Last year was a major one for Courtney and Drew McLean — one in which their family doubled in size!
After both giving birth and adopting within the span of a few months, and now raising their daughters Maddie and Abbie, the Oshkosh couple has prioritized time together in addition to creating a strong foundation as a family.
Courtney explains more.
How did you and Drew meet? How long have you been together?
Drew and I met the very first day of college in Spanish class at UW-Madison! But we didn’t get to truly know one another until that following semester through Cru, a Christian campus ministry that God used to change the trajectory of our lives. We’ve been together almost seven years now, and married for four of those!
What was your path to parenthood?
Parenthood began for us in the most surprising of ways. We became sudden foster parents to a toddler in 2017, beginning our burden for foster care and adoption despite our original plan to wait to grow our family. We had our daughter Maddie in February of 2019, and adopted our daughter Abbie in December of 2019. Our vision for our family is to have a big one, with kiddos close together in age! We’ll see what actually happens, of course, but we treasure the undeserved gift of raising kids so very much, and delight in how much fullness they add to our life.
You’re both and adoptee and adoptive mama. Can you please tell us more about that?
My biological mom selflessly decided to place me with an incredible adoptive family during her pregnancy, and against all legal advice in 1993, refused to make it official without meeting my adoptive parents first. Two days after I was born, my families met and my adoption story began! I reunited with my birth mom in 2012 and wish I could’ve had a relationship with her throughout my life. My story of loss and gain added to our longing to pursue an open adoption ourselves. We eagerly await the memories we hope Abbie will get to make with her birth mom! I write and speak on the topic of adoption as much as I’m able, advocating for the adoptee voice and creating space for every member of the triad to connect and learn from one another.
What brought you to Oshkosh?
We’ve lived in Oshkosh for the past four years now and absolutely love it. Drew grew up in Slinger, and I grew up in Jefferson, so we’re thankful to be not too far from family. Drew works in finance at Kimberly-Clark and I’m a stay-at-home mom and freelance book launch team manager.
Drew and I both started our first roles out of college in the Fox Valley, and we’re so thankful for our time in this area. We love that it’s a bigger city than where we’re both from, but that it still feels “small” enough to recognize people when we’re out and about.
What are your favorite things to do together as a family?
The girls and I spend our weekdays during winter at the local library or YMCA, and as the weather warms our whole family loves to park-hop as we soak up every ounce of sunshine we can!
We love swimming, spontaneous getaways, slow Saturdays reading and playing at home, cooking and going to Culvers, of course!
We love that you have an Instagram account for your marriage! Can you please tell us why you created it?
What I see in our culture surrounding the topic of marriage today leaves me discouraged. The narrative seems to be around settling for an unhealthy, consistently conflicting relationship, where sex ends when kids begin, and the way people talk about their spouse is usually negative. The average couple chooses to stay stuck and seems to let romance fade.
But Drew and I are SO passionate about being a light in the midst of all that to advocate fighting for a thriving marriage, because we can! Staying stuck is a choice and we refuse to make it. We are committed to dating for life, putting each other before ourselves, and forgiving one another for all the times we let our selfishness get in the way.
To keep our marriage strong we pray together, go out on date nights (shout out to our amazing babysitters!), minimize TV watching, utilize a marriage journal and ask older couples for advice all the time. Personally, we’ve seen how the strongest marriages have God at the center, so prioritizing our faith is so important to us.
Do you have advice for other parents wanting to stay connected as a couple while raising kids?
We are in the thick of learning all about this right now. It has truly been so hard to remain connected with two kids under one demanding so much of us.
What we’re learning is that we can already model for them that our marriage comes before our parenting by enabling times of independent play so we can have conversation, and leaving them with a sitter or family so we can prioritize getting out alone together.
We’re also learning that counting the cost of sleep enables us to carve out sweet time together in the evenings and in the early mornings before our kids are awake! These spaces enable connection that we’ve at times let the felt need for an extra hour or two of sleep get in the way of. But we’ve never regretted getting five hours instead of seven, when it means we’ve had the opportunity to pursue one another.
There’s never enough time to do everything, so what do you prioritize as a family? What do you always make time for?
We seek to always make time for God. Drew and I read our bibles and pray in the mornings, and I read and pray with the girls in a very casual but intentional ways throughout the day. They particularly enjoy our spontaneous dance parties to Christian music in the living room. It’s so important for us to make time to pause in thankfulness and to recognize our finiteness before a God who can do anything.
Why do you choose to live and raise kids in Wisconsin? What do you hope the experience means for your kids?
Our families live here, so we are honestly hoping to never leave! We want our kids to grow up knowing and seeing their grandparents often, and being able to learn from them in special ways specific to their gifts and personalities. It’s our hope that this adds to their strong foundation in life, and gives them a heart for family connectedness too.
What are the most important things to teach your kids?
We want our kids to learn about God’s love for them, and in turn the surest way to love other people well. We also want to instill values of humility and graciousness in our girls, enabling them to treat others (and themselves!) with gentleness and a heart that seeks to understand. Parenting for us means giving our kids vision for life that doesn’t put them at the center. We hope they’ll choose to let God be their guide in all things, causing them to live with a selflessness and gratitude that can change the world around them.
Katie Vaughn is the editor and co-founder of Northerly. She is a University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University-trained journalist with experience as a writer, reporter, editor, blogger and author. She lives in Madison with her husband, daughter and son, and her family is always up for an adventure.