Hi! Thanks for stopping by. I hope this page will give you an idea of who I am.

First and foremost, I'm mom to Madison, Amber and Erickson. My daughters are now 10 and 13. I adopted both girls from Ethiopia; Maddie in 1997 and Amber 2 years later. Erickson is 9 and was born in Haiti. He joined our family two years ago. The decision to adopt changed my life - not only in terms of building a family but also in terms of what I do.

I earn my living two ways:

I created and maintain a web site called Adopting.com. Adopting.com started out as an offering to the adoption community that I did in my free time. But, in the 14 years since it's creation, the site has grown into a full time job. We get an average of 50,000 hits a day and have been featured in print in Time Magazine, Adoptive Families Magazine, People Magazine, USA Today and Newsweek; and on television on MSNBC, CNN and ABC. As an extension of this involvement in the interenet, I also do web design for adoption agencies, churches, theatre companies and other non-profit organizations.

I teaching singing and acting in a small, private studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've been teaching since 1979. Directing theatre, performing and teaching was what I did full time before my children and Adopting.com took over my life. I love it too much to stop doing it but it now has to share my time with these other things. I also created and run a web site to help people find voice teachers called VoiceTeachers.com.

I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. With the exception of a few years here and a few years there, I've lived here all my life. As a child, my father was with the Peace Corps so I had the opportunity to travel quite a bit. Before I was ten I had seen a large part of the world and lived in a number of exotic places. It was a wonderful experience but it also created in me an appreciation for roots.

My kids pretty much are my life. Don't get me wrong. Being a single parent and running two businesses is a challenge. I'm frequently tired and occasionally overwhelmed, but I wouldn't change it for the world. My kids are by far the best thing I've ever done! You can see more photos of our family on our 2008 Year in Review Site.

The kids and I are water people. We love to hang out at the pool or the beach - pretty much any body of water will do. We also love movies, the theatre and spending time with family and friends. Whenever possible, we like to take off for a few days in Monterey or Disneyland.

When I'm child-free I love nothing better than spending an evening with friends, talking over dinner. When solo, I love to read. All-time favorites include "Memoirs of a Geisha", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Red Tent", "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", "Angela's Ashes", "The Da Vinci Code", "The Secret Life of Bees", "Prey", "Suzanne's Diary for Nicolas" and I'm a sucker for anything Nora Roberts writes - your basic "chick fiction"!! When I really had free time I did a lot of beadwork and needlepoint but those things are a faint memory these days.

We are all involved at our church, First Lutheran Church of Palo Alto. I also volunteer for several adoption organizations including African Cradle, the agency through which I adopted my kids. I'm very involved in African Cradle's Ethiopian Heritage Camp which we put on every year here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

In a nutshell, there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do. But I do my best to cram in as much as I can!

Hmmm... Let's see... So many things. Well, let's list some:

• I feel passionately about children. It's hard for me to describe what it is I feel about children without sounding cliche'. They are our future, our hope for a better world. They are a little piece of heaven here on earth. I think both children and animals are a pure form of love with which we adults sometimes lose touch. They are the angels among us. See? cliche'!
  

• I feel passionately about family. I'm not necessarily talking about blood family. I mean the family of your heart, of your soul - the people with whom you choose to share your dreams, your fears, your hopes. There is nothing on this earth as important as family.
  

• The ocean is a sacred place. It's power - strength, balance, rhythm and peacefulness - is restorative for me. It's a Zen thing. We go to the ocean as often as possible and plan to have a beach house of our own someday!!
  

• Disneyland holds a special place in my heart. For me, it's a place of many happy memories - from my childhood and now with my own children. It's truly the "Happiest Place on Earth".
  

• Christmas. Okay, I go completely overboard when it comes to Christmas. Christmas is second only to Disneyland in happy happenings. I think I like them both so much because for a brief moment in time people are kind to each other. For some reason we have trouble maintaining that feeling in the "real world", but when it comes to Christmas or Disneyland, for a small, shining moment we are all family and we all remember what it is to be a child. Sappy, yes, but true.
  

• Lastly, and most importantly, I feel passionately about honor. I have this thing about integrity that seems old fashioned by today's standards, I suppose. I think a sense of honor is sadly missing in our modern world. I'm not even sure how to describe what I mean when people ask. I guess it boils down to being true to your word, helping or protecting those less fortunate than yourself and treating others with respect.
  

• Here are some organizations that I feel passionately about:
  
  • Christian Children's Fund
  • Food for the Poor
  • Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids
  • Greenpeace
  • Amnesty International

That's it! Thanks for coming by. I hope this gives you a sense of what I'm about. Drop me a line if you'd like to. I'd love to hear from you!   jv@valentinestudio.com