"Two or three" is the answer we would have given 17 years ago if you asked us how many kids we planned to have. We were early in our careers and had just bought a house. Our plan was to wait a couple years before trying to start a family. A few years later, we realized that getting pregnant was going to be more difficult than we had ever imagined. Primary physician visits led to fertility specialist appointments. Our dream of becoming parents seemed to slip further away as we coped with the loss following each new treatment and failed attempt.

However, we were not willing to give up on our dream of becoming parents. We enthusiastically focused our energy on growing our family through adoption. Our dreams of loving and nurturing a child became our reality when we received a surprising call one afternoon. A beautiful baby girl was born and her loving and selfless birth mother had chosen us! Meeting our daughter's birth mother and aunt at the hospital gave us an opportunity to connect, take photos together and exchange contact information. Those photos and memories will always live on and help us share our daughter's adoption story with her; becoming a part of a scrapbook she can cherish forever. We are so grateful, and have so much respect for Kylie's birth mother and her most unselfish act of love. We promise to always honor that love and share that sentiment with our daughter. We enjoy sharing photos and updates with her birth mother and once she is old enough, we hope Kylie will participate in writing those letters. We view adoption not as the end of our long journey to parenthood, but as the start of us living and sharing our dreams with our children.

We know how to have fun no matter the season or what the weather is like. We stay busy and have a great time visiting zoos and aquariums, playing at local parks, sledding, snowmobiling, riding UTVs, fishing, playing volleyball and basketball, and attending concerts. When we are not attending concerts, we're listening to music at home and dancing around the kitchen together. We really enjoy attending professional sporting events and go to many Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Brewers games each year and travel to Arizona for spring training when we can.

We love to take vacations and explore new places, but we also have a lot of fun at home. You will often find us sitting together in the living room, reading books with our daughter. We go for long walks around our subdivision and play in the backyard or on the family farm, where there is even more room to explore.

We have everything from daily to annual traditions in our family. We spend holidays with extended family, attending mass and joining together for large family meals. Every summer brings a family reunion with hundreds uniting for swimming, playing volleyball, and competing in fun, family competitions like water balloon tosses. We tend to celebrate milestone birthdays with a huge amount of food, music and games. We have baseball tailgating outings each summer and attend as many Brewer baseball games as possible each year. We get together with siblings for cookouts twice a month and spend time riding UTVs on the farm or just hiking or snowshoeing in the fields. To us, the daily traditions can mean just as much as holiday traditions. With both of us working from home, we eat every meal together and always tuck our daughter in together for the night. Every moment is special, and family means the world to us.

We live in a moderately-sized city, located in scenic southern Wisconsin, where we enjoy rivers, rolling hills, farmland and woodlands. Perhaps what our city is best known for is its abundance of beautiful parks and recreational areas. Convenient boat launches, numerous ball fields, playgrounds, two public golf courses, tennis courts, over 2,300 acres of parkland and 25+ miles of paved bike/walking trails are just some of our community's amenities. We have numerous annual events in our community, including county fairs, seasonal festivals, holiday parades, fireworks and light shows. Attending festival concerts and sampling fair food are two of our favorite summer pastimes.

We live in a ranch style home with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Our basement is finished with a large recreational room, weight room, half bathroom and laundry room. Our favorite room is the living room, where we watch TV, play games, talk about our day, and enjoy each other's company. We have plenty of space to grow our family!

Our house sits on over an acre of land that backs up to a field. We have a spacious yard for play and our neighborhood offers a perfect one mile, low-traffic walking/biking path. Families in our rural, residential subdivision vary from young couples just starting their families to retired people living with their grown children and young grandchildren. Our subdivision has a neighborhood park with several planned events, including an annual summer block party and a bonfire gathering after trick-or-treating each year.

Our families are overjoyed with our decision to adopt again. We tried for many years to start a family and adopting our daughter was the happiest moment of our lives. We have six siblings between the two of us and six nieces and nephews. The addition of another child/grandchild/niece/nephew/cousin is highly anticipated. The grandparents, aunts, and uncles are eagerly awaiting baby-time and cannot wait to spoil another child.

To say we have large family gatherings for birthdays and holidays would be an understatement! With many grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins nearby, there is always something to celebrate. Our families really know how to throw a party, with all sorts of food, music, and games for all ages!

We have family living nearby, so we get together often to play games, have family dinners or just hang out and watch movies. Every summer, we enjoy fishing, hiking, large cookouts (with way too much food) and Milwaukee Brewers outings. We spend many weekends in Melissa's hometown, which has proudly been named "The Waterpark Capital of the World."

We have siblings living in California and Idaho and traveling to see them always gives us something to look forward to, especially during the winter months. We love to spend time by the ocean and in the mountains.

We are so grateful that you are taking the time to read our profile and learn a little about us. We can only imagine how difficult this decision is for you and we want you to know how much admiration and appreciation we have for you. We have wanted a family for so long and adoption has allowed that to happen for us. Adding a daughter to our family, through adoption, was the greatest experience of our lives and we would love, more than anything, to care for another child (or twins!). We have a safe, secure, and loving home and will provide our children as many wonderful life experiences as possible.

We have been together for over 20 years and happily married for 17. We met in college and have been together ever since. Dan's hard work and dedication have allowed him to build a business where he can set his own hours and work from home. Being a part-time, stay-at-home daddy has been a goal of his since we began planning for parenthood over a decade ago! We struggled with infertility for many years and always came back to the idea of adoption. Adoption is an incredible gift that will grow our family, while positively impacting another, and we feel privileged to be on this amazing journey again!

We are a fun and energetic family that loves to travel and try new things. We are sports enthusiasts, watchers and players of several sports. We both grew up participating in sports, everything from ballet to hockey, and promise to let our children get involved in the sports of their choice. We love to cheer for our home state's collegiate and professional teams and have been known to mix our love for travel with our love for sports, occasionally traveling to other stadiums to watch our Milwaukee Brewers play baseball. We are excited to incorporate family-friendly activities into our future travels and to give our children fun and exciting adventures.

In addition to physical activity, we strongly value education, both in and out of the classroom. We will constantly strive to introduce our children to new, exciting learning opportunities outside of the classroom through participation in sports, clubs, music and other hobbies while encouraging continued dedication to classroom education. Some of our most cherished memories are from our school years and we want our children to experience the same enthusiasm we felt as children for both the learning and social aspects of a formal education.

Our daughter, Kylie, will be an excellent big sister. She is the happiest, sweetest little girl. We can already picture her showing her new sibling the ropes. She loves to rock her "babies" and read to them. She is always smiling and lighting up the room. She is so smart, walking and talking at a very young age. We both grew up with big families and wish for her to have at least one sibling she can share life journeys with.

As parents, we encourage the values our parents instilled in us with unconditional love. We are mindful to always lead by example, demonstrating honesty, integrity, hard work, respect for others, empathy, humility and kindness. Our children will love and be loved by us and the extended family and friends we hold so dear.

We cannot wait to experience new life adventures and create lifelong memories with our children. We have so much love to give and we know that your love does not end with adoption. We want you to feel assured that we will always honor you in our home. We will share your loving story and explain how, together with you, it became "our story". We want to develop a healthy relationship for all and would be happy to send you pictures and updates if it is your wish to keep communication open. If you have any questions for us after viewing our profile, please feel free to reach out.

With love and respect,

Dan & Melissa