Whew!

Before I launch into the incredibly long description of our Christmas holidays, I would like to officially announce that the "other miracle" I hinted at in other posts is Katie - Patrick's sister - is PREGNANT!!!! Katie and Alan are going to be parents on August 8th (if he or she cooporates!)!!!! We are so excited for them to have this wonderful experience and for us to share in their joy as Aunt and Uncle! Congratulations Katie and Alan!

Well, we successfully made it through the Christmas Festivities without too many mental breakdowns or struggles! Of course it would happen that we ALL would get sick on Christmas - I mean all of us, Me, Patrick and both boys had some form of snotty nose, coughing and general aches and pains. But with the help of our ever so flexible and generous family, we made it a good time none-the-less! I do wish I could post pictures of the boys (well really the oldest one) opening the 6 ft long stockings I got for them to open. I had a stroke of genius and decided to do the HUGE stockings to put all their toys, etc. in so I didn't have to wrap anything. It really was fun!

We had our usual visit to PawPaw's house Christmas Eve to share in the holidays with that side of the family - Thank you to Aunt Judy, Aunt Patti and Uncle Tim, Carla and Bob, Chris and Crystal and Ashlee and Ally, PawPaw, PaPa and GrandMickey (That's the one I am going with!), Katie and Alan and Megan and Fernie for helping to make Christmas Eve special for these boys even though we will only have them for a short while! Then we packed up again and head over to PaPa and GrandMickey's house to spend the night and wait for Santa to come! Aside from a few "sleeping in a new place" blues (the Transformers tent and sleeping bag helped!) the night went relatively well. We got up - had some delicious Christmas morning breakfast (thanks PaPa!) and opened our stockings! After playing with every toy we got several times over, we packed away most of it in the fantastic stockings I got - good for toting gifts home in also! - and we got ourselves ready for the evening festivities. The other side of Patrick's family came over that evening and we had even more goodies to open - the oldest is getting the hang of this opening thing - and a floor full of gifts for the Chinese Auction. Despite his temptations, the oldest did very well in not opening gifts that weren't his. Thanks go out again to Aunt Toni and Uncle Travis, Aunt Mary and Uncle Scott, Aunt Vicki and Uncle Robbie and PaPa and GrandMickey for some wonderful gifts to add to the "pile" already in the stockings! We would also like to thank the "tall boys" in the group for their assistance in providing well timed distractions for the boys while other gifts were being opened! I do beleive all the "boys" had a good time! :)

Whew! Sounds like a lot of activities to for a whole 24 hours! It was, but well worth it. But don't worry - we still have more! The boys are still with us and this week my family comes over on New Year's Day to have our Christmas (another of my family traditions) and I know there will be more fun to have! We are going to be making ornaments so I know I had better go and get some plastic tablecloths and old shirts ready because it is going to be a wonderfully fabulous mess - and I should get some for the boys too - just in case they are messier than the adults! :)

We expect to have both boys through to next week. I imagine the oldest will go home first and the youngest will be with us another week or so after that - though we really have no information about what to expect in the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, we will enjoy our short time with these little guys and pray for a positive future for them both!

Happy New Year to you all!

Even More Fun!

We found out last night, after talking with the boys' case worker, that we will have BOTH boys through the first of the year! So Patrick and I are settling down to the idea of more time with these guys, getting ready for the quickly approaching holiday mayhem - I mean F-U-N! - and getting a schedule going....just in time for these fellas to go home. :) But it is all good practice none-the-less and we get to spend some good time with these boys.

Right now the youngest one is asleep (for now....) and the oldest one is showing me the SpongeBob Square Pants baseball glove he got from some very nice people at Wester Middle School. We are still a bit easily distracted so as soon as we show off the glove, we are down on the floor playing with the legos Aunt Megan and Aunt Katie and GrandMickey bought for us. :)

All in all, it is still a fun experience and we are learning SOOOOO much about ourselves! We are definitely doing this again!

It is very unlikely we will have time to make any more posts until after Christmas, but we will be sure to let you all know things are going! Merry Christmas to you all!

