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East Vancouver couple fulfills ‘spiritual calling’ adopting four

By Scott Hewitt, Columbian staff writer
Published: November 15, 2010, 12:00am
2 Photos
The Keplar family's best attempt at a dignified portrait.
The Keplar family's best attempt at a dignified portrait. From left: Taliyah, 6, mom Jeanette, 33, David, 8, Kayla, 10, Ryder (tucked under dad's arm), 3, Ali, 5, and dad Chuck, 33. Photo Gallery

o What: National Adoption Day Celebration. Celebration for families who have adopted foster children this year includes dinner, entertainment, prizes and professional portrait photos for families

o When: 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18

o Where: Vancouver First United Methodist Church, 401 E. 33rd St.

o Information: Stephanie Hughes, 360-993-7898 or bese300@dshs.wa.gov; http://www.nationaladoptionday.org.

Stepping inside the Keplar home is a little like diving into a friendly rugby scrimmage. There’s a ton of love on display — and plenty of tackles and takedowns and shouts of joy. There are occasional warnings about kids getting too rowdy and winding up hurt. Only rarely are there big bumps and real tears. Those are quickly kissed away by parents Chuck and Jeanette, who invited this maelstrom upon themselves.

Here’s the maelstrom by name. Kayla, 10, and David, 8, are the couple’s biological children. Last year they adopted brother and sister Taliyah, 6, and Ali, 5, and their half-brother Ryder, 3. That makes a household of seven. The Keplars are adopting another child — a 14-year-old named Savanna, who has not yet joined the fray. That’s eight. The dog makes nine.

o What: National Adoption Day Celebration. Celebration for families who have adopted foster children this year includes dinner, entertainment, prizes and professional portrait photos for families

o When: 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18

o Where: Vancouver First United Methodist Church, 401 E. 33rd St.

o Information: Stephanie Hughes, 360-993-7898 or bese300@dshs.wa.gov; http://www.nationaladoptionday.org.

“We always wanted a big family,” Chuck said. “It is a spiritual thing for us. We knew after Kayla and David were born that we wanted to wait a while and then we would adopt. It was a calling God put in our hearts.”

It’s a calling the state of Washington is most grateful for. State courts, the Department of Social and Health Services and other child welfare agencies are intensifying their efforts to move children and groups of siblings through foster care and into permanent situations, either through family reunification or legal adoptions into new families.

The effort is paying off. According to a joint statement from the courts and the state DSHS, nearly 30,000 foster children nationwide have found new families since the first National Adoption Day in 2000. In fiscal year 2010 (ending June 30), 1,533 children were adopted from foster care through DSHS. The median stay in foster care in Washington State has declined to less than two years.

But challenges remain, and the overall problem of children growing up in foster care — without adoptions — continues to grow. There are nearly half a million foster children in the United States right now. That number has approximately doubled since 1987, and the median length of time they spend in foster care has lengthened to more than three years.

Perhaps most alarmingly, approximately 29,000 foster children “age out” of the system — that is, reach legal adulthood and are on their own — each year without ever having found a permanent family. That number is on the rise. Toughest to place are children who are considered to have special needs — which can mean anything from health problems and disabilities to minority status, “advanced age” (teenagers, for example), or even simply being in a sibling group that ought to stay together.

‘All my kids’

A family like the Keplars, who wanted to adopt a sibling group, are a precious find for the state — not to mention the kids rolling around on their floor.

The Keplars came to Vancouver from Oregon City, Ore., because they liked the schools here and also knew they could get more house for their money. Jeanette, 33, works in sales and marketing; Chuck, also 33, is a stay-at-home dad with plans to return to work once the littlest of his kids have grown a bit older.

For now, Chuck seems overjoyed with his lot — full of tickles and jokes as well as some firm boundaries. “No wrestling,” he kept telling his residential rugby team, while he and a reporter tried to converse. “Somebody’s going to get hurt!”

Of course, these kids have already been hurt to a certain extent — having been separated from a birth family that had its problems with addiction and neglect. They were in a long-term foster care situation that was supposed to head for adoption — but problems cropped up there, too. So these are kids who’ve experienced some trauma, some abandonment, some mistrust of well-meaning adults who failed them in the end.

“You go into it thinking, this is going to be a great thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s always great,” Chuck said. “They are not perfect little babies. They were a little bit older and they had their issues.”

That’s especially true, he added, when it comes to adopting a teenager — a fully formed personality with a degree of hard-won independence. Unlike adopting little children, he said, there’s a bit more personality matching involved. He said he knew Savannah was going to fit in just fine when he saw her bonding with the girls.

That group is interestingly multi-hued — some darker brown, some a little lighter, some just as obviously white as their parents. Incoming Savannah is Hispanic. It makes for some interesting double-takes and awkward questions from others, Jeanette said. “No, they’re all my kids,” is her answer.

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A little, a lot

Chuck said the children do have some contact with their birth parents — and that they know it’s OK to love them and miss them. But both parents beamed when six-year-old Taliyah, sprawled across Jeanette’s lap, burst into a spontaneous song that went: “You’re the best Mommy I ever had!”

“She likes to talk a little,” said Jeanette.

“I like to talk a lot!” Taliyah declared. After that, little Ryder joined in with a complementary chorus in honor of Dad.

“It’s definitely a roller coaster,” Chuck said of piecing together a new family and watching everyone get comfortable. There’s a honeymoon phase at first, he said, but there are also spikes in difficult behaviors and some testing of limits. “It’s like, how far do I have to push before I’ve crossed the line and I’m onto the next family?” To ease that transition, he added, there’s plenty of ongoing support from counselors and social workers.

“Hey, with six kids, they’re never always going to get along,” he said. Still, he was overjoyed to realize one day that it had been two whole weeks since anyone was in major trouble.

“We’ve been told we’re patient,” he joked.

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