Learn more about us by watching our video below!
Our Love Story
We’ve gone to school together since 6th grade but don’t really remember becoming friends until later in high school. We both played in city soccer leagues and our junior year in high school our teams joined together to become a co-ed team. That caused our friend groups to also start hanging out together and before we knew it we were seeing a lot of each other. We played soccer together, worked in an after-school program together, and had started having classes together. Our friendship slowly developed into something more and we started dating just after graduation before we headed off to college together. We dated for two years then broke up for a year before being drawn back together before our senior year. We dated for 6 more months before we got engaged. This past year we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary!
Who Laura is from Brad:
I was pretty close friends with Laura before we started dating and was always attracted to how fun she is and love how easy it is for me to enjoy myself when I’m with her. I love how she loves our family, how she challenges me, makes me laugh, how much she loves to serve others, doesn’t let me take myself too seriously, and how I can always count on her for anything.
She is intensely and fiercely loyal to her people. She is always thinking about others and making sure they’re happy and their needs are being met. She is a great cook. She has really good judgment, and I trust her decisions completely. She holds an impossible amount of information about our family in our head. I can walk into a room and forget why I walked in, and she’ll say “Your keys are on the kitchen counter” without me even saying anything.
Laura is incredibly loving with the kids and she’s the one they go to if they’re hurt or upset. She can be silly or authoritative with them and shows amazing patience. When possible she’s always up at their school helping in their classrooms and has the reputation of being a parent that the administrators and teachers can count on. She keeps track of which foods each of them like at that moment in time (this is a legit superpower). Kids have always been drawn to her and we used to call her the baby whisperer at her ability to put babies to sleep.
Who Brad is from Laura:
I fell in love with Brad when we were friends in high school. He was the friend that you could always count on. He never caused any drama and just wanted to be with his friends and have fun. He was easy to talk to and you could tell he genuinely cared for you.
Brad loves his friends and family and desires to be around them as much as possible. He sees the best in people and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. He’s incredibly smart and hard working but also humble. He wants to have fun when he’s not working and makes sure others are having fun when they’re around him. He pushes the people around him to do their best by pointing out the great things he sees in them. He is fairly laid back and easy going but also isn’t afraid to stand up for himself or our family if he needs to. He’s become quite the chef these past few years and takes on a lot of the cooking duties for our family even after a long day of work.
The kids look at Brad as the fun parent. He’s the one who plays tag and jumps on the trampoline with them. He also loves to teach them new things. He built a computer with Emmalyn and Caleb this past summer and is helping all the kids get into coding and computers because he knows it’s a good skill to have. He loves to walk the kids through how things work. He can be incredibly tender and patient with the kids. He’s good at listening to them when they have a problem. He works hard to have a relationship with each kid and engage with them in the things they love. I feel so grateful that our kids have Brad for a dad.
Our family does not just consist of the 6 of us and our two dogs. We could not do any of the things we do without the wonderful people that surround us.
Brad is one of two boys. His parents and his brother’s family live just over an hour from us. We try to see them at least once a month and take a trip with them every year. Their two kids are the same ages as our boys so it’s fun to watch the close group of them all play when we’re together.
Laura is one of four siblings. Her parents moved to our area a few years ago and were so thankful to have grandparents in town that can easily go to school activities, sporting events and that love to babysit. Laura’s siblings are spread out all over the country but are still very close. Her older sister lives in Ohio with her husband and 4 kids. The oldest attends school at Texas A&M and we love having her in town too! Laura’s older brother lives in Colorado with his wife and 4 kids and her younger brother lives in California with his wife. We try to get together with all 22 of us at least once a year. While our kids don’t get to see these cousins as often as we’d like they are still close friends and we cherish that.
We consider Luke’s and Mirabella’s families our extended family as well! We see them periodically throughout the year and stay in touch with them through emails, texts, and video chats in between visits.
We also have an amazing community of friends around us. Some we have known for 20 plus years and some friendships are newer but seem like we’ve known them forever. They’re friends we know we can call in the middle of the night if we need to and friends we know will always be there for us. Most of them have at least 3 kids in their families so our get togethers are large and full of kids running around. Some of their kids are our kids best friends!