Our Story

Christmas 2011

 We met way back in 2001, when we had the opportunity to do Young Life Leadership Training together.  We were friends for several years, before we started dating in 2005.  We dated for two years, before Ben (for the very first time) told Jenny he loved her and asked her to marry him in January 2007.  We waited a short four months and were married on May 13th, 2007!!!

School has been a big part of our journey, and Ben was in his second and final year of nursing school when we got married, and Jenny went back for her Master's just a short year later!  Ben is now working toward his Bachelor's, and someday we hope that we will both have school out of our systems!

We waited a couple years before thinking we were ready for kids, but in February 2009 we decided the time was right, and for about eight months we tried unsuccessfully.  After that, we started the long process of finding the right medical help and tests, and a few months later we had done all the routine initial work.  We found that Jenny has hypothyroidism, and she's now monitoring that.  But all the other tests came back normal - we were deemed one of the many couples who experience "unexplained infertility".  Many more heartbreaking months went by, and by the time we experienced it all over two years and had attempted the beginning stages of medical intervention, we prayed fervently for our next steps.  It became clear very quickly that, for us, this was adoption!

We started our adoption journey in May 2010, with an initial consult with our current adoption agency.  We needed more information before going forward, namely because this agency's philosophy is all about open adoption, which was new to us at the time.  We took their required classes in August 2010, and by the time we left for our big Scotland vacation (we LOVE travel!) in September, we had submitted our fully completed HUGE set of paperwork!

We did our homestudy over October, November, and December 2010.  We went up for approval in December, and were given some extra steps.  We completed those in February 2012, and in a moment of pure, unadulterated JOY, were approved to adopt on 2/23/12!


We were matched in July 2012, and experienced the beautiful, complex gift of adoption later that month, being gifted with our daughter, Nora.  She came home with us when she was 3 days old, and two weeks later was officially ours when the consent paperwork was signed by her hero of a birthmother.  We began and continue in a beautiful open adoption with her birthfamily.