Our leisure time is treasured as it is family time. We are best friends and enjoy spending our time together. We are blessed to live in the house of our dreams on a mid-sized lake in the county yet still within a community. We spend a lot of our free time either boating on the lake or working and playing in our yard. At night, we enjoy bonfires, looking at the stars, or watching movies, especially Marvel movies or action movies. Walt enjoys fishing off our dock while Melissa enjoys sitting outside with him reading a book. Both of us, and our dog, enjoy swimming in the lake or taking walks around it. Playing with our dog, Indy, is also something we really enjoy. Many weekends we will travel to Melissa's parents' house to meet up with family for the weekend. Those weekends may involve playing in the yard or going to a zoo with the nephews. We enjoy attending extended family gatherings with potlucks. We are excited to include your child in our leisure time!

We have been together for over 15 years and married for 9 of those years. One of the greatest things about our relationship is that we are best friends.

Melissa loves that Walt is so kind and compassionate. He is wonderful with his nieces and nephews - they tend to flock to him at gatherings. They love to roughhouse with him. He's always the first uncle to run outside to throw the football or play dolls or cars. Additionally, Walt is incredibly patient. He is going to make a great father. She respects that he is so just and caring in his career.

Walt loves that Melissa is great with kids and loving. She is the first aunt to grab a niece or nephew to place dress up, read, or cuddle. Her nieces and nephews are always excited to come to Aunt Meme's house or when she comes to visit. Walt loves her good heart that she demonstrates daily in her love for her family and care of her patients.

Holidays are a big family tradition for us. For each holiday we decorate the house, not just Christmas and Thanksgiving, but also St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, Easter, and the Fourth of July. We also like to watch holiday movies - from It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown to the Santa Clause. We also get together with both sides of the family several times per year to see aunts, uncles, cousins, and now our cousin's children, too. These are typically potlucks with each family member contributing - we now almost have too much food at the gatherings because there are so many people bringing dishes! On one side's extended family gatherings, there are typically 40-50 people sharing Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner and the great grandkids opening presents.

Another wonderful family tradition is that the great grandkids of Melissa's grandmother get together at Melissa's parents' house yearly for a weekend sleepover in the summer. The children range in age from 2 years old to 16 years old. They go to a local water park, play at the park, and have a movie night. The great grandkids love this and look forward to Great Aunt Nettie and Great Uncle Bob's sleepover every year.

We live in a wonderful lakeside community of fewer than 1,000 people in rural western Illinois. We enjoy the small-town life and the beautiful atmosphere of the lake. We are also very lucky to live within a 20-minute drive of a metropolitan area of just under 400,000 people. This offers us the best of both worlds. We have all the amenities of the city - sports, plays, shopping, and movies, as well as the quiet of the country and ability to see the stars every night.

We live in a four-bedroom house overlooking the lake. Our favorite room would have to be one of the two family rooms. They have cozy furniture to cuddle in and we can read books by the fireplace with a beautiful view of the lake outside.

Our community offers many unique opportunities, such as boating, two beaches, a golf course, and a park that is just a short walk from our house. There are also many regularly scheduled activities for kids, such as a fishing derby, Easter egg hunt, fireworks, and Halloween bash.

The local elementary school is just down the road and there are many children that live at the lake to play with. If we don't send your child to public school, our church has a wonderful private school associated with it.

Family is an incredibly important part of our lives and we are excited to share our families with a child.

We typically see our extended families a few times per month. We live within 2-5 hours of both our extended families. We enjoy getting together and having potlucks with both sides. Your child would have plenty of cousins to play with and would see them often. Some weekends we go boating at our house and other weekends we go to the zoo or football games.

Your child would have an abundance of love from both sides of the family. Our families are very supportive of our adoption plan and are incredibly excited to meet this child. We look forward to sharing these experiences with your child and welcoming them into our family.

We are so grateful that you have taken time to consider us as a family for your child and allow us to share a little about ourselves. This journey is long and unique to each of us, but please know that you and your child are in our prayers. We admire your selflessness and humility.

We met on our first day of college and quickly became friends due to our mutual involvement on the track team and in honors classes. We started dating at the end of the first semester and dated throughout college. After we graduated, Walt started his career while Melissa attended medical school. We maintained a successful semi-long distance relationship for three years and married during Melissa's final year of medical school. We then navigated the complexities of medical residency and a blooming career in investigations in two separate cities an hour apart. Once we were settled in the same town, we started to establish our family. Unfortunately, Melissa was then diagnosed with a medical condition that would make it inadvisable for Melissa to carry a pregnancy to term. After many discussions, we feel that adoption is the method of completing our family that best fits with our values.

We have always wanted to be parents. We have dreams of having a family that is as loving as those which we both grew up with. We both came from stable, extended, loving families who remain close. We will open our arms and hearts to your child. We plan to provide a childhood full of family, friends, sunny days on the lake, and wonderful memories. Our dreams are that he or she has every opportunity to develop into the man or woman they are meant to be. They will have abundant amounts of love, play, family, education, and travel. We hope they have a childhood they treasure, like we both did. We hope they develop into a strong man or women who is able to pursue their own dreams, whatever those may be. We hope that they get to know you and know they are loved by many people. We hope they know they can always come home and we will be there to welcome them with open arms.

Know that your child will be loved so incredibly much and we will protect him or her. We will raise him or her to the best of our ability and provide them will all the opportunities we can. Faith, family, love, and education are our priorities in life and we hope to share our morals and values with your child. Your child will have the greatest support system.

We look forward to having a relationship with you, whatever you choose for that to be. You will always play a significant role to us and this child. We are excited to share photos and stories of your child's life. We enjoy traveling and are open to visits when the time is right. We are delighted to be on this journey with you, though our paths are not exactly the same, we can work together to maintain a healthy relationship. We promise that we will always speak highly of you and that your child will know your love. You have made an incredibly brave decision and we will forever be grateful for your selflessness.

Sincerely,

Walt & Melissa