Life Keeps Going

2016 has been a busy year. A is a junior and doing well in school this year. We are blessed to have his biological mom, L, living in our town now. They have really built a bond that is beneficial to both of them. It is great to see how my family has embraced L as a family member.

J & D moved into an apartment with their mom and sister this summer. Reunification is a beautiful thing. These boys were with us for nearly two years and will continue to be part of our lives. We are helping J with driver's education this fall, taking him for his required drives. Fifty hours of driving is required before he can get his license come spring. We celebrate holidays together and see them regularly.

After thinking we might be a one kid family for awhile, in October we took in another neighbor's son for the long term. AM is adjusting to our crazy clan. We have two goals with AM: (1) help him graduate high school and (2) help heal the relationship with his family.

Since we keep taking in teens not associated with foster care and the requirements to stay licensed get more stringent each year, we handed in our license. It did not make sense to us for our agency to send a caseworker for north Seattle once a year to inspect the house and interview the family when we were not taking in foster children. It is a waste of resources as I see it. We will continue to help local teens as needed by keeping them out of the foster care system and off the streets.

We officially added another family member to the clan - Hillary got married and we welcomed Johnny as our brother!

In late October we lost Isabel, our 17.5 year old cat. We got Izzy two weeks after we got married; Mike nursed her back to health the first night we got her because she got stepped on by a child. She gained the name "Rubbermaid Kitty" because she recovered overnight. This year she died in Mike's arms where she felt safe. She will be missed.

Isabel - the Christmas Village Monster

With all these changes, I threw in another one - I quit my job after 7.5 years and will begin a new job December 1. It is still fairly local so we will stay in Mason County. We are enjoying our kitchen remodel which took five months instead of six weeks. After five years of no usable kitchen, it is nice to having counters and cabinets. And we got the fridge moved from the dining room to the kitchen! Below are some before and after photos.

Before

After

Before

Before

After

Family Keeps Growing

We met a delightful young man this weekend and he will join our family next weekend. It was a joy meeting his biological family and his foster family and we welcome them as part of our extended family! While they will not see their family member as often as they are use to, we plan to stay connected because we are now family - this child connects us forever.
It was a whirlwind weekend meeting our son and spending time getting to know each other. We return later this week to spend more time with him and his family before we move him to our home. There is so much to do before the move - travel plans, clean out his room, stock groceries for a growing boy, contact the school for registration, find medical and dental providers, line up counseling (if we can arrange before the move), contact the church youth leader, make arrangements at work for my time off. We need to create a binder for him for all the DSHS forms that are required for a foster child. There are sooooooo many forms we have been provided and so much we have to track. I do not want to get lost in the paperwork; I want to enjoy our time with with our son. While it is a blessing to have this long awaited for placement, we still need to rely on the Lord for strength, discernment, wisdom and peace during the transition. It will not be easy for the young man to move from the only town and people he has known to a new town, new home, new family, new church, new school and new friends.
Patience will be needed during the bonding process. It may take a while (several months or more than a year) to really bond as a family, but God's hand will guide us and His love is stronger than our love. The scriptures I have relied on during the waiting and matching period still ring true during this transition.

It is amazing how God has blessed the union of our families (biological, foster, and foster-adopt) to provide for the needs of this wonderful young man. May the Lord's love reign over us all as we create a larger family through love of a child. "The greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

Habakkuk 2:3 RSV
"For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end -- it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay."

Psalm 39:7 NRS
"And now, O Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you."

Daniel 2:21b-23a NIV
"...he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors; You have given me wisdom and power, you have made known to me what we asked of you..."

Nesting

It has been one month since I last wrote and I am STILL waiting for my background clearance for DSHS. I called Monday and they got my fingerprints February 10; they were taken January 28! They did not process them until February 28 so I am suppose to get my letter later this week. Mike got his letter two weeks after his fingerprints were taken. Frustrating!

Once I get my letter I can submit it to DSHS and we can begin our interviews with the caseworker. Worker with his/her schedule will be more difficult as there are only two for the entire county. I can take time off work for meetings if needed.

Now that we are settling into our new home, I have been able to begin the nesting phase of adoption. The child's room is set up with two twin beds, a dresser, a bookshelf and a closet full of toys, games, books, movies and music for any child between ages 5 and 9. We are working on the bathroom dedicated to our future child - fixed the toilet, need to install the vanity, hung the shower curtain and got the fan working.

I am finding myself wanting to be home instead of at work just so I have time to nest. By the time I get home in the evenings, I am too tired and stressed to continue unpacking boxes and hanging up photos and pictures. It does not help I currently do not enjoy going to work and my stress at work is affecting my health negatively. I try not to bring work home emotionally, but even when I do not think about work, I dream awful dreams about work. I need to learn to balance work and life because it will just get more complicated when we add a child to our family. I pray I find joy in coming home once we have a child. Now, I enjoy coming home to my husband, sharing dinner with him and spending the evening talking or watching television together. I need to remember that a clean house is not required for a happy family. Chores may have to wait until the child is in bed so we can spend time as a family when I get home from work. I am decreasing my volunteer work at church, but we will begin a garden plot at the community garden so we can grow our own fresh vegetables. The garden will require at least semi-weekly attention.

Our adventure continues......

Nearing End of Initial Paperwork

Our parenting classes are completed. I get our medical forms notarized Thursday and that will be the end of our initial paperwork. Next comes questions about each other from our caseworker, a second visit to our home and fingerprinting at the immigration office. Then our homestudy will be ready to submit to USCIS for our four to six month wait for approval.

In less than nine months I will meet the one to three children that will become ours. Mom will be traveling with me. She has been a major support for our adoption dream and she will be a steady rock during the emotional time of being matched with our family.

As part of this journey, we are looking for a new home to raise our family. This week we put in offer on what we hope will become our new home. If we get to move prior to October, God will have greatly blessed us.

I keep telling myself, "God has provided the caseworker, the lawyer, the judge and the orphanage. We just need the home and the children." It is falling into place better than any plan I could develop; all will happen with God's timing.

New Beginnings

As we approach a new year, I comtemplate the various new beginnings 2010 brings. A new job position, a new home, a sister's marriage and steps towards parenthood. Our house goes on the market, we have three potential homes for our new place, the initial homestudy paperwork is nearly done and I am faithfully following the events of Embracing Orphans during their Christmas trip to Jamaica. I wonder if any of the children Carl describes may be the child God has chosen for us to parent. He has described the aching hearts of three young sisters or the two new boys at Blossom Gardens. There are so many other children at Blossom Gardens I do not know if God has more than one child planned for us.

If we could pull it off financially, I would plan to go to Jamaica this summer to meet my future child(ren). Baby steps and God's timing. Right now, the most overwhelming aspect is the amounty of money we have to come up within the next three months, than more by June and even more by December. January brings fundraising planning. Any ideas would be a Godsend. May God bless you in 2010.