Three Years Later

Three years passed during I went through that terribly trying time called middle school. Yet it wasn't all bad. I finished eighth grade with straight As and a steady spot as one of the premier runners on our eighth-grade boys cross country team. I was finally starting to break out of my shy shell, if only bit by bit. That summer I was in my first show and discovered that I like acting a lot! I was excited, albeit slightly nervous, to be entering Carson High School and all the new opportunities and challenges that would accompany it. Yet, there was one thing I didn't expect.

After having adopted J three years earlier, my parents were now sure that they were done. Five kids was plenty, yet, because the experience had been good and we were decently well off, my family decided to try foster care instead, with the stipulation that the foster children be aged three or younger. Based on the experience with J, we knew now that we had something to give to children, a way to help. For years though this had proven fruitless and no children had come into our home for more than an afternoon. Yet, kind of like with Jeremiah, one day my parents got a call and, the day after they had gotten back from a vacation/work conference in Florida, two redheaded little children, named Colin and Keira Askins (they were a brother and sister, aged 2 and 1) came to our house on my dads 39th birthday. They were born of a teenage mom in Carson City who had no desire to take care of them. In fact, the first day I met Colin, he had on a leather Harley jacket, a shirt that said "Well it seemed like a good idea at the time," and a mohawk. Yes, a two year old redhead with a mohawk. The NDHHS (Nevada Department of Health and Human Services) people said that they would only be at our house for a few months.

Colin was (and is) very interesting. He has FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) and was fed soda instead of milk. When we first got him, he had to have his front three teeth removed because they had rotted away. He still has some developmental issues and has been going to therapy the whole time we've had him. Lately, my parents have tried equine therapy, which I've heard is working. He is incredibly hyperactive unless given his medication and sometimes it is hard to understand him. He doesn't think things out much and, at age five, will still dart into the path of a moving car unless carefully watched. Keira on the other hand can talk rather well and is, for the most part, well behaved (outside usual child misbehavior).

Anyways, after three years of this experience that we were told would last for months, in 2011 we all decided that Colin and Keira were sufficiently part of our family and that it would possibly delay Colin even further if he had to go somewhere else after three years here. I mean, heck, they're my siblings and I love them, simple as that. It is just...something that you get used to. Sometimes I even forget that J was adopted in the first place. Last March, we went to the court in Carson City (the judge was actually a former member of our stake presidency whom we know rather well) and, just like Jeremiah, Colin and Keira became my siblings; after finishing summer term here at BYU, we were sealed to them in the Manti Utah temple in August. Keira is adorable and Colin...is fantastic and getting better. Jeremiah and Colin (only two years apart) fight sometimes but a few months ago Jeremiah, a happy, docile child, laughingly told me that Colin and him were simultaneously making each other more and more crazy, in a good, brotherly way.

(laugh) Not every child we have since fostered have become siblings however, though all are, in some way, a part of the family.