Yay for Spring!

We live in Illinois, so we have the severity of the changing of the seasons.  Cold, barren winters.  Snow.  Freezing temperatures.  The green grass of spring and the budding trees, the scorching heat of summer and the beautiful colors of fall.  Spring is one of my favorites.  I love, love, love the fresh green grass and it excites me to see the buds on the trees.  It seems like it's been forever since we have had leaves on the trees!  I love the warm up, windows open, sun still shining at 8pm.

The kids have a light sports load in spring.  Khloe is running Jr High track and playing on a volley ball league and Drew starts base ball practice tonight.  Kaitlyn has started volunteer work and appearances for her title of Miss Peoria Metro's Outstanding Teen.  It's busy, but not as bad a winter sports schedules!

Things are moving forward with our foster/adoption situation.  After four phone calls in one day, I finally got someone to call me back from the agency and I requested that something be put in writing for our visit schedules.  I felt this would help us to all be on the same page.  They were quick to get that done and out in the mail, I had the document the same week.  We have been approved for visits every weekend, picking up Friday night and dropping off at the sitters on Monday morning.  Phone calls and week night dinners are allowed as long as it works for both families.  The scheduled move date is May 24th!!  30 days from today!!  I am very excited and very much looking forward to it.  We did have our meeting with the agency counselor last Friday.  We thought we were going in to tell our girl that we would be her forever family and that we were adopting her.  We found out when we got there that wasn't the case.  It was a difficult appointment for our sweet girl and we all agreed that telling her she would be moving in with us would be a good place to start.  I think she is excited to be staying with us, but understandably, torn between missing her current foster family.  My heart breaks for her.  She has had a difficult life in her short 7 years.  I can't wait until she is home with us and knows that she will never be moved again.

We had her last weekend and she is such a breath of fresh air to me.  There are so many things I miss about having little ones around.  She and I took a walk with the wagon and she picked some "flowers" (dandelions) for "daddy".  It's been so long since someone gave me a bouquet of dandelions :)  We went to the park and swang on the swings.  It's been years since I have played at the park.  It's nice to have someone who wants to spend time with you :)  Our teenagers have their own agenda.

Last night we had Pizza and Play dough night!

 We had our girl over for dinner and a short play night.

Khloe & Sweet Girl were sharing a room.  The 14 year old decided she didn't want to share a room so we moved Khloe into our room, moved our room to the family room and the family room to the formal living room.  I spent all weekend last weekend moving rooms and rearranging.  I'm still trying to get things settled and catch up on laundry.  All of the rooms will be painted, so we will start on that project soon.  I'll post some before and after pics.  We have 30 days to get things settled.

Enjoy spring.  Breath the fresh air, go for a walk, go to the park, enjoy your days.