best blogger. ever. ha!

yeah i am NO good at keeping up with this blog. funny how i get so frustrated when bloggers i follow stop posting. :) you are all forgiven, by the way.

if we EVER get another placement, i will probably have a lot more to write about! i say that, and i have three kiddos and a full-time job to keep me on my toes. campbell has been in karate since tucker left, and we are loving every minute of watching our little midget "Ki-yah!" all over the place! trey and alyssa are doing very well in school, and making mom and dad very proud.

it's christmas eve EVE, and i am feeling very blessed. we have all three of our kids home with us this year for christmas (they go to their other parents' every other year), and everyone is healthy, for the most part (we have some sniffles, coughs and sneezes, but nothing serious). we are blessed to have jobs, health, children, and gifts under the tree! god is so good.

oops!

"my poor, sweet husband had to sit with me through two hours of training today after only three hours of sleep."

LOL so i just logged in to find this. a not-even-close-to-allllllll-i-wrote post. awesome. well, it's been so long, i don't remember much from that training weekend! that was the first weekend in november, and here we are with the month almost over!

i can't believe tucker has been gone for so long, and that we still do not have a placement. i know god has a plan, and there s a reason we don't have our little guy yet. BUT in the meantime, we can do respite! we just kept our friends' two foster babies over thanksgiving week! i will spare you all the details, but basically they were leaving the state to visit family, and the munchkins weren't able to go. we had some hard moments, but for the most part they were amazing and i got to spoil them rotten for their foster parents. :) we painted every little unfinished wood item from hobby lobby, and even made clay figures that we tried to bake. well that would have worked out if i had gotten the right kind of molding clay! what we ended up with was a melted mess!!

oh the horror! poor brobee is the only one who somewhat made it lol. thankfully, the kids got a laugh out of my "oops" and no one broke down in tears. :)

the house is quiet today with only my girls. trey is at his mom's for a few more hours, and the other two have gone home with their foster parents. hopefully soon they will be reuinted with their mommy and life will go back to a new normal for their family. until then, they are in great hands with some of the sweetest people i know.

i fib, i fib

okay, so i told a little fib. i'm back and i don't have an update or a new placement, but i did want to share this giveaway! 5 million minus 1 is having a "little" giveaway over on their blog, and this is a cause i FULLY support. anything to bring home an orphan to his/her new mommy and daddy! check it out and decide if it's something you can do! http://5millionminus1.blogspot.com/2011/10/giveaway-adoption-style.html

 also, don't forget to follow the mowen family on their journey to adopt their second and THIRD sons from ethiopia!! these boys are PRECIOUS, and i know their parents are beyond excited to get them home! let's help them do this!! (i have a link to their blog on the right side bar.)

i totally thought we were going to get a placement tonight. no, we didn't get another call, but i just "felt" it. same as i did when we got the call for tucker. hopefully soon!

trial and failure......

a week ago yesterday, tucker left our home. initially we thought it was temporary, but we found out the next day that he would be leaving for good. i can't get into the details of the how and why, but in the end, this is what is best for tucker and for our family. my heart is broken for him. that he lost another family. he has to make yet another move. tonight he will transition into his new home. i pray he will be happy and find healing.

tucker is pretty sad about the transition. he doesn't really want to start over, but he understands that this wasn't a request. he has called us every day for the last week. i'm not sure how much longer the communication will continue, or if it's even healthy for him, but for now, i allow him to keep calling.

on a different note, we received a placement call on friday for a 4 week old baby girl. we had to say no to that placement because she would have to go to daycare, but no daycare will take her that young. then today we got a call for an 11 month old baby girl (is there a theme?? what happened to a boy? :)). we actually said yes to this placement, however another family was chosen because the foster mom was a SAHM (stay-at-home mom). alyssa and campbell were disappointed, but trey was happy to hear he wasn't getting another sister!

so i guess you'll hear from me again when we have some news!

update

life is BUSY these days! especially with school back in session. i have recently gotten aggravated with other bloggers whose blogs i read (at least) weekly that haven't been posting. then i realized, i NEVER post! i guess i don't feel like i have a lot to say (oh yes, i love to talk), especially since i'm confused/concerned about what i should and shouldn't write about our new family.

