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Garrett & Ann are hopeful adoptive parents from Illinois waiting to adopt a baby.

If you are pregnant and considering placing your child for adoption, please read the following Dear Birthmother Letter.

Our Story Dear Birth Mother,

We are Ann and Garrett and we want to thank you for taking the time to get to know us. Your bravery and courage during this difficult time amazes us. We can only imagine the strength it takes to consider adoption for your child. Our hearts go out to you, and our thoughts and prayers are with you. Your child will always know every decision you made was out of love and with their best interests in mind. Please know that we will love your child unconditionally and will provide a warm, happy home full of laughter.

Our story begins at Ann’s senior prom. Ann, in her purple dress and Garrett in his top hat - we were a dashing couple at the senior prom! We dated for awhile until Garrett left to join the Navy and Ann went to college. But fate couldn’t keep us apart for long, and a few years later, we found each other again. Garrett surprised Ann with a wedding proposal on bended knee amidst family and friends on the back porch of his home. In 2003, we were married in the same church both of our parents were married in many years before. Our marriage means so much to us because we have such strong faith in God, family and each other. We have great examples of strong, loving marriages from our parents. Ann’s parents have been married 37 years and Garrett’s parents have been married 33 years.

After the wedding, we spent our honeymoon in Italy. We visited Rome, Venice, Florence, Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast. Some of our fondest memories from that trip include a romantic gondola ride in Venice, lots of great pasta and ice cream and a mass with Pope John Paul II.

When we came back from our honeymoon, we starting working on our new home. Once we saw this historic home with the big front porch and yard full of oak trees, we began dreaming about filling it up with children. We began trying for a family right away. After a year of trying on our own, we started fertility treatments. For two long years we endured invasive treatments, with no success. But something good came out of this hardship. Our marriage and our resolve to have family became even stronger. It was then that we decided to pursue our dream of having a family through adoption.

Ann and Garrett About Ann
Ann is the middle child in her family; she has an older brother and younger sister. She grew up in a close knit, loving family and some of her most cherished childhood memories are of family vacations to her grandparent’s house in Michigan. Growing up, Ann was very involved in sports like volleyball and softball and very active in school activities. Ann and her family were also very active in their local church participating in fundraisers, pageants and charitable activities. A fun and unusual fact of Ann’s family life growing up was that both her parents were professional clowns! Although they both had regular jobs (teacher and computer programmer), they spent their spare time clowning around. It made for a fun-loving household to grow up in.

Ann loves to bake and cook. She is always trying out new recipes and bringing them to family gatherings for all to share. She is also an avid reader. She loves to read all kinds of books and can’t wait until the day when she can read a bedtime story to our child. She also loves spending time with her friends and their children. Ann is a very kind and caring person who loves to share life with everyone around her.

Ann received her bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the marketing manager at a public relations firm. She currently works full time but looks forward to the day when she can cut back on her work and spend more time being a mommy.

About Garrett
Garrett is blessed to be one of ten children – but it wasn’t always that way. Garrett was born the youngest of seven. His oldest sibling was 20 years older than him. When Garrett was four, his mother died in a car accident and he went to live with his oldest sister and her husband and children. Garrett’s sister and her husband adopted Garrett and he was raised with their three children as his siblings and his sister and her husband as his Mom and Dad. He is close to all of his siblings – most live in the Chicago area but two brothers live in Colorado and one in California. Although he endured some hardships starting out life, his childhood was happy and filled with baseball, hockey and football games and camping and fishing trips with his younger brothers and his dad. With such a large extended family, some of Garrett’s favorite memories are of family parties and reunions with all his cousins.

Garrett served three years in the Navy on an aircraft carrier in San Diego. He spent time in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific Rim defending our country. Garrett loves the outdoors. He is a master griller and enjoys serving up his famous ribs at Ann & Garrett’s annual 4th of July BBQ. Garrett is a dedicated and loyal brother, son, friend and husband who takes pride in his family and his work. He is a master joke teller and can be counted on to keep everyone in stitches.

