Dona and Steve Stone

Hello, we are Dona and Steve from Camarillo, California and we thank you for taking the time to visit our site. We know this is a very important and difficult time for you and we admire your courage and wisdom in considering open adoption.

Your child will always know that you chose us to care for him or her and that you gave us the ultimate gift, a family. We look forward to the day that we can share all the love we have with our child and with you.

Our child will always know about the special birthmother that brought him or her into this world. We will keep you updated with photos, letters and visits -- whatever makes you the most comfortable and the most at ease. We will make sure our child gets the opportunity to know you.

We promise to provide our child with a happy life, stable home, education, and many loving family and friends. Most importantly, we promise unconditional love and support.

We would love to get to know you and we hope you will take a moment to learn more about us through this website as you consider adoption.

OUR STORY
We met while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico! Steve was living in London, UK and Dona was living here in California. We were very fun and independent singles – but we are so much better together!

Our love was almost instantaneous and we continue to be amazed at having found each other. Steve moved here a year after we met and we got married in 2005. We have built a strong foundation between us based on love, respect, close relationships with family and friends and laughter. Our love deepens all the time and our greatest joy is to see each other smile!

We both love the work we do. Dona manages an Information Technology team and Steve manages IT Hardware and Systems. Our child will be very high-tech! Although we both love our work, one of us will put our careers on hold to be a stay at home parent.

PARENTING VIEWS
Our child will know the value of laughing and having fun! We will sing and dance around the house and play all sorts of games/sports as a family. We want our child raised in an environment filled with love and extended family. We will work hard to build moral character and raise an emotionally strong child.

We will teach our child to learn from mistakes and to know the difference between right and wrong.We hope our child will learn to work hard, to always stand up for him or herself and be a good friend to others.

OUR FAMILIES
There are so many qualities that we admire in our parents' marriages – love, patience, caring, open communication, dedication to their children. They are the most loving and fun grandparents and are all looking forward to becoming grandparents again and are so excited about our choice to adopt. We have many relatives close by as most of Dona’s family lives in Southern California. Her brother Mike and his family live in Kentucky. All holidays and birthdays are always celebrated with a big crowd.

Our child will also be able to travel the world to visit with Steve’s family. His parents and brother Rich live in England and his brother Rob lives in Australia. Steve’s parents visit several times a year. We are a close-knit family, no matter how much distance separates us, and we know how to make long-distance relationships work.

A couple of years ago we started the “California Summer Vacation” – all 3 nieces spend a couple of weeks with us for the summer. (As soon as baby Emily is older, we hope to have 4 nieces visit!) We love seeing them all together and away from their parents. We swim, go to the beach and do crafts. They are happy with the simple things and with our attention. We are blessed to have so much experience with children in our family.

OUR HOME
We live just off the coast in sunny Camarillo, California – a family friendly town about 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Our home is comfy and casual, with a large backyard that has a swimming pool and is perfect for a sandbox, running around and a great jungle gym. We love to have our family, friends and their children over for BBQ's and our large support system is waiting anxiously to welcome our baby. Steve loves our open, airy kitchen and looks forward to the day he is cooking for a family. We have turned the bedroom that adjoins our master bedroom into the most wonderful nursery, furnished with a handcrafted crib that Dona’s dad has made.

Camarillo is a great community to raise children, with many playgrounds, a swim facility and a strong recreational department that offers loads of activities. Art, sports camp and music are just some of the programs that we are looking forward to bringing our child to!

We are close to Los Angeles, the mountains, the ocean and many parks and recreation areas and yet, we live with a small town feel. There is a great public school system here and many families with children all throughout our neighborhood.

OUR DOGS!
We adopted 2 labrador puppies in July 2007 – Tucker and Sunshine. We enjoy taking them for walks, swimming at the beach and having them as part of our family. They love to run around the yard, chase balls in the local park and be around people especially children and they have already met all of our nieces and friends children.

WHAT WE DO FOR FUN!
We love doing things together and spending time with each other – hockey games, reading, going to the beach, relaxing in our pool and entertaining friends and family. We are about 15 minutes from the beach so we can go for a picnic and walk anytime. We love sports, not only watching but attending live games and our child will have so much fun going with us - LA Dodgers and LA Kings are our favorites.

Dona has loved reading her whole life and cannot wait to share this love with our child. We both like roller-coasters and amusement parks, lucky for us we live close to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and Sea World! Our child will enjoy being a kid while we enjoy being “Big Kids”! Steve coaches rugby for a local university team and wants to teach our child to play sports and coach them as they grow up.

Steve is currently learning Spanish and is looking forward to practicing his skills on one of our upcoming vacations to Mexico - we love to go to Mexico at least once a year.

Every year we like to decorate our home for Christmas both inside and out. We always have 2 Christmas trees just so we can put all of our ornaments on especially the ones that family have given us over the years. The outside of the house gets decorated with bright lights and we have a collection of moving animals which the local children love to come and look at.