A Photo Timeline

Lets take a look at some of what we've been doing since God brought us all together last February 5th:

This was the first time we actually saw our beautiful daughter.  It's the closest thing to a baby picture we'll ever have for her.  We fell in love with her instantly! 

We had visits every weekend until she moved in as a foster child on April 17th. 

Then the real fun began.!

This is only the beginning!  I can't wait to see what happens next! 

Finally a Family Adoption Day

On December 19th 2011, we finallized our adoption.  Now I can post pictures.  Here's a few from that amazing day. 

Then on New Years Day (2012) we baptized her.

We are all so very blessed! 

Fall Fun

Yesterday was our official 6 month anniversary of having H live with us.  We were required to have her live with us for 6 months before the courts would allow us to adopt her.  We're ready to adopt, and so is she.  H is always asking when she'll be adopted, but we cannot tell her a date yet.  The last we've heard, the court still has not finished up the appeal process started 9 months ago by H's birth mother's attorney.  Our SW comes tomorrow evening for her monthly visit.  Hopefully she'll have good news for us on this front. 

We have had a very busy beginning of school.  H has been doing very well in school.  She is such a smart girl!  I love her little brain!  When we talk to her about something new to her I can see in her face how she's really thinking about what we've said. Academically she has no issues, other than racing through her work ocassionally.  She struggles a little more with social skills and appropriate behaviors such as using an inside voice, treating others with respect, and following directions.  H's teacher gives H a conduct grade each day for school.  Every evening we check her conduct grade together and talk about how her day went.  I think this has been a tremendous help.  Each week we set a goal for H's conduct grades.  For instance if she earns 2 S+ or E (excellent) in one week she earns an outing.  If she earns 3 S+ or E's, she earns the outing and gets to bring a friend along with for the outing.  This has also been a great motivator for her to improve her social skills. 

So much of life that we take for granted is all new for her.  When H first came to us she had never ridden a bike, she had never built a snow man, never jumped in a leaf pile.  She's never been Trick-or-Treating.  When we first brought her to our home from the city, she would get very excited, point out the window and yell, MOMMY, MOMMY, LOOK AT THAT ANIMAL!  We'd be passing a farm with cows.  I'd tell her, that's a cow.  Another time we passed a horse farm.  She pointed out the window and yelled, MOMMY, MOMMY LOOK AT THAT COW!  I explained to her the difference between a cow and a horse.  A couple of weekends ago my Dad took all of the grandkids, and parents to an Indian Summer celebration.  There were horses there we could pet and even ride on.  I've never seen H's eyes so big as she took in this massive horse, up close and personal.  At first she was quite afraid to get close, but by the end of our day she actually got to ride one of the horses.  It was great!

Today I took off of work to go along on a field trip with H to a pumpkin patch/farm.  It was awesome!   H got to ride a pony, catch and hold a chicken, pet a hedgehog, rabbit, and a guinea pig.  We went for a hay ride through the woods and a corn field.  We ate lunch in a barn and even picked out a cute little pumpkin to bring home.  H did great as well.  She stayed with her class, listened to the rules, and treated all of her friends nicely.  She's come so far, I'm so proud of her and all of her growth.   

Through all of this process, I have to say again that we are surrounded by amazing friends and family who love and support us.  Everyone has accepted H and our situation with open hearts.  From the kids in her class to our parents and grandparents, we are all truely blessed! 

