Erin & Joshua In Kansas

We met our freshman year at K-State in the fall of 2011. We quickly became friends and often found ourselves playing on the same team for games of ultimate frisbee. We had several classes together and grew closer as we determined we both had a love for swimming and the outdoors, animals and playing games, plus a lot more.

Through the next two years, we worked together to get each other through school and our relationship grew strong. Some of our favorite memories are our adventures to different zoos, since we both love animals, and spending time getting to know each other. We decided to go see one of the best zoo's we had heard of, the Henry Dorley Zoo in Nebraska. The zoo was amazing but the most exciting part was when Joshua proposed in the butterfly dome!

We were married in December of 2014. We both graduated and began careers as engineers in Salina. We bought our first home on 28 acres so we could raise a family and have tons of room for them to grow and play. We found out after over a year of trying to conceive that we were unable to. We had both felt a previous calling to adopt, so we barely paused before starting our adoption journey in the fall of 2016.

We are forever blessed with three adopted children. Our daughter, Gabriella is 4. Her adoption was full of ups and downs, but in the end, her birth mom made us a family. About 18 months after Gabriella was born, we began the craziest year of our lives when we were presented with two separate adoption opportunities. Our sons Sebastian and Simon were born just 7 weeks apart!

We live on 28 acres in the country, a couple miles outside a city. Our home, we designed and built a lot of ourselves. It is a 5 bedroom 4 bathroom ranch style home with a walkout basement. We are super looking forward to filling our 5th room with another baby to love. While we do go to several parks in town with the kids, we spend most of our time playing on the massive playground Erin designed and built with her little brother Johnnie a couple years ago. Twice a week we meet with various members of our church and in our Tuesday night life group, 6 of the 11 children who come have all been adopted.

We have a hobby farm and with it comes quite a few animals. Goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, pigs, cats and a dog. Gabriella’s favorite by far are the ducks and chickens. She calls one of the chickens we have her “best friend” and loves to carry it around with her. Sebastian is totally a cat lover, any and every kitty is his friend. Simon’s favorite is our bunny, Macaroon. He loves to pet his soft fur and giggle. Every now and again we bring in animals that need a little extra attention or care, but for the most part they all live outside. The kids absolutely love carrying feed buckets when it comes time for everyone to eat. They always beg Erin to let her help them take care of everyone.

We spend almost every Sunday evening at Joshua's parents' house, often playing outside in their large yard. Joshua's sister also lives nearby and the kids get to spend lots of afternoons with their two cousins, Ben (3) and Josie (1). Joshua's parents definitely spoil the kids. They have everything the kids could want and more. We spend most major holidays with them, aside from Thanksgiving, which we reserve for all our friends who don't have family nearby and serve a Friendsgiving at our home.

We usually see Erin's parents for Christmas every year, though are not super close with them since they are 3 hours away. We go to see them a couple of times throughout the year and they come stay with us every now and again. Erin's brother Johnnie is also a big part of the kids' lives as he lives nearby and comes over quite regularly. They all love 'Uncle Nonnie"!

We both love games. Anywhere from video games, board games, outside games, tag, hide and go seek, you name it we have probably played it. This has definitely started to come through in our kids and they have their own board game shelf now with games like Candy land, Trouble and Jenga, though their favorite game right now is Kerplunk.

The kids all do gymnastics. Wednesday is their gymnastics day and they all get so excited when they find out it's Wednesday. We all also love swimming. The kids began noticing that the pool in town has water in it and haven't stopped begging to go since. The boys are still too little to swim on their own, but they have a blast in the shallows while Gabriella can pretty well do everything at the pool with the help of her water wings.

In the spring of 2016, we were told we needed to stop trying to conceive for the next year and a half and would likely not be able to conceive after Erin underwent treatment for a medical condition. Erin had felt called to adopt before and Joshua had family members who were adopted, and we were ready to start a family so not knowing what the future held we decided to go ahead and start the adoption process. Years down the road we determined that we were indeed unable to conceive so we kept adopting because we always wanted a big family.