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Hi there! We are Alysha, Nate, Leyla and Elliana (Ellie). We are a loving, silly, adventurous, family who genuinely loves spending time together. Traditions, vacations, and special day-to-day memories are big for us. Alysha is an educator and instructional coach for the local middle schools and high school. She works part-time and has flexible hours so that she can still be very involved with the kiddos. Nate owns his own concrete construction business and is somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades, since he can build or fix just about anything. Leyla is a sweet, smart, shy eleven-year-old, and Ellie is a friendly, spunky, outgoing nine-year-old. Both girls have been dreaming about and praying for a little brother or sister for many years and cannot wait to bring home a sweet baby through adoption. As a family, we love to be adventurous through activities and sports outdoors, but we have just as much fun playing board games, dancing or playing “tackle fight” in the living room, or just snuggling on the couch together to watch a movie and eat popcorn. We have also loved training and playing with our Golden Retriever puppy, Ruby. Prioritizing time for family (both immediate and extended family) and for God, are the most important things to us, and we cannot wait to bring another special child into our family through adoption. We’re praying for you and we’re looking forward to having an open adoption, to your level of comfort.
We went to the same high school (although we didn’t know each other then). We met a few years after high school through our little brothers, who played on the same baseball team. Nate saw Alysha at a game, and after asking his brother about her, the two brothers began conspiring to set us up. After our brothers set us up to meet, we ended up having a very long, surprisingly comfortable, conversation in which we realized pretty quickly that we had a lot of the same life goals and values regarding family and faith. Over the next few years, we spent lots of time together with Alysha’s family and her youngest brothers. We were both drawn to the fact that the other loved kids so much and valued family time. We have always loved traveling together, playing games together, and finding new restaurants to try.
We were married in 2009 and spent 3 years together as a married couple before having our first daughter, Leyla, in 2012. Just two years later, we welcomed Ellie. Over the years, we’ve continued to strive to always communicate with each other, grow in our faith together, and prioritize quality time. Through our journey with multiple miscarriages and fertility issues over the last 6 years, we’ve learned to lean on each other more than ever before. Personality wise, we are opposites in many ways, but we agree on all the important things, share in the same values, and balance each other out to make a pretty good team.
Nate is loyal, optimistic, hard-working, easy-going, and fun! He’s our provider, our protector, and the one who helps us to be adventurous. When I get worried or stressed, he helps me to see the up-side of things and encourages me to not worry about what I can’t control. He makes me laugh, and always helps me feel like we can get through anything with God’s help.
I knew pretty early on, from the way Nate interacted with my little brothers, that he was a genuinely good guy, and that he was going to be an amazing dad… and boy was I right! He has been the best dad to our girls! He has always been the guy who’s willing to help everyone. He’s a “manly-man” in the sense that he is strong, hard-working, and a fixer. He would drop just about anything to fix someone’s tire, pull someone out of a ditch, show someone how to build something, or help someone move. He likes rock music, hunting, four-wheelers, construction equipment, and being outdoors. But he’s the same gentle guy who dances with our daughters in the living room, lets them put nail polish on his toes, reads them devotions, and hugs and kisses them goodnight every night. The girls adore him and look forward to him getting home from work each evening. From the time they were toddlers, they have loved to “jam out” with him, and they love when he takes them on adventures in his grandpa’s woods (four-wheeler rides, ziplining, and walks to look for wild flowers). There’s nothing quite like the sound of the three of them giggling and laughing while they play “tackle-fight” on the living room floor. Our dog, Ruby, has recently joined in on this fun, as she hops all around them while they tickle, wrestle, and laugh. Nate also plays sports with the girls, is always there for their concerts and performances, and teaches them things about vehicles, sports, and life. I love seeing the genuine love he has for our children, as well as for all of our nieces and nephews, who all love to play with him. He’s often just like a big kid himself. He has a very special connection with our niece and God-daughter, Khloe, who was adopted two years ago and has a special place in our hearts. It makes me so happy to see the way that kids seem to flock to him and love playing with him, and I can’t wait to see him love, play with, and teach our next child in the same way he has my little brothers, our daughters, and our nieces and nephews.