For nine years, Garrett worked at the Chicago Board of Options working with stock options. After a downturn in the business, Garrett decided he was looking for a more meaningful career. He went to school to become a certified Emergency Medical Technician and shortly after that, he was accepted into Paramedic School. He recently graduated from school and is a certified Paramedic working for a private ambulance company. Garrett loves the work he does as a paramedic and takes pride in helping others.

About Us and Our Family About Us
We try our best to live life to the fullest and traveling is a big part of that. We love to travel and explore places we have never been. Recently, we visited Ann’s grandmother in Arizona for her 100th birthday then drove through the desert to California to visit Garrett’s brother and children in Los Angeles. One of our favorite trips – other than our honeymoon in Italy – was the trip we took with nine members of Ann’s family on a cruise ship to celebrate her parent’s 35th wedding anniversary. We love taking road trips and can’t wait to plan our first trip as a family.

Whether it’s a pick up volleyball game or swimming with our nephews, sports are a big part of the fun we like to have together. Often during the summer time we attend White Sox games and local minor league games with friends and family. And in the winter, we’ve been know to brave the cold for a Bears or University of Illinois football game. We also enjoy being outdoors riding our bikes on the local bike trails or taking walks with our dog Roxie around the neighborhood.

Garrett is a part time coach for his nephew’s basketball team and is an announcer for our community’s peewee football league. Ann is a member of our community's library board and is involved in the adoption organization Chicago Area families for adotpion. Also, she was a tutor for an after school program in the city and loves to baby-sit her nephews. Since before we got married, we have dreamed of having a big family. We know that bringing a child into our family will make it complete.

Faith is an integral part of our lives. We both were raised in the Catholic faith and attended Catholic schools for part of our education. Both of our families are active in their church’s activities and we both find strength in our faith. God is with us in every part of our life and we couldn’t have it made it this far in our journey without our faith.

We both have very flexible hours for work and our plan is for one of us to be home with our child each day of the week. If by chance there is a day that one of us can’t be home, both of our parents live close by and have volunteered to be home with the baby.

About Our Family and Friends
We both grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago. One thing that we both enjoy most is spending time with our families. Garrett is part of a big Irish family. He is very close with all his siblings and we enjoy spending lazy summer Sundays at his parents house with his brothers and sisters. Swimming in the pool and relaxing in the screened-in porch before a big family dinner is a great family tradition. Ann’s family is not as large as Garrett’s but just as close and loving. A favorite tradition with Ann’s family is celebrating birthdays. Whoever is celebrating their birthday gets a scrumptious meal of their choice made by Ann’s mom followed by cake, presents and sometimes even a little karaoke.

As you can tell, family is very important to us. Just as important is our desire to have our own family. We both love children very much. We spend time with our 25 nieces and nephews as often as possible. (This means 25 instant cousins!) It’s especially fun for us to spend time with our families at their summer cottages in the Wisconsin Dells. Garrett’s sister and Ann’s uncle have places just a few miles from each other. We try to visit a few times each summer and love boating, campfires and just hanging out with our parents, siblings, cousins and nephews. We are also blessed with wonderful friends and their children who would be a part of your child’s life. Your child will be spending lots of time with our nieces, nephews and friend’s children (ages 0-13 yrs old).

Our Message to You Our message to you
We want you to know that we can’t wait to start sharing our lives, love, laughter, knowledge, and values with a child. We are very excited to begin this adoption journey, as is our family. Both of our families have already been touched by the blessings of adoption. Ann’s brother and two of Garrett’s brothers have adopted children. Our families are so excited for us and are waiting with anticipation for the day when we can bring a child home and add to our family.

We eagerly anticipate the day that we can change diapers, read bed time stories and plan play dates with friends and family. We want to take active roles in our child’s life by coaching their team, helping them with homework and supporting them in any way possible. Our child will always know about their adoption and we plan to share this adoption story with them. We are open to creating an adoption plan that works for all of us. There will never be a doubt that they were a treasured and precious gift for us from their birth mother.

You are in our hearts during this time. We hope to have given you a few snapshots of our lives, love and families. We look forward to meeting you and finding out more about you. Thank you for reading our letter and considering us in your search. Wishing you all the best for you and your baby.

Ann & Garrett Glynn