Mark Wahlberg’s blockbuster film, “Instant Family” follows a couple who opts to take in one foster child, and winds up adopting three siblings instead.
The film, starting Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne, is bringing foster care to the big screen, and Wahlberg hopes it creates a bigger conversation about the shortage of foster parents in the U.S.
The movie’s comedic twist on taking in, and adopting three foster siblings is a situation Paige and Daniel Zezulka know a thing or two about.
The couple from Athens, Georgia won the hearts of America after a video of them telling their 11-year-old foster daughter, Ivey, that she was officially going to be adopted by them.
Seriously, her reaction is EVERYTHING.
A “Huge Epidemic”
The Zezulkas first learned about the shortage of foster care parents in their area a few years back. There were over 250 kids in foster care and at the time, only eleven families who had opened their homes.
Daniel says he and Paige talked about it and prayed about it, and although they didn’t feel ready to be parents, they felt very strongly that they had to do something. They went through the process of opening their home, and within 24 hours got the call about their now-son, Kai.
The couple did not know that their 5-month-old had an older sister, who was placed with a family in their town. They also didn’t know that Kai and Ivey’s birth mother was pregnant with a baby girl who would come to be their youngest child, Lita.
When Paige received a call asking if the couple would foster Lita, who was just a few weeks old, too, “I said yes without asking my husband,” Paige said. “I knew he would have said yes anyway.”
