Meet the Hulett Family!
Pat and I (Wendi) have 15 children—five by birth and 10 by adoption, ages ranging from two to 27. Our whole family loves the outdoors—they love to shoot guns, ride dirt bikes, play basketball, hunt and camp, and cut wood. Our birth children have been extremely supportive of our foster/adoptive journey, including our 21-year-old daughter Hailli, who is our nanny and tutors the kids.
We began fostering 11 years ago, and two years into our fostering journey, we received a call about an eight-week-old baby that we would need to pick up from the hospital’s NICU. Our family accepted the placement without hesitation. For 13 months, we thought Onyx would return home, but instead when he was 15 months old, we were chosen as his adoptive family. Two weeks before Onyx’s adoption was final, we received a call about a sibling group of two—a five-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy. We again accepted without hesitation. Two years after being placed in our home, we adopted Pipyr and Rokko.
Over the next four years we had many placements, including an adorable two-year-old girl who was with us for just a few days. She was part of a sibling group of six from another county. The department couldn’t find placement for all six together, so they placed her with us until they found a family in their county that would take her and her three-year-old brother.
In the meantime, we kept fostering and decided in 2019 that we wanted to adopt a girl. We inquired about many children but nothing happened for a while. Last October we sat on our couch with our placement worker and expressed our strong desire to adopt again. The worker thought for a moment and then said, “I have a sibling group of seven whose adoption just failed. We need to find immediate placement for all seven, and they are ages one to nine.” We answered immediately: “They need a home, we will take them.” Our worker was flabbergasted that we agreed so quickly and asked if we were up for having 10 children in our home. We assured her that we had had up to nine children in our home at one time over the last few years; we were experienced parents and could handle this.
Then a week before Thanksgiving, we drove to pick up all the children. During our drive, I started thinking about the two-year-old girl we had for just a few days two years ago. We thought the name of the four-year-old girl in this sibling group might be the same, and the age was right. Lo and behold, when we arrived, we saw the face of our sweet Aklee!
On October 6, 2020, after six of the children spent 1,104 days in foster care, we made our amazing sibling group of seven (Hunter, Errow, Drue, Aklee, Kanyan, Trekk, and Oakkley) part of our forever family. Little Aklee will never have to leave us again. Immediately after the adoption, standing in a courtroom of masked and social distanced family, seven-year-old Drue stated, “Now we’re not orphans anymore,” and eight-year-old Errow replied, “And we never have to move again!” Such simple desires from these kids—to be loved, have parents, and to have a home that is permanent. How lucky we are to be touched by their lives and to be their family.
We wish that policymakers would ensure that all children who are waiting have this same opportunity, including by ensuring that children do not spend longer than they should in foster care and by that decisions about family size are made based on children’s best interests and the family’s ability to meet children’s needs.
