We’ve been together since 2012. Anthony popped the question on Michelle’s 30th birthday while on vacation in Italy, and we married the following year in a small ceremony at Michelle’s parents’ home. We are different in a lot of ways, but we both have our strengths and balance each other’s weaknesses, which makes us a great team. We love working on DIY home projects together, kayaking, playing board games, and spending time with our pets. Anthony is quiet, has a dry sense of humor, and is endlessly patient. Michelle is caring, is a little goofy sometimes, and loves taking care of people.

Michelle is an only child, and Anthony has an older brother who lives a few hours away, though we still manage to get together a few times a year. Michelle works in her family’s business with both parents, and they live just a few miles away. Anthony’s mom lives a mile away and is eager to be on call for grandma duties! His dad lives about an hour away, and we get together for holidays and special occasions. Anthony has one aunt, and Michelle has several aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Both of our families are very supportive of our decision to adopt and excited for us to start our own family. We always spend Christmas Eve with family and friends at Michelle’s parents’ and rotate between Anthony’s mom’s house, his brother’s house, or our house for Christmas, where we all decorate the tree together. We have apple cider making parties each year, where assorted family members get together to help pick and press the apples from our little orchard. We usually spend the Fourth of July with Michelle’s parents at their camp on the lake. We host our parents for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and birthdays, and Michelle always tries out a new dessert recipe!

We live in a beautiful four-bedroom, three-bath home on 48 acres on a dead-end road. We’re surrounded by preservation land full of hiking trails but still only a few minutes outside of town, where you can find a beach, a library, and a charming downtown full of cute local shops and restaurants. We’re also in a great school district. Our property gives us ample room for our critters. We have two horses (Ari and Stina), two pet pigs (Skinny and Bacon, names courtesy of Anthony), 35ish free-range chickens, and our dog/furbaby Luna. We also get plenty of wildlife that comes to visit. We love doing DIY home projects, and we’ve slowly been reclaiming the pastures, wooded trails, and landscaping. It’s our little piece of heaven!

We decided years ago that we wanted to start our own family. Unfortunately, that has been more of a challenge than we anticipated, which brought us to the discussion about adoption. Not being able to have biological children has been emotional, to say the least, but once we accepted it, we decided that it didn’t change the fact that we still want to share our love and experience with a child. Anthony’s father and aunt are both adopted and Michelle has a close family friend who is adopted, so we’ve seen how adoption can create amazing families. Being a family isn’t about blood; it’s about connection, and we want to create a connection of our own.