Encouragement?

Third training meeting down, 1 more to go. At least for me, Sean has 2 more. Then the home visit, then approval!! I think I've written on here before that I coach our young women at church for the annual basketball tournament. Over here in the eastern part of the US we don't have regional basketball tourney's like they do in Utah & Idaho :) Anyway, I've missed two practices and last week I let them know that I would be missing this Saturday as well and I told them why. So yesterday at church I had several people come up to me and say, "Rumor has it, you are adopting kids." Why yes we are, that's the plan anyway. And their immediate response, at least from two people was, "you know those kids are damaged, right?" WHAT??!!! What does that have to do with the price of rice in China? Seriously, we are looking to adopt kids who might not normally have a chance at having a "forever" family and you tell me they are damaged?! what the hell? Yes these kids will have issues, but don't your kids? My kids probably won't have the same issues as yours will, but we are being given tools to deal with them. Yes, we are going to be getting more than one at once, we will figure out how to deal with that too, but you've had lots of time to deal with all your kids and they still have issues. And who knows why they are in the system. What if they just had the misfortune of both of their loving parents dying in a car accident and they don't have any family left. Yes, they will have to deal with the grief of losing both their parents at one time, but that doesn't mean they can't love and be loved. Sometimes people annoy me. Luckily I know when to hold a grudge (my sisters can tell you I'm really good at that) and when to just shake my head and think, "they have no clue," and brush it off as total ignorance. Yes my kids are going to have issues, but we will deal with them in the same way that you deal with your kids issues. Find something else positive to say please, thanks.

Nice family pictures

Here are some of the pictures that actually came out nice this year. If you got our Christmas card then you've already seen some of them. The kids & Sean clean up nice. hehehe

 These are from the girls birthday. As you can see, they tolerate my photography but not very well :)

 Abby has always got to make us laugh!

 We went for a walk on the river trail on a really nice day. The girls did nothing but whine the entire time. Especially on the walk back to the car. oy. But I got a few nice pics. So they can complain all they want :)~

Changes are coming

Our major dilemma with adopting kids is our tiny house. Seriously tiny house. It was great when it was just Sean and I and the girls every other weekend. It's looking pretty darn small at the moment. So we are looking at some creative ways to save some space but have enough room for more kids. oh, yeah. We have a finished basement that is all the rage in the summer since it's way cooler than the rest of the house. Winter, not so much, but we have little heaters to warm it up a little. I speak from experience since I use the little heaters when I am working in the craft side of the basement in the winter. Since it's not a very large space, it doesn't take long to get warmed up. It's kinda nice. Our idea is to have the girls, since they are older and enjoy their independence, to move downstairs. AKA: hiding in their rooms for hours on end playing on various electronic devices. No adults needed or desired. My original idea was to get 2 futons that could be left as couches when the girls aren't at our house. But now I'm wondering if maybe I was thinking too big. A friend suggested a day bed with a trundle underneath. hmmmm, while this would negate the space under the bed for storage it was free up the entire wall in the basement for storage. I'm liking this idea. However, another friend of mine was giving away a futon that was in nice shape so I grabbed it. crap, now what am I going to do with it. decisions, decisions. I still have to figure out how to store the couch & chair we have, since I know we are planning on getting a larger house when we move across the country and we will eventually need it. Or we could just buy a new one when we get where we are going. Like I said, decisions.....
As for our classes Sean and I are headed to one this weekend. 2 for me, 1 for him. The sweet part is that we have them all scheduled and we will be done with the classes on March 2!!! I'm so excited. I'm hoping that we can get everything approved and arranged so that we can go for visits during Sean's spring break. I guess if that is the way it's supposed to happen Heavenly Father will make it happen. We are doing our part, He will do the rest :)

Moving right along

Sean and I have filled out a large stack of paperwork. Yikes! I think I mentioned before that they know you're serious when you are willing to subject yourself to the mound of paperwork that needs filled out. anyway. I was able to go to one of the training meetings on Saturday. Interesting and enlightening. I was able to get another perspective on what happens when kids are removed from their homes and put into foster care. I am hoping that we will be able to help these kids get back on track and feel safe in our home. Sean is going with me this weekend to the meeting. So I will have 2 classes done and he will have 1. Can't wait until we have them ALL done. it will take us until mid-March to get everything done with classes, but it will be worth it. I'm so excited to have a large family :) Some may say I'm crazy, but hey, I would probably agree! 

Next Step

We made it to the orientation meeting last night. We also got the last of our background checks back in the mail. The meeting was nice, it also got us pretty excited. We were given a gigando stack of paperwork to fill out, but we can do that. We got the hard part completed, the background checks. We are excited to move on. The women at the meeting from the agency said that since we have completed the process before we may be able to move a little quicker through the process. We will still have to complete the required number of training hours, but we may be able to contact other agencies earlier. She wasn't sure, and I'm not holding my breath, but it would be cool to let the other agencies know that we are interested in a specific group of boys. So I will be going to an all day class on Saturday. Oh, yeah, fun :) There was another women at the meeting, her and her husband are planning on adopting out of foster care as well. She had a friend complete the training classes and the friend said that the classes were very beneficial and helped her to deal with situations that came up after she had adopted her son. It's good to know that we won't be doing these classes for nothing. I'm all for tools to help these kids! Another nice thing we learned is that we will probably get "child support" for them. Whew. While we really want to have these kids and know we are supposed to be doing this at this time, we were a little concerned about how we were going to make it work, money-wise, since Sean is still in school. Heavenly Father will make it possible. So, we are excited to move forward.

4 out of 6

For background checks there are 6 that have to be completed in this state. One of which is the FBI. Sean and I have 4 out of the 6 we need back already. The FBI ones are supposed to take up to 6 weeks. We got ours back in 1. Hopefully we will have the two remaining clearances by the time we go to the introduction meeting next Wednesday. Things are moving along.