Leelanau County residents Colleen and Lucas MacDonald didn’t think they would have the opportunity to have children until they adopted five kids of their own from foster care nearly 15 years ago — two sibling groups, all five years-old and under at the time.
Fostering and then adopting their children was one of the couple’s biggest blessings that became reality. Colleen said they were fortunate that both sibling groups were relatively close in age and grew up together just like they were their own natural born children. More than a decade later, the couple is now caring for their adopted kids’ younger siblings.
“We were unable to have a baby and so we decided that we would try foster care. We set out just to foster, then had thought if a child or children were a good fit for us and us for them, that we would consider adoption… Lucas and I love them no differently than any parent would love their biological child,” MacDonald said. “This was 15 years ago, so we were not expecting to be fostering again and for a lot of people, it really is part of your heart… Of course every effort is made to keep siblings together.”