Christmas Wishes Do Come True!

We hadn't heard anything about the status of our two kiddos getting to go home to their families next week, so we called their case worker for an update. Turns out that due to the Holidays and the court schedules the 9 month old will for sure be staying with us until after Christmas and the 2 year old is "very likely" going to be staying with us as well! What wonderful news for us! Though we do hope that they can be reunited with their families soon, we are so glad to have the opportunity to spoil these guys at Christmas time! :)

Of course, I thought I had all my Christmas shopping done. Turns out I will be hitting those stores last minute after all! Oh well, it is always fun to give and what better way to do it than to give these little guys a fun Christmas. :)

We are getting a good routine down now as we get up, go to school (day care), come home, have dinner, play, and get ready for bed. Of course it is more these guys teaching Patrick and I what to do, but it is fun all the same. We steal a few minutes here and there to do laundry and clean the kitchen - trust me, we are getting up WAY earlier than we are used to! - and it all seems to be flowing pretty well. Of course, I am expecting those glitches to pop up any minute now, but for the time being we are enjoying our time together. It is simply amazing how resilient these children are....what precious, precious boys and that God blessed us with them at Christmas is that much better. Yup....I am hooked on this kid thing! And I think I have got Patrick pretty "sold" too! (not that it would have taken much....) :)

Day Two

So after a rather restless night Monday night, Patrick got up to go to work (he's so good!) and I stayed home with the boys to get them enrolled in day care. We found a wonderful little place thanks to the fantastic investigative efforts of Megan, Katie and Mickey that was not only a Christian based facility, but reasonably priced (as we found out, CPS does NOT pay for the first two weeks of Day care) and was more than willing to take these little guys with only a few hours notice! I am not going to post any specifics about the day care or the boys names or pictures or anything as we have to protect their privacy and them. But I will tell you this place will be getting my recommendation anytime someone asks me about a local Arlington day care!

So about 9:00 am I packed everyone up to go to day care. We got there and while I filled out the necessary paperwork, the boys were taken to their rooms. The youngest went right in and began drooling on everything in sight! The oldest one was a little more hesitant, but after a new pack of play doh and some gentle coaxing from the assistant director, he was back there playing up a storm! So I left, went home, dressed for work and came on in. I had a late meeting last night, so Patrick went with his sister Megan to go pick them up from day care. Mickey (Patrick's mom) and Megan stayed with Patrick last night to give him a hand while I was in the meeting. What great help! They stayed with us last night through our first baths (thank you so much for that duckie bath tub ladies - they LOVED it!) since being at our house and right up until the youngest one was about to droop off to sleep. Thanks so much for your help!

The best part of the day though was when I walked in the door from the rather grueling drive home. I walked in and the oldest boy greeted me at the door with the most adorable smile you have ever seen and he said "Mommy's home!" and gave me a big hug! Now you know why we do this! What an absolute blessing this is for us! Though we have had some rather shocking blows the last two days (we thought we were getting a GIRL and boy, we thought all of day care was included and the shock of having kiddos the same day you found out they were available!) these are the kinds of things that make it all worth it! The first night, the oldest was a bit leery of sitting with us or letting us hold him, but last night he was a cuddle bug and wanted to follow us everywhere we went. If we got up to leave the room, he said "Hey!" and would follow us! Yup - it is all worth it! :)

We don't yet know how long we will have these kiddos, though the case worker did say she expects the family members to have expedited home studies approved in time to take custody of them by Christmas. So we will very likely only have them for this week and part of next week. But it has been a wonderful early Christmas present (even I wasn't too sad about waking up at 5:15 this morning!). We will keep you all posted as we learn more and of course will share all of the fabulous "ahhhh" moments along the way!

Good News All Around!!

