Why We Chose Three Strangers Over the ‘Perfect’ Family Plan
Between 65 and 80 percent of siblings in foster care are separated from each other.
Source: Child Welfare Information Gateway
Let that sink in for a moment before I tell you our story.
The First Date That Changed Everything
Shane and I skipped small talk on our very first date. We went straight to the real stuff — kids, futures, intentions. We’d both been on plenty of dates before and had developed pretty sharp filters for cutting through the noise. So without a lot of preamble, we established the important things:
We both wanted to become parents. After debts were paid off (yes, including the student loans), we wanted two children. Adoption was the most likely path, though surrogacy was on the table too.
We had a plan. A neat, tidy, two-kid plan.
The Student Who Rewrote My Heart
In 2014, I made a career switch — from working as a programmer at a nonprofit to becoming a first-grade teacher in rural Jarrell, Texas. I’d always resisted teaching, but my heart kept pulling me toward kids. So I finally listened.
I fell in love with first grade immediately. The innocence. The enthusiasm. The way a six-year-old will learn to read and look at you like you just handed them the universe.
Then I met Peter. (Not his real name.)
Peter had a younger brother in kindergarten, and he spent most of his school day checking on him — making sure his little brother was safe. Peter was academically behind, but unmistakably bright. Aware. Watchful. Then I learned why: he was a foster child who had been recently removed from a home where he’d been living in a car surrounded by drugs for as long as he could remember.
My heart stopped and grew at the same time.
I poured everything into Peter — catching him up, making sure he felt smart, safe, and loved. And things were going really well.
The Email That Broke Me Open
One evening, Shane and I were having dinner at Wings n More in Pflugerville when my phone lit up with an email from Peter’s foster mom. Peter was leaving our classroom. He was being sent to live with family in South Texas — people he had never met — in circumstances that sounded worse than what he’d just escaped.
I sobbed. The kind of sobbing where you can’t catch your breath.
Shane, being the partner he has always been, did what he could to help. And somewhere in the middle of consoling me, he quietly said, “Maybe we can adopt him.”
It wasn’t possible at that moment. But he wasn’t wrong.
I knew Peter’s story wasn’t unique. I knew there were thousands of kids moving through a system that too often shuffled them from uncertainty to more uncertainty. So in 2016, I started researching adoption agencies. I started paying attention. I started getting ready.
The Application, The Search, and the Pattern We Couldn’t Ignore
On September 1, 2019, Shane and I began our application to become foster parents. By October 1st, it was submitted. We were moving forward — officially — with our plan to foster and ultimately adopt two siblings through the state of Texas.
But as we began looking at children who needed homes, something kept stopping us.
Sibling groups of three or more had been in the system far longer than others. Again and again, we read stories of larger sibling groups being split up — foster families taking in two and leaving the rest to navigate the system alone.
This is not a guilt trip. People can only do what they can do, and that is genuinely okay.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about what that experience must feel like. First, you lose your biological parents. Then, one by one, you lose your siblings. Then you’re placed with strangers and told this is your new life — with most of your world already gone.
Shane and I had only put our names in for one child or a sibling pair of two.
Until these three showed up in our inbox.
The Family We Never Planned For
After more than 25 failed attempts to foster, we decided to try for a sibling set of three.
And today, in 2026, we are exactly where we’re supposed to be.
We are a male-dominated household with one singular QUEEN — a girl who could never, not for one second, share a spotlight, and who is completely unafraid to stand up for what is right. And two boys who have seen the cruelties of the world and are learning, day by day, how to trust, how to love, and — maybe the most profound thing — how to be loved.
On Perfection
Here’s the thing about perfect: we spend so much time letting other people define it for us.
We planned for two. The plan was tidy and reasonable and made complete sense on paper. But when we stopped letting someone else’s definition of “the right family” guide us, we found something better than the plan.
We found perfection. In the most unexpected, unplanned, beautifully chaotic form it could have taken.
It turns out, perfection shows up in a lot of places — if you’re willing to look.
If this story moved you, share it. There are sibling groups right now waiting for families willing to keep them together. You don’t have to do everything — but you might be surprised what you’re capable of.