Leah & Daniel In Missouri

We met online. As crazy as it sounds, we actually have all the same friends. We both grew up in Southern Illinois about 45 miles away from each other. We had actually been at the same get-togethers and concerts but never met up at that time. When we met, we saw pictures and asked how we knew the people in the picture and found out that we knew most of the same people! We started dating in 2016 and by 2019, we were married. We have been married for 5 years this year.

We enjoy spending time together and with our families at our family farm and at the rivers. We love going on our yearly family vacation. We spend a lot of that time in national parks and enjoy the views and seeing new places. We have 3 dogs, and we consider them our babies. Two of them came from the same litter. We have had the oldest since 2017 and got him when he was a baby. They all love the attention and always want pets and treats. We love playing with them and showing them the love we have for them.

We moved to Southern Missouri the January before we got married and have a house on 2 acres in the country. We enjoy spending our weekends together as we both work during the week at our full-time jobs. Leah is a mammography technician at a local hospital, and Dan is a general maintenance technician.

Our friends are spread throughout a couple of states that we have lived in. Dan was in FFA (Future Farmers of America), and we are in the Alumni of FFA for his high school. We help with a yearly pork steak dinner with our friends back home. Our closest friends are Chandler and Payton, and we love spending time with them. Leah was in their wedding, and we talk to them almost weekly. We also go to eat with them when we can. We invite our friends to the family farm to go side-by-side riding and enjoy time on our private rock beach to the river where we swim and relax. We usually have a meal and bonfire with them all in the fall by the river where our family farm is.

We enjoy traveling and seeing new places. Just this year, we visited most of the states out west and went up into Canada. We love to go to National Parks and see the beauty that makes them a National Park. Our favorite place this year was seeing Yellowstone. We are excited to go back and spend more days in the park. It is such a beautiful place to see. We also want to go to Montana again and go to Glacier National Park, as well. We enjoy those trips because we have family with us and get to enjoy it together. This year we also got to go whale watching and saw over 40 Orcas. It was a rare experience as our tour guide told us. It is so amazing to see all that we have seen, and we are looking forward to seeing many more places.

We live in a ranch house on a couple acres out in the country. We have fields around us that are used for farming and feeder hay. We also have several houses around us. We are about 10 minutes from our local school. Our local school is a smaller school, but they do have different sport options and other clubs to join. We also try to go to church as often as we can. We are currently looking for a church close to us that we like and will also be good for our growing family. We hope our church community will have children who our children can grow up with.

We do spend most of our weekends either at the family farm or at one of our parents' houses helping them and spending time with our family. We are so excited to start this new journey and are so happy that we are able to do this.

Dan comes from a family of 5 with 2 older sisters. He lived in his childhood home until we moved to Southern Missouri. Dan has a big extended family with 9 aunts and uncles. We have a cousin of Dans who we spend a lot of time with; Clay and his fiancé, Lacey. They have 3 kids, and we like to spend time with them and enjoy time with their kids. They are there any time we need help, and we are there for them if they need anything at all.

Leah comes from a family of 3 with just her mother and father. She lived in her childhood home until we moved to Southern Missouri. Leah has a big extended family with 5 aunts and uncles. We love spending time with our immediate and extended families.

We spend almost every holiday big and small with at least one set of our parents. We sometimes go to Leah's aunt and uncle's for Thanksgiving and spend time with their family that we do not see often. Most Christmases, we spend with both of our parents. One of Dan's sisters lives across the country, and we only see her in the summer. That is when we take our family vacation with both of our parents and Dan's sisters with their significant others. Dan's family puts on a corn maze and pumpkin patch every year. We go out on the weekend and help them throughout the season with whatever they may need. Sometimes we help move stuff and greet visitors, or we may babysit children of the family.

As a couple, adoption has been something we have been thinking about for quite a while, but we weren’t sure this was the path for us until we were blessed to go through a kinship adoption four years ago. Watching him grow up so happy and secure in our home, we knew then that we had so much to offer a child, and it made us realize that we should pursue our desire to grow our family through the miracle of adoption.