How a Pandemic, a Pause, and a Phone Call Led Us to Our Forever Family
Summer 2020: The Year the World Stopped — And We Started
Our adoption story didn’t begin with a dramatic moment. It began with a pandemic, a cancelled trip to Morocco, and a phone call we almost missed.
Shane and I got married in January 2017, but we’d been building toward a family since 2013. We’re the kind of people who don’t rush into big decisions — we map them out, talk them through, and move when we’re ready. So when we began the foster application process in September 2019, we planned to take a full year to complete everything.
We finished in three months.
(We tend to overachieve. I do not recommend that pace for anyone — but here we are.)
The Trip We Didn’t Take — And the Call We’re Glad We Got
As 2020 opened, we had one last adventure on the books: Morocco and Australia. We’d planned it as our final year of serious travel before life changed for good.
Then COVID closed the borders, cancelled our flights, and turned our days into remote teaching and long daily walks.
That’s when our foster agency, Depelchin Children’s Center in Austin, called. They were seeing a sharp rise in children needing emergency placements — family violence was spiking during lockdown, and kids were paying the price.
We said yes.
Our First Placement: The Hardest Goodbye
A few weeks later, we welcomed our first foster children: a 3-year-old girl and an 18-month-old boy. They were in our home for two months before moving on to family.
That transition nearly broke us. (A full post on that experience is coming — it deserves its own space.)
We took a break. We hiked Rocky Mountain National Park. We gave ourselves two or three months to heal before we opened our home again.
“Infant” — and the Three Who Changed Everything
When we were ready, we got another call: a newborn in the NICU being treated for drug dependency. His biological mother had not given him a name. His chart simply read “Infant.”
We brought him home.
For five months, Infant was part of our family. Then it was discovered he had a brother living with an adoptive mother elsewhere in Texas — and he went to join them in his forever home. We were heartbroken and grateful at the same time. That’s the emotional math of foster care.
But in the middle of that season, three more children came through our door.
Isaiah. Jordan. Sophia.
November 2020: A Full House and a Decision That Couldn’t Wait
By November 2020, we had four children under our roof: an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 2-month-old newborn.
Isaiah, Jordan, and Sophia — “the three,” as we’d come to call them — had already been in the foster system for three years. Three years of moving from home to home, never quite landing somewhere safe and permanent. They had finally reached a family that could have been their forever home.
That family chose to adopt only Sophia and found ways to remove the boys.
Their caseworker’s goal was to keep the siblings together. So they came to us — with the hope that we would be the home that finally kept them whole.
We knew almost immediately that we were.
The Six Months That Made It Official
In Texas, you must foster a child for six months before you can adopt. For us, the decision came long before the paperwork did.
We weren’t going to let them move again. We weren’t going to be another chapter in a story of upheaval. We moved to begin the adoption process in April — and because of their ages, the caseworker sat down with Isaiah, Jordan, and Sophia individually to make sure they wanted this too. That this was a mutual decision.
It was.
On May 20, 2021, we legally became a forever family.
And everything — everything — changed for the better.
What We Learned (And What We’re Still Learning)
Fostering and adoption are emotionally exhausting, deeply rewarding, and every complicated feeling in between. But here’s the thing we had to accept early: the process is always hardest on the kids.
We came in thinking we had some control over the outcomes. We didn’t. The control lived in judges, caseworkers, biological families — healthy or not — and systems that move slowly and imperfectly. Learning to show up fully while releasing the illusion of control was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever done.
It was also one of the most important.
We’ll be using this blog to walk through our experience honestly — the hard moments, the breakthroughs, the paperwork, and the grace. In the meantime, we’re proud to share the video below from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which documented our journey. One of the kids’ extraordinary caseworkers came through Wendy’s Wonderful Kids — and we are forever grateful.
If this story resonates with you, share it. There are sibling groups right now — like Isaiah, Jordan, and Sophia — waiting for a family willing to keep them together.
Read More from this Article by The Dave Thomas Foundation
Read More about the Foster Situation in Texas