Colorado Springs family honored by state DHS for work in foster care, adoptions
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- In celebration of National Adoption Month, and to encourage more Coloradans to consider adoption from foster care, the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) recognized five exceptional adoptive families from across the state.
One of them is the Lopez family from Colorado Springs.
"We didn’t set out to adopt any children," says Ashlette Lopez. "Honestly, for us, it was more like God knew who was supposed to be with us. There’s just something about each one of our children, we knew, was supposed to be ours.”
Eric and Ashlette Lopez are high school sweethearts who always knew, they wanted to be parents. Now, the family is being honored during the entire month of November for, not only their work in foster care, but adoption.
“We didn’t ever set out to have eight children," says Ashlette. "That was not the plan. I was like, maybe 3, he was like, 4 … and now we have 8.”
In total, the Lopez's are a family of ten: mom and dad, one biological son, and seven adopted children. Most of the adopted children are biological siblings.
"We call it..." Eric says, trying to find the right word.
"Controlled chaos," Ashlette says, finishing Eric's sentence.
Eric, who is deaf, and Ashlette, who is blind, say they teach their children that having a disability does not stop you from living life to the fullest. It's a lesson they hope to instill as much as they can -- the children, struggling with physical and mental disabilities of their own.
"Some of them have emotional attachment disorders," explains Eric.
The process of foster-caring has also come with obstacles for Ashlette, once in the foster care system, herself.
"We had no idea what trauma was or what the impact of that would be," says Ashlette. "When we started foster care, they told us, like, it’ll bring up a lot of stuff you didn’t know was a problem. And it did. There were a lot of things that I was like, I haven’t thought about being in foster care in 20 years, like, it’s been since I was five. But there was a lot of stuff, there was a lot of triggers and things I had to work through.”
But they agree: the love of family, and giving children a life they otherwise may not have had, trumps it all.
"Just watching them grow and become the people they’re supposed to be is great," says Ashlette. "But watching that shell of that wall you put up to protect yourself go away is really rewarding."
