I'm baaaaaaack!

See, didn't I tell you that I'm a horrible blogger? :)  Well, I am! I just am really not impressed with my blogging skills. It almost frightens me that someone might actually be reading this.

This weekend we went to Grand Rapids to the Deltaplex. Kylie started cheering with Young Champions in the fall and they got 3rd place for large team division 2 at regionals in Dec. This past weekend was States. WOW, some of the teams were REALLY good! Our team did really well too and the girls had a blast but didn't place this time.

In Nov we got a call from Bethany Christian Services that they had a file of a little boy for us to consider. We went in and looked at his file and picture and met him the next day. He's 5 1/2 and on here I'll be referring to him as "little D". He moved in just a week later.

While we were in GR we also went to Chuck E Cheese's. Little D had never been to one before and the look on his face when we walked in was of pure excitement! He later said " This is the best day ever"... which he usually says atleast once a week about something.. which is typically followed by " I hate you and I dont want to live here anymore" around bedtime... his typical response to "bedtime". But he always wakes up the next day happy to be here .

Well I have to go help Chase do his homework, NOT my favorite parent of parenting at all!!

Here we go!

I havent posted much about our adoption journey. Mainly because I was terrified that something would happen and we wouldnt get approved. But now I feel like I can post all I want! Yesterday I got an email from our agency saying that our Foster Care License had been approved. That also means that our Homestudy was approved too! We ARE approved!!! YAY!!!!! It took a whole year! October of last year my husband made the phone call to Bethany and asked about their Special Needs/Older Child Adoption program, (Foster care adoption) and was told that the PRIDE class was going to start in just one week and would we like to sign up for it? PRIDE is the required class/training that you need to get your license. It was two weekends long and it was actually kind of fun. We worked in groups with other prospective families and problem solved and shared expiriences. Their were people there who were trying to Foster their grandchildren, who ONLY wanted to foster older kids, who only wanted babies, who ONLY wanted to adopt and people who werent sure at all if this was something they really wanted to do or NOT. We learned about bonding, typical foster child issues, imagined would we would feel like if everything we knew and loved (no matter how dysfunctional it was) was suddenly ripped away and we were put with people SOOOOO different than where we came from. It was intertesting.

Then we had to do the paper chase. Gathering all the needed documents , FBI clearances and local police clearances and state police clearances and finacial statements and dog licenses and proof of vaccines and medical clearances and statements of mental health and 3 letters from friends saying how awesome we are... or arent! The letters took the longest but they finally came through and all our friends agreed that we were AWESOME :) .

Finally in April we had our first home visit. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more and my MIL helped. We installed safetly latches on cabinets and made everything look CLEAN :). Oh, and we installed extra smoke detectors too. Our worker came out and.... BARELY LOOKED AT ANY THING! :) figures! She asked us lots of questions like, nothing hard to answer. Mostly things like how was our childhood, asked about my husbands feelings about his own adoption and what type of children we were interested in adopting/fostering. Then she met with my kids. I was NERVOUS because my kids say exactly whats on their minds! She asked if they wanted siblings and both said "YES!" and chase said "if its a boy" and kylie said "if its a girl" LOL . She asked what happens when they get in trouble and chase said " I dont get in trouble" and kylie said " My mom yells at me" OH BOY!!!! The worker asked what she meant and Kylie said " When I dont listen my mom has to yell at me because I cant hear her" UGH... well she had just gotten in trouble a few minutes before the worker got their and i said " Why do I need to yell for you to listen?" LOL The worker actually laughed and said that she's glad they were so open and gets worried when kids dont want to talk to her. SOOOO, that ended that meeting :)

She came back in May for the second visit and I cleaned but not quite as much :). She went over our paperwork and had us clarify a few things and asked to see our carbon monoxide detector and she was off.

Then we waited and wait and waited and finally in August she ended me the copy of our homestudy rough draft.. i proof read it for accuracy and the next day she sent it to Lansing.

And we waited and waited and waited and October 7th I got the email from her telling us our licence was approved, we were good to go!!! We are approved for 2 kids between birth and 7 yrs old of either gender and with special needs up to what is considered "moderate need".

FINALLY, I have wanted to do this since I was little. I have bugged and bugged my husband to be on board with this and one day he just woke up and said "Ok, let do it"

I AM ALIVE!

Well, Like I said before....I'm not a good blogger! I want to be. I read a million blogs a day and I get upset when they don't update frequently. But I'm just not a great writer and I'm a total procrastinator. But here I go again.... one more try!!

