About Us

Eric and I (Samantha) met a few times over the years when we were involved in young adult events with our churches. We never really connected or became friends at those time. Many years later, we were both added to a Facebook group for young, Christian singles, and we began interacting with each other in that group. After several months of commenting back and forth, Eric finally decided to send me a private message…and we just never stopped talking. It was a “whirlwind romance” in that we talked as friends for about 3 weeks before Eric decided to take the leap and ask me out on a date. After our first date, we “made it official” and we dated for 6 months. We lived about an hour and a half from each other, so there was still a lot of texting and calling in between weekend visits. On the 6-month anniversary of our first date, Eric proposed. And 4 months after that, we were married! We will be celebrating our 7^th year of marriage in September of 2025.

Eric says he was drawn to me because of my music (I wrote and recorded original songs), my nerdiness, and my humor. I was drawn to him because he was funny and intelligent, and I just never wanted to stop talking to him.

Eric is so incredibly kind and patient, and he really is the rock of our family. When things get a little crazy (as they sometimes do with small children in the home), he is constant and steady. He has worked as an IT Hardware Technician for over 20 years, he is on the worship team and the speaking team at church, and he is in the process of publishing his first book! He is an amazing husband and father, and we are so incredibly lucky to have him.

Samantha is a loving and nurturing mother, and she’s always looking for ways to enrich the lives of our children. She is focused and dedicated, and when she sets her mind to something – it gets done. She is the worship director at our church and is also on the speaking team. She has been a stay-at-home mom since our son was born in 2021, and absolutely loves this “job”.

Our Home / Community

We live in a one-story twin home with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and a large family room in the fully finished basement. We love to play together in the family room (which currently serves as a playroom, and is full of toys and books), and there’s plenty of space to run around together, even on stormy days when we can’t go outside. We have a good sized, fenced-in backyard where we like to have fires and roast marshmallows in the warmer months, set up an inflatable pool in the summer, and the kids love to jump in the leaf piles in the fall.

We live in a very nice, quiet neighborhood filled with other families who have children of all ages. We’re just down the street from a middle school and a local park, where we often walk to take advantage of the soccer fields, the running track, the gaga pit, and a hill for sledding in the winter. We also live right next to our close friends who have a daughter that is the same age as our son. We often get together in the backyard for fires, grilling out, or just watching the kids play while we chat.

Family Activities / Traditions

We are both very close to our families and we all live in the same city (except Eric’s sister), so we get to spend a lot of time with them. Our kids love to spend time with Samantha’s parents, who have set up an outdoor playset, airplane seesaw, sandbox, and more in their backyard for the kids. We spend every holiday with either Eric’s family or Samantha’s (or sometimes both in the same day!). Every year, we go on a family vacation with Samantha’s family where we spend a long weekend at a lake house, cruising around on the pontoon, visiting the local ice cream shop, fishing, swimming, and just relaxing. We are planning our first ever Christmas getaway with Eric’s family where we will spend two nights in an AirBnB together over Christmas!

We love to visit our local apple orchard in the fall; they have wagon rides, a bouncey pad in the shape of a pumpkin, giant slides, a corn pit, rubber duck races, apple cannons and more. We make a whole morning of it, and the kids are happily exhausted by the end of it all. It’s one of our favorite traditions. We also love to check out events in our community, although we haven’t settled on many as a tradition yet, except the Memorial Day parade where the kids love to see the fire trucks drive by.

Some traditions that are closer to home and closer to our hearts include measuring the kids’ heights on the bedroom door frame each year, our nativity advent where one of the kids gets to put baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning, and reading together as a family every night.

Our Adoption Journey

I (Samantha) have always known that I wanted to adopt, and to provide care and support for children who need it. My husband was on board, but we chose to grow our family “naturally” first. When I was 27 weeks pregnant with my son, I was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia. At 31 weeks, I developed HELLP syndrome, and my son was born via emergency C-section. We had decided that this would be my one and only pregnancy, and knew that when we decided to grow our family again, it would be through adoption.

We began our first adoption journey in April of 2023, and we were so lucky to be able to bring our daughter home in January of 2024 at just one week old. She has been a feisty little addition and a blessing to our lives. We are prayerfully looking forward to adding more joy and love to our family with the addition of another child. We know that God has given us this heart for adoption, and that He will use us to meet a need at just the right time.

A Little More About Us…