Meet the Families

About Us:

We met over 10 years ago and became good friends after realizing how much fun we have together and how much we have in common. We first bonded going to hockey games together! We started dating in 2017, got engaged in Thailand in February 2020, and were married in Stephanie’s grandparents’ backyard in 2021. During this time we renovated our house, added two sweet kitties, traveled far and wide, started running again, and just had the best time together.

We’re a very active family and we love to be outside. We love hiking, camping, biking, and running together. One of our favorite memories is running a marathon together in 2022! We love to take long neighborhood walks and try all the restaurants, bakeries, and tea shops we can find. At home, we’re typically cooking meals together, watching movies, or playing card games like gin rummy. Our two kitties are the sweetest! Tessa loves to snuggle and Jo loves walking around the block on her leash with Isaac!

About Stephanie

I was born in East Tennessee and also spent a few years in Florida during elementary school. As a child I loved playing with my siblings, reading, and playing soccer – I was even the captain of our high school soccer team! I was an English major in college and now work in and study public health research, a job I absolutely love.

Besides reading, I love being outside with friends and family – one of my favorite things to do is go on long walks with my mom when we’re visiting each other. I love being around kids and started babysitting and working in childcare at churches all through middle school, high school, college, and early adulthood. I am so excited to welcome a child into our fun, love-filled life! What I care about most is making sure we are creating a home and family where any child we raise feels safe and unconditionally loved no matter what.

About Isaac

I was born and raised just 30 minutes away and grew up in the house where my parents still live. I had a lot of interests as a child from drawing and basketball to video games and hiking in the woods with my dad. I studied environmental sustainability in college and now work as a sustainability consultant at an engineering firm.

These days, I love to be outside, play sports, garden, experiment with new recipes in the kitchen, and spend time with friends and family. I love my life with Stephanie and can’t wait to add to our family and raise a child in a home filled with joy, love, and nature.

We both LOVE our community and are very dedicated to it — our neighborhood, church, and city. Our neighborhood offers amazing access to large city parks with lots of trails (we can walk to both of them from our house!), summer camps for kids, updated playgrounds, and a new children’s bookstore! Isaac is on our neighborhood board and works to improve transportation safety and access for the neighborhood.

We love traditions, including making new ones! Every year we go to a Christmas tree farm and cut down a Christmas tree together (well, Isaac does the heavy lifting!) the day after Thanksgiving, something Isaac loved doing with his family when he was growing up. We also love our Christmas Eve parties inherited from Stephanie’s family where we all get together and make food, watch Christmas movies, and play games. We also love handing out candy to trick or treaters and hosting a spooky movie night every Halloween. We can’t wait to introduce our traditions to you and your child and make new ones together!

Our Family and Friends

Stephanie’s family mostly lives in or near East Tennessee, where she grew up. Stephanie’s mom, Becky, is a middle school teacher and is so excited to meet her first grandchild! Her grandparents, two of our favorite people in the world, live near Stephanie’s mom, and we love getting together at their house for summer bbqs, pancake brunches, and hanging out on the deck. Stephanie has two sisters, Sarah and Jennifer, and a brother, Jarrod, and we adore all of them. Although none of them live close by, we often visit back and forth and love to spend time together at holidays and summer beach vacations.

Isaac family all live within 30 minutes of us, and we love having family so close! His parents, Joel and Jackie, have been together over 35 years and spend their time gardening, kayaking, and visiting family. My dad passed his construction knowledge down to me and we love to work on house projects together. I have one younger sister, Jordyn, who recently had their first baby (Avery) with her husband Travis! Stephanie and I love to spend time with the three of them in their beautiful backyard, and we love that our child will have a cousin close in age!

We are so lucky to have an extensive group of friends who live all across the country! We love to hang out with our friends in the backyard, around the table for a game night, or outside while running or eating good food together!

Stephanie is still very close with a few friends from college, and we get together for a book club every other week on Zoom.

Isaac has lots of friends from his ultimate frisbee community. He met one of his closest friends, Alex, playing on a team together. The three of us love running and going out for sushi! We also love to visit friends and enjoy when they come to visit. Many of our friends have children, so our child will be immediately surrounded by friends who love them and want to be part of their life.