So many things have happened this summer already, Cherry Festival is a National festival right here in Traverse City. I've been going to it every year of my life and there's all kinds of fun free things to do and a lot of not so free things to do. :) We opt for the free things. Chase and kylie raced turtles with 100s of other kids, this year neither of their turtles did so great but it was a lot of fun to see all the kids with their speed racers.. If you don't have your own turtle there is a supply of them to borrow. Both kids also participated in the Bubble Blowing contest. Each kid was given a hard as a rock piece of double bubble gum and had 3 chances to blow the biggest bubble they could. It was fun to watch because neither of my kids could even blow a bubble last year. I rarely give them gum... no time to practice! They did fairly well this year but OMG some kids REALLY can blow huge bubbles!!! Chase participated in the Cherry Pie eating contest one day also. Kylie didn't because she doesnt eat cherry pie. Chase smashed his face into the pie and ate like a little pig!!! He was in first place for awhile but had too much in his mouth to swallow which slowed him way down! Let see, what else did we do? We watched dogs run off a dock into a long pool trying to jump the farthest, watched a PowWow and Chase participated in one of the community PowWow dances :) , went to Green Day and did activities that are earth friendly or engery efficient, watched 2 parades, took a tour of the MSU agricultural center ( lots of cherry and apple trees) and watched the Fire Works over West Grand Traverse Bay.

The following week was Chase's 11th birthday... WOW 11!!!! Eleven years ago Chase was born a mere 4 pounds 3oz at 33 weeks gestation.. its been a crazy and windy road! For his birthday Chase invited his friend Sam to go to Michigan's Adventure which is an amusement park/water park. The kids had so much fun and I was reminded that my kids are troopers! Their endurance at parks like that far exceeds the other kids we have taken with us in the park! No whining that they are tired and they will ride EVERYTHING that they are big enough to ride. No so much for the friend Chase brought but it was still fun and we still did a lot! For his birthday Chase wanted money.. LOL . He doesnt get an allowance because we feel that kids should help around the house because thats what family does. But if we wants something with in reason we usually will buy it for him if we are able. So he got some money and bought his first CDs...3 Green Day CDs and 1 Nickleback CD. He also bought several books and a souvenir at Michigan's Adventure.

Early this week we went to Empire and hung out on the beautiful beach of Lake Michigan with my friend Lindsey and her 3 kids. Our 5 kids get along really well and are all close in age....7,7,9,11,11. I can't wait until there's a few more ages in that list!

So, this weekend we are driving down to my friends Stacey house, she offered to let us stay there because Sunday night I am taking kylie to the Jonas Concert and its in detroit which is a 4 hour drive from here. We hope to get down there early sunday so that we can hang out and possibly go to IKEA. Chase is going to stay at their house while Kylie and I go to the concert. She has 2 kids that are 5 and 7. But Chase doesnt mind playing with younger kids and maybe he'll get to go do something fun too.

Hay Brr Ham Linkin Popsicular conclusion

http://lookmind.com/illusions.php?id=186&cat=4

I nearly die laughing everytime Kylie mentions "HayBrrHam Linkin" and recently she was talking about a "popsicular conclusion" that they saw at school... so when I ran across BOTH in one topic, I had to post it!!! Don't you just love the silly things your kids say with out even realizing that they are silly???

New blog

OK, my old blog was severly neglected so I decided to start a brand new one! I have a new digital camera, a laptop and lots of time, righ? So it shouldn't be so hard, right? I wish my blog was fancier but I just don't know how to add all the cool things that other people add! Oh well!



Well this week started out ok, until tuesday night rolled around and Chase's cold started sounding like much more than just a cold. I was pretty sure it was the Flu. I took him in to see the Pediatrician and sure enough, he has Influenza! First case of the season at his Pediatrician's office, leave it to my kid!! So, I took Wednesday off of work and stayed home with him. Thursday I needed to go back to work so he was dropped off at my mom's house to spend the day laying on the couch and watching cable TV. Well, at lunch time I pass Kylie in the hall way and she said "I feel awful!!". She didn't look too bad and I figured she just wanted to go home because her brother didn't have to go to school. She felt a little warm but she had just come from Gym class. I told her to eat lunch and if she didn't feel good after that, she could go to the office to have her temp taken. Well about 45 minutes later while I was outside with the little ones out walks the Sec. and I knew right away, SHE SICK! Yep, I won the worst mom in the world award! I thought my sick little girl was faking it! SOOOO, I found someone to cover the afternoon for me and we all went home. Stayed home Friday too, and now.... now..... I have a fever!!! I don't think that what me and Kylie have is Influenze because we jst have a fever and a sore throat with a small dry cough.... chase on the other hand has a wet cough, fever, body aches and enough snot coming out of his nose to fill an olympic size swimming pool!!!