i will say things are hard right now. the honeymoon phase is over. i remember telling another foster mommy friend that "if this is the honeymoon phase, how much worse will it get?" maybe i shouldn't speak anymore. i think i wish things on myself. ahhh. he really is a good kid. he's a good kid with a big heart who has suffered a lot of loss and hurt. he just hasn't quite figured out how to get his anger/aggressions out in a way that doesn't get him into trouble of some kind. he doesn't trust adults because the investigator who handled his case lied and told him he wouldn't tell anyone else if he would just give him details. sooooo, when you don't trust adults and kids make fun of you for being different or sensitive, who do you turn to? god, yes, but tell that to a pre-teen who has been disappointed and let down by adult after adult his whole life. tell that to the child who has lost not their first, but SECOND set of parents. yes, you read that right. tell that to a child who lives in a home with strangers who have weird rules, and has siblings spread all over because they are not stable enough to live together. he believes in god and he believes in the teachings of his word. but tell me he feels it when he has no faith or trust in the rest of the world. how do you tell him that everyone in this world will let you down at some point or another?

we have had it rough the last couple weeks. the "doctor" seems to think we're miracle workers over here and took him off all his meds. less than two weeks later, meds out of his system, and we have a very broken and destructive child on our hands. PTL we're back on them and all is right in MY world for right now. his? not so much. he had a sibling visit recently with a few of his brothers (not all are able to make it to each visit), and two of them had written him a letter basically telling him to have a good life and "don't forget us!" ha. how did that get past the CPS worker?

counselling sessions are going from bi-weekly to weekly due to the recent "issues" we've been having. he's been having. i think this is good for him, but not so much for the rest of us. kind of ties us to the house every saturday early afternoon. with counselling, all night homework, and a weekly structured activity (karate), bi-weekly home visits from our case manager, and monthly sibling visits that take him out of school for an entire day, it's a very foster child-centered home at the moment. that is exactly what we were hoping to avoid when we entered the system as foster parents. if i could change the system, i would. i know all of these things are in place to help the child, but it certainly doesn't leave much room to just be a family. to be a normal kid.

this weekend i have an angel baby in my house! she is beyond adorable, and i might not let her mommy have her back! :) we're providing respite care for our friends who are also foster parents, and we have one of their five foster kiddos. she is sweet as can be, and the girls (alyssa and campbell) are in love. alyssa told me tonight after little miss fell asleep that she doesn't want to give her back lol. too bad she has two handsome brothers that would miss her too much, not to mention her mama and daddy! anyway, just wanted to update those who still read....better get this posted before the battery goes!

9-11 Remembrance/Update

i can't imagine that anyone in this country under the age of maybe six has forgotten where they were ten years ago. i don't remember all the details, but i was at work with my friends. we went to the break room to watch the coverage on CNN. i went through the motions the rest of the day, wondering what was next. was this it? was this the end? i've been told my WHOLE life that Jesus is coming back.....i just couldn't imagine that something like this would happen to our blessed country, and the world wasn't coming to an end. i felt like the chicken who cried "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" i felt panicked. i knew i wasn't living the way i should, and i was suddenly concerned with where i would spend eternity. i think a lot of people questioned that. (i heard on the radio yesterday that church attendance in NY has increased something like 16% since the 9-11 attacks.) i went home with a very little Alyssa, and sat and watched the news for the. rest. of. the. day. i remember my brother and his friend sitting next to us arguing if they would be drafted into the military. my brother was very happy to reveal that he was the only boy. the only boy left in our family to carry on our last name. (side note: he has three daughters, and who's to say but him and my sister-in-law, but i think they're done! :) ) i was so proud of the way our president stepped up, took charge, and was such a calming voice in the midst of so many emotions. i know a lot of people have a lot to say about president bush, and not all of it good, but my heart goes out to him. i think he did a wonderful job as president. he wasn't perfect. he did some things i didn't necessarily agree with, but how do you make an entire country happy? you can't. enough about politics. i just appreciate his honesty, his dignity, and his convictions. i'm proud to call him "neighbor." (i only WISH i lived in preston hollow.)

onto happier things that happen on 9-11, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIENNE!!! my vbffl (very best friend for life....in case you don't have a pre-teen girl) is celebrating her birthday with her adorable family in japan. <3 you!!

