About Matthew

I’m a web-footed native of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up on a quiet street where kids around the neighborhood played long games of kick-the-can on summer evenings, breaking only when our mothers called us in for dinner. I shared a room with my little brother in our too-small rambler. I’m lucky he was such a great little person (he’s a great BIG person now, a fireman who loves helping people). We liked building stuff, like model railroads and forts, and even though we helped my dad – a house-builder by trade – add an extra bedroom onto the house, my brother and I still made do with one bedroom well into our teens because my grandmother came to live with us for many years. In our family, family is the most important thing.

From my father I learned the value of resourcefulness and the satisfaction of working with my hands. My mother was a stay-home mom for our early years. She made apple pies and helped us cut out valentines and holiday decorations and discover our particular skills. She encouraged my love of words and music.

Music and art were important in our home. My sister, the oldest of us three kids, took to the “ivories” as a young child and became an excellent piano player. As far back as I can remember, the sound of piano was the background music to my home-life. My brother took violin lessons in grade school and I took accordion and trumpet lessons. In high school I taught myself basic guitar during the long afternoons after school when I wasn’t doing my algebra homework. Both my brother and I took painting lessons. While he became extremely skilled in pen and ink drawing, I painted in oil and later took up photography, which I still enjoy.

I did well in school (if you don’t count the algebra). I graduated from the University of Washington with an English degree. I studied German language and literature, too, and traveled to Germany during college and stayed on a farm for a planting season, then traveled around the rest of Europe. I traveled some more later on, journeying through Morocco in an attempt to reach the Sahara Desert (I never made it, but I met a lot of interesting people!).

By my late twenties and early thirties I still was undecided about a career, and I tried various adventures to see if anything would shake out. I envied people who always knew what they wanted to do, but I was interested in absolutely everything. One year I worked on a Christian ranch camp as a horse wrangler and counselor, and another year I worked at a nursery and fell in love with shrubs. I now propagate and grow a variety of fragrant ornamental shrubs in our back yard.

In my thirties I became very involved in the folk dancing community in Seattle. Between other jobs I had managed to become a freelance journalist, writing articles for local newspapers and magazines. Life kept getting better, but I didn’t realize what I was missing until I met Angela while folk-dancing. You could argue that the fine fiddle music made me giddy, which it did, but I would have gone bonkers over Angela even if I’d met her holding a plastic garbage bag at a volunteer curbside clean-up event. We became friends in a group of friends, and I learned what an honest, courageous and deeply giving person she is.

Angela and I dated for several years and during that time my writing career went from journalism to corporate work. Eventually I got into technical writing, and I now work for a small software company.

Angela and I married in 1999. She is my best friend, a person I trust absolutely and the person I love to be around the most. We spend entire days in each other’s company, working on home improvement projects, playing hearts and other games with friends, enjoying family get-togethers, or just hanging out with the cats.

We love our neighborhood, where we often walk to the grocery store or to our church (the little neighborhood church we were married in!). One of the things I value is being not just a resident and consumer, but a member of a community where people know each other and support each other. I’m very interested in finding ways to help neighborhoods thrive in a world that often leaves community last on its list.

I love hiking in the mountains and taking day trips to nearby small towns with Angela to explore. I especially enjoy “messing about in boats,” as Rat said in the Wind in the Willows, whether it’s a ferry ride or a rented canoe. I like putting together huge jigsaw puzzles. One of my favorite things is to curl up with a good book. I like books about history. My favorite author these days? Joseph Mitchell, hands down. He wrote about life around New York in the 1930s and 40s. At night Angela and I take turns reading to each other from a book we choose together, usually a novel, and we both adore children’s books.

I would like to provide a child with the same opportunities that I had to explore this beautiful and amazing world: a safe, nurturing and creative home, a solid education, and a community to grow into and be part of.

These are mainly random snippets of how I got to be who I am and what I’m about. There’s more. If you are considering placing your child with Angela and me and you’d like to get to know us better, I’ll tell you all about how eager I am to be a dad, to listen to and learn from a child as well as to guide and teach one. I’ll tell you how ready I am to have the enthusiasm, chaos and joy of a child in my life, and how I’m looking forward to loving and nurturing the child God chooses for us to raise. I’ll tell you how I plan to be the voice in a child’s life that I believe every young life should hear, which is the voice that says “you are the most precious thing in the world and I love you more than anything”, and “what you think and feel matters to me”, and “you can do whatever you dream of…I’ll help.”

If you would like more information about our family or would like to visit further, please call us anytime at: toll free at 1-888-766-8728, or call our adoption attorney (collect) at (206)728-5858, ask for Joan, reference file #6527, or use this link to send us email.

Sincerely,

Matthew