels respected.

We have lived in our house for three years and are still in love with the house, which has a romantic walled garden. In summer we hang a big hammock between our hazelnut and walnut tree. It fits three people and our nieces and nephews love it when we rock the hammock until the trees nearly collapse under its weight. At night, lying in the hammock looking at the stars, it is easy to imagine how well life can be. Every year a pair of ducks flies into our garden and lays their eggs. Last year, we were surprised to find that they had laid a nest twice, in spring and in autumn! The twelve ducklings were not able to escape the walled garden. So even though we liked keeping our visitors in our garden, we had to usher them out through the front door into the canal. In the canal, they peacefully grouped together with their mother duck and swam away. Another permanent resident of our garden is a pair of blackbirds who also lay eggs twice a year. They are great singers whose serenade we hear every morning. We have three lovely rabbits living in a separate part of our garden. Children love to spoil them. They are very happy to be held and fed carrots.

There is an open air market in our town every Saturday. Holland is famous for its flowers so Anco loves to decorate the house with a bunch of fresh flowers every week. Yes, tulips are our favorite. Sometimes we have our nieces and nephews over to stay the weekend with us. They know that we are planning to have a child of our own and have been asking us when they could finally see their little cousin to play with. They are wonderful together and the best of friends. King's younger brother is married to Yolanda, who grew up in Spain and they have two little boys. They now live and Paris and come to visit us in Holland as often as possible. The oldest boy is sometimes so excited seeing his cousins again that he can hardly sleep at all my brother told me. Yolanda has introduced us to the Spanish culture and language which we have learned to love. As food is also very important in that culture her father regularly brings enormous hams to enjoy. Everyone loves to have Chinese lunch, dim sum. So, family gatherings are regularly spent in restaurants to enjoy these lunches.

Like in many places in the world Christmas is a time for families to get together. This is an important tradition to keep family ties intact. We think that it is okay to give presents to children, but Christmas is more than the presents only. At these occasions the children play their musical instruments: harp, piano, and violin. Anco plays the piano too and we both love to listen to all kinds of music. We encourage every child we know to learn to play a musical instrument. Several of Anco’s and King’s nieces also learn to dance at an Art school. We love to go to their performances and see them grow on stage.

King's mother has eight brothers and sisters who are all still alive and have emigrated to different parts of the world. Still they like to keep in touch and organize an annual family reunion somewhere in the world. A couple of years ago we joined the family reunion in Indonesia. We traveled with 40 members of the family in a bus touring around the island of Java with children and old folks. We thoroughly enjoyed this. It once became emotional when the family honored King’s long deceased grandfather with a Chinese ceremony.

Anco is the first born grandchild and has a special relationship with his grandfather, which he was named after. When he was young he always spent his holidays with his grandparents. His grandfather taught him how to fish. His loving grandmother is unfortunately not alive anymore, but his grandfather is still alive and almost 92 years old. He has been a widow for many years but something remarkable happened a few years ago. By coincidence Anco's grandfather met his former girlfriend and fell in love again. They now live in an apartment building as neighbors and spend their lives together. Anco hopes that your child will have the chance to meet this special man.

If you would like more information about our family or would like to visit further, please call us anytime at: toll free through A Full Circle Adoptions at 1-800-452-3678 or use this link to send us email.

Yours Sincerely,

Anco and King