Forever family

The Nipomo home echoes with the pattering of eight small bare feet on hardwood floor, darting down the hallway into bedrooms, racing to slide open the patio door that leads to a backyard found in children’s dreams.

Thinking only of the idle trampoline, playground and chicken coop, some of the four young siblings are so overcome with excitement after a full day of school that they rush outside without stopping to put on shoes.

Jacque Barnett jokes with her daughters, Kate, 6, left, and Emily Rose, 5, at their home in Nipomo.

The Nipomo home echoes with the pattering of eight small bare feet on hardwood floor, darting down the hallway into bedrooms, racing to slide open the patio door that leads to a backyard found in children’s dreams.

Thinking only of the idle trampoline, playground and chicken coop, some of the four young siblings are so overcome with excitement after a full day of school that they rush outside without stopping to put on shoes.

By the patient tone in Jacque Barnett’s voice as she kindly yet firmly reminds her children of the rule, it’s apparent this isn’t the first time they’ve been forgetful.

Katie, 6, and a bouncing Emily, 5, step into matching pink clogs and join their brothers John Riley, 10, and Nicholas, 8, on the slide and swings.

Jacque stood smiling, monitoring the activity on an early evening last week with husband, James, marveling at their “forever family” — a term often used to describe a family that takes in and then adopts foster children.

The Barnetts are proud of their family, and they are proud to raise awareness for adopting foster children during National Adoption Month and for National Adoption Day, which was last Saturday.

The National Adoption Day Coalition expected 4,500 children in foster care to be adopted Nov. 19, which for 11 years has been designated as a day to finalize adoptions for foster children to families across the country.

“I think it’s great because there’s lots of kids who don’t have a forever family,” said Jacque,

who stays at home with her kids and helps out in their classrooms at Dorothea Lange Elementary School. “We’re really blessed.”

Jacque, 41, and James, 40, met while studying at Cal Poly.

She was from the San Joaquin Valley, he hailed from the Bay Area, and they settled on the Central Coast as a couple in their early 20s, ready to start a family.

After seven years of trying to get pregnant — discovering they both had fertility problems — and giving up on expensive fertility treatments, the Barnetts, then living in Grover Beach, turned to private adoption.

A brown-haired John Riley came first from a mother in Hayward, and Nicholas arrived two years later from Georgia.

Unofficially, the Barnetts said, they’ve been foster parents since John Riley arrived as an infant and they waited for the adoption paperwork to become finalized.

The Barnetts officially became certified for foster care around the time Katie arrived at 3 months old, taken from a mother in Santa Maria who had drug-abuse problems.

“We went into foster care because we wanted to adopt more kids,” said James, who teaches at Miller Elementary School in Santa Maria. “We knew we wanted girls.”

It took 18 months to finalize Katie’s adoption, the longest of the four. Nicholas’ adoption was the quickest at 8 months.

They welcomed Emily at 3 days old from Santa Maria for reasons similar to Katie’s placement in foster care — except Emily’s mother still was using drugs while she was pregnant.

The Barnetts were able to adopt the now rambunctious, smiley girl with a blonde-bob haircut, acknowledging that Emily would and does have some special needs and might have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) like her brother, John Riley.

Both girls were adopted through Aspiranet, a nonprofit charity that has for 35 years worked to ensure that California children are placed in permanent, loving homes — touching the lives of more than 10,000 children.

Adoption is not a truth the Barnetts hide from their children, especially since they don’t look like the typical family, although they clearly function like one.

“Of course we stand out,” Jacque said, noting Nicholas’ black skin and her and James’ fair skin and light hair. “But people on the Central Coast are very kind, very accepting.”

The kids have seen their baby pictures, birth certificates, even their adoption papers.

On a day last week, the family flipped through photo albums together until the youngsters could sit still no longer.

They understand that their family is a bit different, but they love each other as siblings do.

“Adoption is a great thing ... for kids who don’t have homes,” Nicholas said, as he and John Riley looked up from a Lego magazine long enough to good-naturedly hassle each other.

“Sometimes we tickle each other,” John Riley added.

After 17 years of marriage, James and Jacque have moved their family into a bigger house and property in Nipomo, and they are out of the foster-parent business.

They know they’re lucky they were able to adopt foster children because that’s not always the case.

“They call adoption a ‘back-pocket plan’,” Jacque said, adding that foster parents should have their hearts in the right place going into the process.

This is the first year all four kids are in school, which means the Barnett family only will get busier from here on out with sports, clubs and homework.

School is a challenge the couple readily accepts, just as James and Jacque set their mind on parenting more than a decade ago.

“In the end,” James said, “it’s worth it.”