Alysha is the most caring, thoughtful, selfless person I have ever met. Her love and dedication to children (not just her own children), is unsurpassed. If there are kids around that aren’t receiving adequate attention or supervision, she is there. She devotes all of herself to caring for others. She runs our family, our house, and keeps our lives running smoothly. She caters to us all and is so accommodating to all of our individual likes and dislikes. Alysha gives her all to whatever task is at hand. She was an excellent teacher, and continues to be a great asset for our school system as an instructional coach at the secondary level. She goes above and beyond what is asked of her, especially when it benefits kids. She does such an amazing job making special time for our daughters and knows how to show them love in a way that is specific to them. She is an amazing mother to our girls and she takes that role very seriously. We both see the value in being very involved in our children’s lives and helping them to be upstanding individuals as they navigate life. Her moral character and her integrity are second to none. She is beautiful inside and out. I am so proud and honored to have her as my wife.
We live in a quickly growing small town in northern Indiana, and we absolutely love our community and the neighborhood we live in! Our neighborhood is filled with so many kind families, couples, and sweet elderly people. Everyone in our neighborhood seems to love kids and love dogs. It’s a regular occasion to go on a walk and stop to talk for a half hour with a neighbor who’s out in their yard or on a walk.
We both grew up in this area, and since family has always been so important to each of us, we never planned to move far away. Our community has a wonderful family-centered feel with lots of lakes, dozens of playgrounds and parks, and walking/biking trails. We love to go to the nearby lake and play on the playground, play in the splash pad or on the beach in the summer, and walk or bike the trails. We usually end our time with ice cream from the small ice cream shop nearby. While we like the small-town, family feel, we also like that our town is growing in diversity and expanding. It’s been very cool to see Alysha’s best friend since high school gain large community support in growing and expanding her own hair salon, as a minority business owner (being both African American and a woman). We’re proud to be friends with her, her husband, and their two children. We also love that our community shows a lot of support for adoption and for caring for both adoptive families and birth families. We know of several groups who meet in our town regularly so that adoptive children can be around other adopted children, and we feel that will be valuable to us and to our adopted child. We are also very involved with our church community and have a lot of love and support from our church family as well as our extended family.
Our extended family is very unique, but in the BEST of ways. Alysha comes from a large family, being the only girl with five brothers. Those brothers are all grown now, and three of them have children of their own. We love getting together with all of them, along with Alysha’s mom and step-dad, on a regular basis. All of our nieces and nephews are best friends with our kids, and they love to be silly together. We all like to go on vacations together occasionally, and go camping together a few times each summer as well. We not only like to spend time together, but we really support each other. We have an especially close relationship with Alysha’s brother, Phil, and his wife and daughters. The two older daughters are around our girls’ ages, and their third daughter, Khloe, was adopted a few years ago, and came into our lives after we had suffered several losses. They asked us to be her God-parents, and she has helped us to see what a beautiful blessing adoption can be, and that a child can never be loved by too many people.
Nate’s parents and grandparents live in the community as well, and we see them regularly. His brother, sister, and their spouses and kids live in Chicago, but we enjoy getting to see them on holidays and a few times a year. Everyone in our extended family, along with our many close family friends, are all so excited for us to adopt. They have been with us through our journey of having multiple miscarriages and fertility issues, and now they all can’t wait to welcome a baby through adoption.
Our top priorities as parents are to be present and involved, and to help our children to feel unconditionally loved and valued as a part of our family and as children of God. It’s always been important to us that we spend more time with our children than any other caregiver. That’s why Alysha has always either been a stay-at-home mom or only worked part-time since having children. She plans to take 6-12 months off of work when we bring another baby home. After that, she’s very thankful that she only works part-time, flexible hours, and that both grandmas live nearby and will help with childcare while Alysha works.
We try to show our kids lots of love and affection to help them feel confident and secure. Bringing our children up in church, teaching them their true value, is also very important to us. We also strive to teach them responsibility so they can grow into productive adults who contribute to society. Teaching them to respect themselves and respect others is extremely important to us, and we try our best to lead by example in the way we treat others. As they get older, we are trying to teach them that it’s o.k. to have different views and opinions, but we should always show love and kindness as God has shown us. Over the last 11 years of being parents, we have learned that each child is different, and with that, we parent each of our girls differently to try to meet each of their unique needs. We recently went through a book to learn their individual love languages so we could know how to best show each of them love in the best ways they need (no matter how different they are).
We truly cannot wait to add another baby to our family. We have longed for and prayed for a special baby for a very long time, and I can promise you that your baby will be loved fiercely by SO many people. We want you to know that we’re praying for you as you work through this tough decision right now. We’re hoping to meet you and have an open relationship with you, at your discretion.
No updates at this time.