Pink Heart Marshmallows

H first came into our lives in December of 2010.  At least that's when our SW sent us a 1 paragraph email about a 5 year old little girl from Milwaukee.  H was not our first referal for a child, but she was the first one we felt would be a good fit with our family.  With 4 sons at home we had to make sure we were not puting them at exceptional risk.  I also was not interested in a baby, been there, done that.  We're a working family always on the run with church, school, family, and athletic activities.  Any child joining our family needed to be able to keep up with us.  H seemed like a perfect match.  Steve and I asked for a few days to talk to the boys and to pray about H.  It was not an easy decision, afterall, who gets to "pick out" their children?  We only knew such a limited amount of information about her, her history and any "issues" she may have.  We decided to put our trust in God and to give the decision to him.  That's when we just knew she was the one for us.  We contacted the SW and started visitations.  The children's court system is quite backed up and takes what seems like forever to make any progress.  We had to wait to meet H until the courts had completed the TPR process.  They had a date set for early January.  Then mid January, then Late January.  Finally, the SW decided we couuld start visitations on the weekends.  We met H in person on the 5th of February, 2011.  We were at her therapist's office talking about how to proceed once we met when all of a sudden we heard quick little footsteps coming down the hall.  We looked up to see the most beautiful little girl standing in the doorway nervously looking back at us.  I remember that she had a baggie with pink heart marshmallows in it in her hand.  She smiled at us and slowly raised the baggie asking if we wanted to try one.  Of course we did.  That was the beginning...   That's how a simple pink marshmallow ended up being the most effective ice breaker ever!  After that day, we saw H every weekend until she finally came to stay with us on April 17th.  We found out later that the delay in the TPR process was due to H's birth mother not showing up for scheduled hearings.  The TPR was rescheduled for this reason 4 times, then the judge granted TPR without her present.  H's birth mother's appointed attorney filed an appeal on her behalf.  We heard at our last SW visit that it is now a "no merrit appeal".  I guess it's just a matter of time.  Since her arrival, we have had fun learning all about AA hair and skin care.  We've come a long ways in our learning as we often sit by the computer watching and re-watching You Tube videos on how to do different hair styles.  We've also been to Orlando to visit Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  (It was a trip already planned before we knew H would be with us by that time.)  It was a fun, but challenging trip as we were still in the building relationship stage.  Since then we've survived a long hot summer.  H went from being afraid of the water in the shower, to swimming like a little fish!  She was still in Kindergarden when she moved in and was able to finish out the school year with her new class.  That was a great opportunity for her and her classmates to get to know each other.  Now she's in first grade and seeming to be more cmfortable each day.  It's been an amazing journey so far, but it's only the beginning.  We're hoping to complete the adoption by the end of 2011.  This blog is my way of recording as much of her story as I can for our friends and family, but mostly for H as she grows.  We are so very blessed to have H in our family.  

One Year Later

9/7/2011

Almost exactly one year since I started blogging, life continues to change and move forward.  Let me fill you in. 

Steve (aka Dad)
My husband graduated from college and started a new job working at an airport as an electrician.  He really likes what he does, but is still getting used to the much slower pace from his previous job.  The best part of this career change is his schedule.  Where he used to work 20 - 70 hours per week for 8 months of the year, now he works 7am - 3:30pm, Monday through Friday, year round.  This schedule has allowed him to be much more involved with the kids.  He's now helping to coach Jaden's football team and he makes it to every game of both Jaden and Kameron.  What a tremendous blessing for us all! 

Me (aka Mom)
I'm still working as a Social Worker.  I still love my job, after almost 3 years, which is very good for me!  I'm still a crazy busy mom, and loving it too! 

Dylan
Dylan joined the US Airforce in April of this year.  He completed Basic Training at Lackland AirForce Base in San Antonio Texas.  He then went on for schooling at another base in Texas.  He's home right now for a week long visit, then he's off to the next base somewhere in New Mexico.  We are so proud of the young man he has become.  This is a dream of his he's had since he was very small.  I can't believe he's all grown up and living his dream!  We continue to pray for him to be safe, and we appreciate any prayers you wish to send up for him as well! 

Kameron
Kameron is a Sophomore this year.  He's playing JV Football right now, in fact, he's the team captain, because of his positive team focused attitude.  Way to go Kam!  He has always been humble and thoughtful of others.  All glory to God! 

Jaden
Jaden is in 7th grade.  He's also playing tackle football and doing well.  He's quite a bulldog on the field.  It's fun to watch him.  He's growing so fast, I can hardly keep him in pants or shoes. 

Dominic (aka Doc)
Doc is in 5th grade, middle school!  He was excited an nervous for the first day of school this year.  So much so that he got sick, at least that's what I thought untill I ended up taking him to the ER where he had an emergency appendectomy!  That's one way to get out of the first day of school, I guess!  Needless to say, he's back to school now and doing fine.  He's quite the trooper. 

H
Yes, we have a beautiful little girl living with us.  We are still in the adoption process so I cannot post her name or picture.  It's awesome and exhausting.  I'll tell you all about how this came to me in my next post, and I'll try to get a few pictures posted also. 

