Three Kids in Three Hours’ Notice. Here’s What Happened.

Three Hours

It’s May 5th (insert Mexican grito). I’ve been invited to speak at the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption retreat on our story — a few days where passionate employees and adoption recruiters come together around one shared mission: getting kids who need homes into homes.

With that on my mind, I’ve been flooded with flashbacks to the beautiful chaos of how our journey began. We’re five years in now — talking college with Isaiah, building recruiting profiles, and having the same GPA conversation on repeat (bruh). But going back to the beginning? It’s a rush of joy, anxiety, and everything in between.

November 13, 2020.

Most people were still masked up — COVID was real — unless you were in Texas. I was a teacher at the time, working toward my administrator certification, and juggling more than I probably should have been.

Shane called me around 1 PM. He never called during school hours. He knew my “teacher tone” wasn’t exactly warm. So when he did, I knew it mattered.

“I sent you an email. You need to check it out. It’s a group of kids.”

My response: “Okay, sounds good.”

I pulled up my email, skimmed it, and texted back two words: “Go for it.”

By that point, we’d been foster parents since June 2020 — wild times doesn’t even cover it. COVID. Trauma. Emergency placements. Teaching. All at once. But we entered foster care with a clear intention: to eventually build a forever family. We didn’t rush it. We learned at our own pace.

---

These pictures were the two pictures sent to prospective families.

Here’s how it works: your foster agency sends profiles of children who need placement, partnering with caseworkers from the Department of Family Protective Services across the state. When you’re interested in a child or sibling group, you submit your home study for consideration.

We learned quickly — you cannot hesitate. Decisions happened almost instantly, and if you weren’t selected, you simply never heard back. By this point, we had submitted over 20 home studies with zero follow-up.

For the record, I thought our home study was excellent.

One dad: an engineer, Texas A&M grad, strong income, clean background, great credit, and a spacious four-bedroom home with an extra office — in a “white picket fence” kind of neighborhood.

The other dad (me): an educator, UT Austin grad, teacher’s salary — though I’d just earned my master’s degree and was about to move into administration (which I did, promoted in August 2020). I had a couple of driving-related marks on my background check, but that’s a story for another post. Around kids? Amazing. 😄 I also happened to share that home with Shane — married three years, together for seven.

Point being: we had a solid home study.

---

When the email arrived about Isaiah, Jordan, and Sophia — we moved without reading every word. Just a quick skim: a photo of the three of them together, short bios, and some health, academic, and social details. Shane told our agency to submit our home study immediately.

Within the hour, my phone rang.

“OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG — they’ll be here after school.”

The school where I worked let out in about two hours.

My brain went blank.

Where will they sleep? Who gets which room? Do they have clothes? Toiletries? School supplies? Do we have anything they need?

We’d fostered a newborn, an 18-month-old, and a 3-year-old before — but now we had a 3-year-old, a 9-year-old, and an 11-year-old arriving the same afternoon. We were clueless.

My coworkers heard what was happening and told me: “Go home. Figure it out. Let us know how it goes — and congratulations.”

We were not ready. Not physically.

But emotionally? We were.

In those three hours, we discovered something about ourselves — that together, we could handle whatever came our way. In three hours, we got a house ready for three kids who would call it home for the next two years. In three hours, we laid the groundwork for what would become our forever family.

Photo Taken December 31, 2025 – New Years Eve in Victoria, TX