I’m Ryan Nachtigal and my wife Jen and I live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We both love children. Within the first 7 years of our marriage we had four biological children.  We felt like we could give more children a home so we considered adopting.

We had our first placement in 2007 on Christmas Eve. Even though he only stayed with us for 24 hours, Angel was amazing and we realized you have to start somewhere.  Many foster placements have come and gone through our home. In all we have had 56 foster placements, mostly younger infants but also a couple elementary aged children as well. Currently, we have four biological children (2 boys and 2 girls), four adopted children (2 boys and 2 girls) and two foster children (both girls).

Our story has lots of ups and downs and many people in it. My encouragement to foster parents is to stay strong and stick with it. Foster care and adoption is not always pretty, but we all do it for the children.