This weekend has been just full of wonderful news and happy experiences. To begin with, Patrick and I decided this morning to change our vacancy list profile to say that we would be willing to take boys or girls ages 0-2 and that we have two vacancies at our home to allow for sibling groups. Then at 3:00 pm today, I got a call from our case worker to see if we would be willing to take a 2 year old and a 9 month old - both boys (these are not the same kiddos we were considered for as of last week)!!!! Can you believe it??!!? Yeah well, neither can we! :) The kiddos are supposed to be here to see us about 7:30 tonight! Thank the lord for Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles! We have a whole army of people helping us to get ready (wouldn't you just know it - I didn't clean the house this weekend!). :) We will keep you all posted on how things are going and as we know more!

Our other bit of good news will have to wait as it is not public knowledge yet (once it becomes public, we will be sure to let you know) but we are not the only ones about to experience a little miracle! :) With that, I will leave you in suspense - and don't ask, I am not going to tell! :)

Its a no go....this time.

Well, three weeks later in this mess and it turns out that the parents of these two children have identified a family member that can take the children. CPS is going to do a home study on the family member to determine if they will go with them or not. However, the exact words of our case worker was this: " Ok, bad news. The parents have given them a family member to home study, so at the moment this is on hold. I will let you know if there are any updates…."
So it is VERY unlikely these children will be placed with us after all.

I did find it very hard not to be incredibly snotty in my response back to her - not that I feel our case worker has had any control over this decision by any means - but due to the ups and downs and extreme changes in information this whole time. I limited myself to simply saying we were dissappointed and would have thought they would have checked all of the family members before they got to this point. But if that is what is best for these children, that is all Patrick and I could ask for. I think that was pretty good considering there were many other things I really wanted to say! :)

Thanks again for all of your support and prayers over the last three weeks. We pray we will have another opportunity soon!

Still Waiting....

Well, this will be a short update. We are still waiting on the decision of the case workers involved in caring for these two kiddos. We still don't even really know if we are in the running or not. As you can imagine, our emotions have been up and down about all of this. Some days I am convinced they are not going to pick us, others I am frustrated that we haven't heard anything and still others I have planned out the little boys room down to the last detail and know that just has to mean we will get to have them - even for a little bit! :) Of course, Patrick remains as even-keeled as always (thank God he saw fit to give me a husband to balance my wierd mood swings so nicely!).

So we wait, and wait and wait and wait some more to see if we are chosen or to see if there is some other major development or hoop we must once again jump through. Though the fact they keep "testing" us with all of these changes or criteria does make me feel more confident in the fact that they haven't counted us out just yet! :) Till then....

Decisions Decisions

Well, not much has happened in the last few days - given it was the weekend and all! But Patrick and I started talking about our vacancy list profile and decided it was a little silly that we were willing to ADOPT a 2 year old, but not FOSTER a two year old. If we are comfortable enough with the idea of adopting a little girl that age, then we might as well be comfortable enough to foster them at that age! So we contacted our case worker and asked her to change our profile on the vacancy list to include girls 0 -2 instead of girls 0-1. We talked about including boys in that mix as well (again if we are willing to adopt a boy, why wouldn't we be willing to foster a boy?) but we both really wanted our first child to be a girl, so we are sticking with just girls (for now!).

In the mean time, our case worker was diligently gathering additional "intel" on these two children we are being considered for now. She shared with us this afternoon, that she has not heard anything negative from the case workers making the decision about who these children will go to so we should be "all good". I am going to take that to mean we are still in the "running" for these two. She also told us that there may be a chance that the judge will grant a 6 month extension for the parents of these two children to "get their act together". I can't promise I will get this right, but my best guess is the parents have been given at least one (and maybe more) chances during the course of time these children have been in foster care. I assume they did not make the necessary efforts if CPS was moving to terminate parental rights come January. It seems that now, the idea of losing their children forever for real this time has caused them to make a renewed effort. There is a chance that the judge will allow an additional 6 months for the parents to make that turn around before making the final ruling about the parental rights. My thoughts are these: 1. 6 months is not very long to get your entire life turned around, but if they are willing to really make the effort then they can certainly make a good start. 2. If they are willing to really put in the work to turn their lives around in 6 months, then they must really care for these children and have just made some bad mistakes. 3. If it is safe and they can take good care of them, it is always best to return the children to their parents. I would personally like some strict guarantees, but I know that won't happen. But I believe that God will make the right thing happen for these children, the parents and Patrick and I. So if the parents are able to turn things around and the judge decides to award them custody, I have to believe God has a reason for it. All of this to say, our case worker wanted to make sure we would still be willing to take these children given the fact that they may have this additional 6 month extension - which makes it a much larger legal risk kind of placement than it was at first. Of course we said YES! If we only get to have them for 6 months and that means they get to go back to loving parents, then great. If that is not the way things work out, then we will be thrilled to have the chance to adopt them!

