Sunday, August 28, 2011

A Busy Weekend

The first week of school is behind us. D loves her teacher and already has a few friends. A hates going and cries almost as soon as we open the door to get him out of the car but then does great the rest of the day. Jonathan has finished his first week back to college. I don't think he realized how much homework he was going to have and how much independent learning he would have to do. He is enjoying it though and I'm so proud of him.

This weekend we headed to Dallas for my twin nieces 5th birthday party. We stayed with my sister and brother in law and had fun visiting and hanging out. Ate lunch with some good friends we hadn't seen in a while and enjoyed a birthday party with the family. D and A had a blast. We had promised D a surprise for today and we took her bowling and to play arcade games. She loved it and was super excited to go "bowling ball" for the first time. We are headed on our way home now. Jonathan has homework to do and I need to study for my board exam.

I'm glad to know that my friends on the east coast are surviving the hurricane.
Keep praying for those being affected by this storm.

~until~

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Back to School

Tomorrow is August 22nd. The first day of school for D! Jonathan also starts back to college tomorrow and I am so proud of him. A started daycare last week so he could start getting used to it before the chaos of tomorrow hits. I also am taking our friends little girl Andrea to daycare tomorrow for her first day. Jonathan has been keeping her for the past 18 months during the day and now that he is going to college it is time for her to go to daycare. I never knew what it would feel like to have my kids go to school on the first day, now I do and I LOVE IT! It is so exciting helping them pick out school supplies, lunch boxes, school clothes. Helping pack backpacks for the first day, making a school lunch for D, picking out clothes for school and planning a first day of school breakfast! I think I'm more excited about this than she is. The other great thing about starting school is having our set routine back.

D and A have been visiting with their grandma every weekend for the past 4-5 weeks. They went there this weekend too but we decided that it would be best to pick them up Saturday instead of Sunday so that we could make sure they were in bed on time today and were well rested for tomorrow. Usually when we pick them up they are exhausted and hyped up on caffeine and sugar. Yesterday was no different and they were asleep in the car on the way home at 8:30. Jonathan had to wake up A this morning at 8:45 and D didn't get up till 8:30 so we know they were exhausted.

I can't wait for D's soccer season to start soon. Her first game is in a few weeks and hopefully we will find out what team she is on and when practice is sometime this week. Jonathan may be coaching her team, we are waiting to find out if they need extra coaches. D is super excited about playing soccer and I hope she loves it.

On a different note... we are still working on infertility stuff. I'm not gonna go into details but we are slowly getting back into seeing our specialist and trying to have a baby. This time around I feel more at peace about everything than I have in the past. Jonathan pointed out something to me the other day that I hadn't really thought about and that is that if we would have had a baby a year ago we wouldn't have been foster parents now and wouldn't have known S, K, C, C, C, B, D or A. We wouldn't have been blessed with these children and wouldn't know the joy that they have brought us. God knows what He is doing and in His time we will have a baby.

~until~

Friday, August 5, 2011

An Unexpected Surprise...

We had an unexpected surprise this week and my heart is happy. D and A were supposed to be going to live with their grandma by August 15th. They have been staying with her on weekends for the last few weeks to prepare everyone for the transition. We had some concerns about them living there and had expressed these but basically the plan was to still have them live with Grandma in 2 weeks. However, this past week grandma came forward and told our case worker that she couldn't care for them full time. She will still have occasional weekend visits, but they will be living with us for now. We are so excited to know that they are staying with us for the time being. We didn't feel good about them leaving because of some things we knew about where they would be living and this is a huge relief. I'm glad that they get to continue their relationship with their grandmother, it had been estranged for about a year, and that I know that they will be taken care of the rest of the time. I know our role as foster parents is to foster them and allow the families to fix problems so the children can go home and I actually feel like the system is working the way it should right now.

We are really excited to get the chance to be "real" parents to these kids. They have been here just over 3 months, longer than any of our other placements. They will most likely be here for a few more months at the least. We have enrolled A in daycare, D in after school care and will be enrolling D in her new school and soccer on Monday. She is so excited to be going to the school that is in our neighborhood and to be playing soccer this fall. She seems really excited to be staying here and getting to visit grandma on some weekends. I'm excited to go back to school shopping, school supply shopping, soccer practices and soccer games, sleepovers for D, birthday parties for their friends and more, all the things they deserve to have. I feel like we have been given the biggest gift by the grandmother recognizing that she is not capable of caring for them. I really just want to give her a hug and tell her thank you! Thank you for not being selfish. Thank you for knowing what is best for these two precious children. I know she has made an incredibly hard decision and I am so grateful that she was able to do so.

Thank you God for continuing to provide for D, A, Jonathan and I. Please continue to help their family make good decisions, work hard to get their children back, and give them a peace of mind that D and A are being cared for and loved.

~until~