Ok, so it's time for the fun intro. Glad I'm not doing this in front of everyone, I keep having to do that for seminars that I go to for work and I end up mumbling everything. Typing is much easier. On to the important stuff.

I would be Ryan, and my partner is Adam. We met on the internet back in December of 2000, and moved in together in December of 2001. We have now been together for 6, almost 7 years, and we recently celebrated our 1st anniversary in September - we were married in Canada in 2005.

I currently work as a computer consultant for a currently small company in Illinois - though things seem ready to take off soon. Adam currently works in the insurance industry, although he is planning a eventual return to school so that he can get another degree and teach, which is what he really likes to do.

As to the reason I joined, we've been discussing lately (by which I really mean over the past year) the idea of kids - we both agree we want at least one, and probably two, and maybe even three (down the road..one is probably enough for right now). So the discussion has turned to the fun question..how? We have been looking online for about the past two weeks at the various options - fostering with eventual adoption, open adoption, surrogate mother, etc. and trying to decide which is the better way, and also to assess the costs of each plan - while we make a decent amount of money, all of these options can get plenty costly, as I'm sure some of you know. The online resources that I have found so far have been informational, yet not very good at the same time, so I've been looking for other resources, such as this site.

Anyway, I'll stop there for now - I don't usually ramble on this much. Other posts I make will be much shorter. I'll be reading through the various posts, and probably have a few questions along the way. I look forward to talking to people soon.

-Ryan