While fostering children from broken homes is not for everyone, 10 years ago, Kelly Carmody took in her second foster child, nine-year-old Peyton Peterson, without a second thought.

“Kelly wasn’t my first home that I was with, but she was the one that I’ve been with the most,” Peterson said. “She’s been my teacher, so I knew her personally, and she was the director of operations for the Ogden after school program branch. So, we already had a personal connection.”

After years of constant moving and neglect from his drunk, mentally ill mother, Carmody finally gave wheelchair-confined Peterson the stability required when dealing with his type two Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

“When I was with my mom, I never really had that sort of stability that Kelly was able to provide,” Peterson said. “[Mom] had multiple boyfriends at different times, and so there wasn’t ever any permanent basis. We moved, like, six times just within Ogden alone. So, when I came in with Kelly, I actually had someone who’s stable with me … [Carmody] was always there for me and never gave up. So, that was always the one thing I was able to depend on even when life got really bad.”

Today, nine years later, Peterson, now a senior, remains in Carmody’s care and is joined by seniors Karl Drown and Princess Goudy, along with Carmody’s biological son, four-year-old Eli. Until a few weeks ago, senior Marc Wood was also in the house.

“Balance is huge,” the single mother said. “That’s something that I am really working on. I never said, ‘Oh, I have five, it’s a nightmare.’ I changed my job because of it, because it’s just too much to balance … Our home will be going great, like, I got it. Then, I’ll throw something in, like, a new dog, or I’ll hear a kid’s sad story, and I’ll want to take them in. And so, everytime I change a dynamic, there’s a transition.”

Like 90% percent of children in foster care, Drown, Wood and Goudy all suffered some form of neglect or abuse. Intellectually disabled Drown entered the system at 15 after being on the receiving end of abuse from his mother. He joined the Carmody household three years ago.

“First my dad passed away, and then I lived with my mom for a while and then after, she started being mean, and then I went to foster care,” Drown said. “Both [foster homes] was nice, but I didn’t really get soda at the other one because they had a no soda rule because, like, no. And then once, when I came to Kelly’s house, I was like ‘yes, soda.’”

Unlike Drown, Wood never met his parents and has bounced around foster homes since he was born.

“Due to my upbringing, I have an entirely different view on things than everyone else, and that tends to be a conflict, especially in [the Carmody] house. I tend to view things differently,” Wood said. “I can’t truly see where [friends] are coming from [when they complain] because I’ve never truly had, like, my own parents.”

After gaining Wood two years ago, Goudy entered the home in May after leaving her mother’s care at 13 and living with various family members and one foster family.

“I think I’ve slowly got more bitter over the years,” Goudy said. “Any person I’ve ever gotten close with, in one way or another, has like, either hurt me, left, died, anything you can think of probably. It just happens.”

Though the family accepts that people come in and out of their lives, Carmody believes it’s her job as a foster parent to help her kids reach adulthood.

“What I tell my kids is that I’m never going to put your placement on the line,” Carmody said. “If you’re in my home, you’re in my home, because I know personally, if I didn’t have a place to live the next day, I would act out all the time. The anxiety would be, you know, out the roof. But I also can’t control things that the state does … I yell at the state all the time, I’m yelling at case managers … and I’m fighting injustices for my kids. And that’s why I chose to do long term [placements], because I didn’t want a revolving door … I’m a treatment level home.”