So as you can see it is either feast or famine in the world of fostering! We are either waiting for days on end or bombarded with new questions every second. So we are getting used to the change in tide the more we get used to working with CPS. As I have said before, at least we are not bored! :) As we hear more, we will certainly keep you all posted!

At Least We Aren't Bored!

Well, there hasn't been a lot of action in the last few days. We are still waiting to find out if we are the chosen family for these two children. HOWEVER. we did find out that the biological mother we thought was pregnant is not. We don't know if that means that she was and is no longer or if that means that she never was pregnant to begin with and that was a mistake. I am hoping for the latter myself.

Anyways, we also discovered that the children's case workers are looking at a private agency to get home studies to reveiw for these children as well. Which could mean any number of things of course, the worst being that they didn't like our home study and have decided to move on. OR they could be just making sure there isn't a better fit out there before making their decision on the two home studies they have looked at already (ours and our friend Elizabeth's). We don't know and likely will not know their motivation behind this move. We believe that it will likely be the end of next week before a decision about our involvment is made or at least before that decision is communicated to us.

In the mean time we continue to wait! We will keep you all posted as we hear more! :)

The wait continues....

Well, here we are almost two weeks into this process of being considered for two children - possibly three - to adopt sometime next year. It seems like it has been years since we agreed to submit our home study and let God make yet another decision about the future of our family. I think it seems that long because the last two weeks have been a bunch of just waiting. And that waiting and waiting and waiting has a tendency to take a toll on a person's confidence as it is mine today. Not my confidence that God will do what is best for us and best for these children. Not my confidence that God knows which doors to open and which doors to close for us. Not my confidence that Patrick and I will be good parents to some wonderfully perfect children. But it is more related to my confidence that THESE are the children He has meant for us. So we continue to wait to hear if these children are our future family or not. And while I jump a few feet in the air every time the phone rings or an email pops up, I know that we will have an answer soon enough. I can't keep myself from staring at the computer for a few minutes at a time just willing the answer to come though! :)

So again we say thanks to you all for your continued prayers and support as we take yet again another ride on this roller coaster called Starting a Family! We will continue to keep you posted as we hear anything new!

Change is ALWAYS good...right?

So we still don't know if we have been chosen to be the new parents of these two little ones we are being considered for, but we have a bit of news that has certainly changed the whole dynamic of what could be our future family! Our case worker emailed us this morning to let us know they just found out that the biological mother of these two kiddos is pregnant and is "pretty far along". They are now only considering families who would be willing to take the newborn (once he or she is born of course) in addition to the other two already up for adoption.

So Patrick and I talked for a while, did some regulated breathing, some internal thinking and some praying and decided that we would be willing to adopt the third sibling should that become an option in the future. We assume it would as her parental rights are being terminated for these two, but we don't know the situation for this third child. It could be that the third child is from a different father who is willing to take custody or something like that. Anyways, we have just said we would be willing to not take just two, but THREE children at one time! We are praying that this third little one is a girl since we already have everything we would need for a newborn girl! :) But in all reality we continue to pray for what is best for all of these children. If God has planned these children for us, we will take them happily! If not, then we know that He has planned a better home for them and our little one (or little ones!) are around the corner for us.

Carolyn did say that they hope to place the oldest two children before Christmas so we should be hearing something soon - in the next couple of days at least. We will be sure to keep you all posted as usual! Please keep those prayers coming!