Sorry to cut it short, it's getting late and kids need to get to bed.

Last Home Visit and Race Discussion

9/9/2010

Tuesday our Home Study SW came over to comlete our Home Study interviews and our home inspection. She was here for over 3 hours! It was a great interview. We talked a lot about issues surrounding race and adoption. We're open to any race, we thought it wouldn't really matter if our child was of a different race from us. We talked about the importance of instilling a sense of pride in our child for her race. This sounds simple enough, we tell her how beautiful we think she is, but actually there's so much more to it. We talked about role models and mentors, cultural things such as music, food, books, movies, festivals, and cultural traditions. We even talked about white privilege and what that means for us and for her. I guess when your emeshed in something, you become blind to it. We were talking to Dylan (18) about culture after our meeting and he said, "well, that's easy cuz we don't have a culture". Just because we're not always aware of it, doesn't mean we don't have it. Of course we have a culture, and so will our little girl. It's not fair to expect her to completly accept our culture and reject her own. We need to celebrate, explore and embrace her culture just as we do our own. I'm feeling like this is a pretty big responsibility, and honestly, I'm not exactly sure how we're going to do this. A few of the questions our SW asked had to do with how we would handle it if our daughter came to us saying that someone said something mean to her about her race. This is hard. We both said that even the question made us feel protective of her and as though we wanted to shelter her from anything like this, but the truth is, in our society there is more of a chance that this will happen than not. How do we teach her about such ugly things as racism, and ignorance and teach her to love herself and to be proud of who she is at the same time? More to research, think about and pray about.

Anyways, our SW said that now she'll write up our Home Study, then send it to us for approval, then it gets submitted to the State for approval. She said that we should be licensed (for foster to adopt) by next month some time. Once we get that, she'll send out HOme Study out to other agencies and to the counties. Then it's a matter of waiting until we're matched. We have a challenging journey ahead of us, but one we can't wait to begin!

Labor Day Weekend

9/7/2010

I'm pretty new to blogging, as I'm sure you can tell, so I'm darn proud of myself for figuring out how to post those pictures last time! They were from one of our albums a friend of ours put on the computer a while ago. I have more recent photos on my camera, but I cannot figure out how to get them here. I have an old digital camera with none of the original cords and an even older computer, the big old clunky ones. These are two of the items on my wish list before our little girl(s) come to stay. Now that I'm blogging I want to be able to enhance my writting with pics. This is a great way to keep a history for us to look back on over time, pictures help.

Anyways, this past Labor Day weekend my two older boys helped my little sister move. She's 10 years my junior and very special to me. She's had her share of struggles already in her young life. Two years ago she moved back home to our parent's home from Kentucky after seperating from her husband. She has 3 children (1 boy and 2 girls). We helped her move from our parents house to her own apartment in town. This was a big step for her and she was quite nervous about being out on her own with the kids, but she's strong and I know she'll be fine. She has a good job, her kids are going to great schools, and she has family that loves and supports her near by. While the big strong boys were helping Dad, Shelby (my sister), Grandma and Grandpa with the furniture and boxes, I got to play auntie!! I love those kids!! Jaden and Nathanial are two peas in a pod. They like to hang out and play video games. Doc and the girls (Karissa and Caitlyn) are inseperable. He's so funny with them. He plays whatever they want, dress up, house, school, you name it. We went out for pizza for lunch and the kids were great!! The girls even ate a whole piece of pizza each! Then we went to this awesome candle shop to pick out a house warming gift for Shelby. They picked out a candle warmer that said HOME and FAMILY, "Angel" melts, and Island Pear foaming hand wash for the bathroom. (They can pick out my house warming gifts any time!) Shelby loved them and did a great job setting up her apartment. The kids all loved their rooms, it's a good thing.

Sunday we were off to the Speedway for the races and demolition derby. We go with a big group of friends and family. It's always a great time, loud, smelly, crazy fun. The boys love it! I'm sure we will bring our girl to this annual even as well! Hopefully she'll learn to love it too I wonder if the boys will go to girly events such as the ballet when we have a little girl in the family. That could be interesting!!