Michael was willing to miss a March Madness Purdue Basketball game to go on a date with Chrissy, so that’s how we knew our relationship was going somewhere. After months of building a strong friendship, we were both pretty certain that we had met the person we would spend forever with. We got married during the pandemic and while we missed out on a lot of the traditional “wedding things”, this season helped us build a really solid foundation and taught us to focus on the things in life that really matter – relationships. Now, we love doing life together with our Goldendoodle, Penny!

We went into marriage knowing that the path to building our family would not necessarily be easy. Along the way, we learned it would be even more difficult than we imagined. As we considered the path we wanted to take to grow our family, we connected with friends touched by adoption, and we would weep at the stories of how their family grew through the process, a family that faced challenges at times, but a beautiful one. It didn’t take long for us to realize we had landed where we were meant to be all along. We wanted to be parents, not just that, but we wanted to be adoptive parents. We didn’t need to share DNA with our child. We just needed to be willing to learn and work hard to give our future child the best life possible. That was an easy yes. 

We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the generosity of CCFB. When we first started our journey of adopting, we were overwhelmed at the cost of the adoption, attorney fees, and birth family expenses. Being chosen for a grant by CCFB has been such an immense blessing for our family, and we are so excited to meet our future child!  

Michael and Chrissy welcomed their son, Auggie, in October 2024!