Two years passed?

Has it really been two years since I've written anything? Time flies.

With a new journey for our family on the horizon, I thought I would come back to the blog to document.

Let's start with an updated picture of what our family looks like today...

Khloe, on the left, is 13 now. Drew, in front, is 11 and Kait, on the right, is 15.
We are a very busy family. The kids are involved in many activities and sports. I still work full time and Rich still travels. We still have not adopted. We "borrow" our God-daughter a lot. She is 2 1/2 and brings much joy to our family! We love her to pieces and the kids fight over who gets to spend time with her and who gets to sit by her in the car! We have her every Sunday. She has been a huge joy and blessing to our family!

Where have we been over the passed two years? We did pursue Miracles In Waiting Embryo Adoption and only received a few emails of inquiry, nothing that was ever returned after the initial response. In April of 2011 I had another Laparoscopy to clean out the endometriosis. By August the pain was unbearable. Some nights I couldn't even walk up the stairs to bed. My Dr had me keep a journal of pain for several months, and after seeing in black and white that I averaged 3 days a month pain free, I finally agreed to a hysterectomy. I had a complete hysterectomy and oopererectomy in September 2011. I was ready to be pain free and I had conceded to the fact that we would not have any more biological children. My heart and soul were finally at peace with that. I am happy to report that I am 99% pain free and it is wonderful!

I am back here posting to document our journey into Foster Care. We are currently pursing our Foster Care license and praying about what that will mean for our family.
My mom has done relative and non-relative foster care for 28 years. I have seen relatives in our home for care while their mom got her life back together, I have seen relatives adopted, I have seen severely medically fragile children adopted, severely medically fragile children die, healthy toddlers placed and adopted, newborns placed and adopted, teenagers placed and removed, teenagers placed and adopted. I've seen the system fail and I've seen the system work. I had always said that I could never do foster care. As a young adult, I resented the fact that my mom couldn't be as involved in my life and in the life of my kids that I would like her to be because she still had small kids of her own (she is now 57 and her youngest is 18 months). I didn't think that foster care was for me or my family. However, the Lord's plans are not always our own.

I have felt the tug of foster care for about three years now. We looked into it about three years ago and had a licensing worker over to the house for an application and interview. She stressed how the State's goal is to return children to their parents and that was enough to scare me away. At the time, I wanted to adopt. I want to add to our family, forever. That is when we started to consider Africa. We wanted something more guaranteed to be forever and decided that we couldn't take the risk of foster care. We started on a wild goose chase to adopt from Africa. What a hot mess that was. I know in my heart of hearts that God spoke to me. I know that we were to pursue that, but...we kept hitting brick wall after brick wall and it left me confused and spent. It was about this time that my God-daughter was born. I think that she was my saving grace. She was the balm to my aching heart. I got to hold her and love her and rock her to sleep sometimes. We borrowed her every chance that we got and we loved on her every minute we could. I think she brought me out of the haze of that all consuming fertility fight and brought me to the here and the now. She has been a breath of fresh air and we are blessed to have her in our life!

We have been busy living our lives, traveling, running kids here and there, working, etc. The yearning for another child has gotten less and less as the years have passed. Recently, we were handed an opportunity to possibly take custody of a newborn. My mom's youngest foster child's bio-mom was pregnant. Bio-moms rights have been terminated and so the baby would immediately go into DCFS care. My mom is licensed for 6 and has 6 at home, so she could not take the sibling. We thought it would be perfect for us to take the sibling so that they could be raised to know each other. We were working with the placement agency to secure all required paperwork/classes. Our initial call was in May of 2012. We were trying to get into PRIDE classes that started in early June. The class was full and they would not make an exception or let us apply on a stand-by basis. My husband & I had our physicals & fingerprints done in early June. I was pushing to get classes done so that when the baby was born we would be through that part. Rich would be working in July, so I registered for a class by myself. I drove the 90 minutes to the class only to find that the location had been moved and I was not notified. I re-registered Rich & I for another expedited class 90 minutes away and we had our first class this week. In the meantime, the baby was born and the mother disappeared with her. They were missing for 11 days. DCFS, our Agency and many people were looking for them. They resurfaced after 11 days and revealed that the bio-mom had signed the baby over to the baby's grandfather. Baby's grandfather did not even raise his own children due to drug & alcohol abuse. As of this week, DCFS has released the baby to the care of the grandfather and dismissed the case. I still have many many questions and I am not 100% that the baby won't end up in DCFS custody sometime soon, but for the time being we have to move forward and ask ourselves, what now. Do we continue forward with foster care? Do we want temporary placements in our home? What is best for our family? What is best for our kids? Are we being "called" to do this? How many? What age? So many questions!

For now we are moving forward with our classes and hoping to complete those this month. Our licensing worker has been to the house once and she has two more visits scheduled this month. By the end of August I believe we will have everything completed. That gives us plenty of time to think and pray. Will you pray with us?