UPDATE on us....things with Tucker are turning into our new "normal." he is pretty good, very neat and clean. he does most tasks fairly quickly and does what he's asked to do. i am waiting to see if this is our "honeymoon" phase. if it is, i don't know how much more "new normal" i can take. it's very hard having a stranger in your home that doesn't seem to want to connect. i read in a blog this week that it takes as many years with you as the child was without you to attach. make sense? so that means by the time he's 24 we should be where we're supposed to be?? ha. he struggles in some areas of school, so as the days become shorter, and the nights longer, we find ourselves staying in more. homework that is done in less than an hour for the other two seems to consume the rest of his evening. then it's dinner, study for this or that test, shower and bed. sounds fun, huh? i recently posted on facebook that i can pretty much quote the entire first chapter of my kids' social studies book. i wasn't kidding. i read every section so that i could find the answers and explain to him how i found the answers. my other kids are getting less and less of our attention as we focus on making it to the next test. i don't know if he's testing us, or just likes the individual attention. i can tell you that he was AMAZING this weekend when it was just him and Campbell. the other two big kids went to stay the night with friends, so Eddie and i took Tucker and Campbell to eat and shop. wasn't exactly a thrilling evening, but he very much enjoyed the somewhat undivided attention. i am dreading our next visit with our case worker. Tucker has pretty much decided we are trying to add to his already destroyed childhood by making him a slave to his flash cards (math and science). yes, he actually said this. yes, we know we're right to encourage him to study. HOWEVER, i can only imagine how this will translate when he has his one-on-one time wiht his case worker and tells her what WONDERFUL people we are. :)

a couple things to pray for if you still peek in here from time to time (i am THAT slacker blogger. sorry!): 1. that we find a Christian therapist for Tucker that he truly likes and that can help him heal (monthly therapy is a requirement). 2. that he finds the "fun" in school and makes amazing friends like Trey and Alyssa have (i truly LOVE their friends), and takes his school work seriously. 3. that we have patience with a broken child who is also hitting puberty while transitioning into a new, big family. 4. that God's will be done. i have a lot of things on my mind and my heart, and my husband and i are not on the same page. this is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not "right now!" i can't exactly go into it, but if you know me, you may have an idea.

thank you if you're still reading and checking in on us. i am still trying to decide what i should and shouldn't write on here. i know i won't be able to give specifics of each and every meltdown/bad behavior/naughty words said, but i want to be able to blog openly and honestly, so that you can really get a feel for what being a foster parent is like. i can say this, regardless of how easy or hard the days are, i would do this again because i know God has called us to care for the orphan and the widow. this is not exactly the experience i dreamed about. i reallllllllly wanted to be involved with the bio parents. in this case, there are no parental visits, so i can't have that angels singing, glory moment where the bio mom/dad/parents get their lives straightened out and the angelic child i have been helping raise has now gone back to live happily ever after with his birth family. maybe God knew i wouldn't be as good at that part of it as i'd like to think i'd be. :) either way, it ain't happenin'!

the hard parts

i thought i took everything into consideration when i decided to put my kids names on this blog. what i didn't think about was when the kids are older, they could be online, find this blog and read about details i might not have wanted them to know, espeically not tucker. as if he needs to go back and read about how hard this or that was for me with him here, especially after everything else he's been through. i started this blog hoping i could be open and honest about my feelings during this process. there are so many blogs out there and it seems like they leave out the hard parts, or they hint that things are rough but don't elaborate, leaving you guessing. ugh....there is so much i want to share, but i can't. what i can tell you is that things have been going a little easier with tucker being here than i thought. he is very good to put away his dishes, clean up, etc. there are some other things and some attachment and bonding issues that we had anticipated with his age. i'm sure it happens at all ages, but pre-teens in general are not as receptive to affection like little kids are. besides that, i'm not always the best at giving it out. that is definitely something i need to work on!

anyway, right now i'm trying to decide if i should just abandon this blog and start a new one where i leave out some of the specifics like names and picutres so that i can reallly tell it like it is and not leave out the hard parts. something to think about!