It's been a while!

Hi all! Wow! It's been way too long since I posted anything to this blog. Can you tell that life has gotten crazy busy!!

Now that all three kids are legally free - Yippee! - we are just waiting for all the final paperwork to be done and our adoption court date to be set. We received a large box full of paperwork to read on Daniel & Gretchen. Five volumes, each about 2" thick. It is ours to keep, and there is lots of info in it. Some heart breaking stuff, but important nonetheless. Now we are waiting to get Austin's file. Since he has been in the system longer, I'm imagining that his paperwork will probably fill two if not three boxes. Yikes! All the homestudy stuff is done, and once Austin's paperwork gets delivered, we can then start negotiating the adoption support. And once that is done, it's time to set a court date. We are thinking that it will be sometime in July. At least, that is what we are praying for, and what our adoption worker seems to think will happen.

Other than that, life in the foster care world has been quiet. We are not taking in any new kiddos until we can get our three adopted officially, and even then, we may wait for just a while. We will probably start out with emergency short-term care, but as most of you foster parents know, "short-term" to the state usually means "long-term" to the foster parents. The child that comes "only for a week or two" ends up being a six-month placement, and you fall in love! If we are not careful, we'll have adopted a dozen kids before you can blink. Something my husband is not all that cool with! I would like at least six, but he thinks I'm nuts! But I have this funny feeling we are not stopping with three. Who knows what God has planned for us!

So there's the latest. I'll try and back date some posts with pictures to let you know what we've been up to for the last couple of months, but I don't promise how long it will take. Right now, all three kids are down for naps, but I don't guarantee that will last long, since Gretchen went down half an hour before the boys!

Hope you are all having a good day! Happy Monday! I'd love to hear how you are doing!!

When Love Takes You In

This is a great video, and a really touching story about adoption. If you are not familiar with Steven Curtis Chapman, he is a Christian musican/singer and is both a biological father and an adoptive father. He has an organization that helps people adopt children. My friend dedicated this song to our family, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Report on Adoption Shower

The adoption shower was really fun, and we were extremely blessed with gifts for our family. They all truly "showered" us with love! Here are a few pictures to share:
Our lovely cake!
Sharing the story.
A friend's adopt devotion.
All our fun gifts!
Getting a little help opening gifts!

Adoption Shower

Our church has decided to throw us an adoption shower. I'm looking forward to it! I think it will be lots of fun, but I'm trying to decide whether or not to take the kids - it starts at 7 pm - or just get a sitter for them. 7 pm is their bedtime, so I'm sure the kids will be cranky if they come. I'm still weighing my options.

I'm trying to put together a slide show of various pictures throughout the last 2+ years that we've had the kids. I take a huge amount of photos - it's a good thing it's from a digital camera and I don't print all of them, or I would be bankrupt! But I have a ton of photos on my hard drive to choose from.

We also just got some great photos done professionally of the kids, so I'll bring those to display. That way, if the kids stay home, at least their images will be there!

It's a different thing registering for gifts now that the kids are older. Not as easy to do, but I think I've given everyone a wide variety of things to choose from.

Our Adoption Caseworker

We have been assigned our adoption caseworker! How exciting! Daniel & Gretchen's case has been forwarded on to her, and we are just waiting for Austin's case to be forwarded - it is from a different social worker than the other two.

Our ACW came by on Monday afternoon and spent a little over 2 hours with us, asking questions, taking in information, observing our interactions with the kids. We were told several months ago that once the kids were legally free, it would still take 6-9 months for the adoptions to be finalized. But when we asked our ACW for the timeline, she said that she thinks she'll be able to finalize by the end of May or mid-June at the latest!! How totally cool is that!! We are so very excited - we'll be throwing a huge celebration this summer!!

She comes back next Thursday for another visit, and then she'll come back again when she has everything from the kids' files redacted that needs to be. Then we'll get all their information - most of which we know, but there may be some court related stuff that we haven't seen yet.

It's hard to believe that we can actually see a very close timeframe for all of this. We have been waiting for so long to legally call these kids our own, and it has finally come! Yippee!!

Menu Plan Monday

I've decided to join Laura with her Menu Plan Monday. This will be my first post, so forgive me if it's a little simple and plain.

Monday - Ham Leftovers with Potatoes and Veggies

Tuesday - Meatloaf with Rice Pilaf

Wednesday - Crockpot Chicken

Thursday - Pork Chop Casserole

Friday - Homemade Pizza

Saturday - Spaghetti & Garlic Bread (and mom's night out with the girls, so daddy gets to cook!)

Sunday - Pork Roast

Maybe next week when my head cold is all gone I can jazz this up a bit!

Is night really for sleeping??

Well, it's almost 4 am, and I've been up since 1:30 am. First, it was with Daniel. I think he's having some growing pains. He woke up twice tonight, rubbing his legs and saying "owie". I spent 30 minutes each time with him, rubbing his legs until he could fall back to sleep. The second time he wanted new jammies on - not quite sure what that was all about. As soon as I changed his diaper and put him in new jammies, he settled right down. Maybe they other jammies are itchy - I'll have to check that out later. At 2 am Gretchen decided she needed a bottle, so wwe cuddled in the rocking chair while she drank her bottle. I really need to break her of this waking up in the middle of the night for 2 ounces! She's 14 months old, and it's high time she slept through the night. But I'm a softie! I got her back to sleep, and went back to bed myself, and while trying to fall asleep I kept thinking of e-mails I needed to send out. So, I got up, sent the e-mails, and now, almost 2 hours later, I'm still sitting here at the computer. It just sucks you in sometimes! As soon as I post this, I'm headed back to bed. Hope you all were able to sleep better tonight than I was!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here are our little Leprechaun's, wishing you all the best for St. Patty's Day!

A Cup of Sunshine

I took these pictures on Feb. 17, when Gretchen was still sick with the flu. I caught her playing in the sunshine streaming through our living room window, and it looked just like she had caught a cup of sunshine in her little green cup. You can see by her eyes that she's not feeling good - poor little thing! She lost 2 pounds while she was sick with the flu. But she's much better now, and eating normally again.

Introducing Austin!

Just a few fun photos of our Little Man!