The Need for Community

January 25, 2012 By 3 Comments

Jesse and I have been full of emotions the last couple of days relating to our foster care journey. We have been everywhere from super excited to crazy scared. My mind is constantly running with things we need to buy and questions we need to ask. I guess there is really no way of knowing what it will be like until we get our first placement. We are at the point now that we feel so close, yet still so far away.

It’s been a full year now since we first started getting these ideas of becoming foster parents in our heads. Last January we finally decided to jump in with both feet and start figuring out what was required to do something like this. We quickly realized that we were all of a sudden in over our heads. Having just left my job to work with Jesse, we were already navigating as much change as we could handle for the moment. Even though we decided that we needed to stick with the class we had started, we knew that we were not ready to have a child in our home right away.

We’ve come a long way since last January. We are confident (yet still a little scared) that we can do this. We are so much more financially stable than we were at this time last year and we’ve now managed to settle into a work routine that agrees with both of us.

It’s a little unfair of us to expect our licensing people to all of sudden start working at lightning-speed to finish up our process, after we’ve been taking our time getting ready for them. But that’s exactly what we want to happen!

All of this to say that we think it’s time we start attending the foster care support group. This area of our lives comes with such a specific set of needs and emotions that we are starting to realize that most people can’t really relate to. We’ve been invited to go before, but felt weird going knowing that we were no where near actually being foster parents. Now that it’s getting closer… I think we could really benefit from meeting some friends that have been where we are. It’s a little scary to put ourselves “out there,” but I think that it could be really awesome too!

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Project: Nursery

January 23, 2012 By 19 Comments

I feel like we’ve made some huge progress toward our foster care goal in recent weeks. Some projects have been no-so-much fun to work on, others have been more exciting. This project falls into the exciting category… our nursery is set up!!

Several months ago, our home office was set up in the first spare bedroom. After moving all of our office related things into our bedroom, we got to work transforming the room into a nursery.

Before

We painted a light beige color which we thought would be nice and neutral.

Painting

The most exciting part was finally purchasing and setting up our new crib! I think it’s about the only brand new item in there and it looks SO pretty! Jesse left to go to the store the second we got the notification that our online order was ready for pickup. Then he came home and immediately started working on puttin it together. He’s getting really good at furniture assembly these days!

CribJesse assembling cribJesse finishing crib

I couldn’t wait to see how cute the bedding would look in the crib. A friend of a friend (a complete stanger to us) donated the entire bedding set, all the coordinating accessories, and the changing table. The best part about it is that it’s perfect for our situation of not knowing if we will get a boy or a girl. It’s a good mix of pink and blue. Love it!

BeddingCrib with bedding

The rules for crib arrangement include being placed away from windows with no pictures or shelves hanging above the crib. So, I found this sticker decal to decorate that bare wall without breaking any of the rules. Jesse helped me put it up since my brain wouldn’t have been able to arrange them randomly. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Jesse making treeGrowing treeTree over crib

My parents let us use the rocking chair they still had from back when my brother was little. It makes a nice little sitting area by the window.

Sitting areaBasket

The changing table is cute and polka-dotted and filled with a few random items that people have given us already.

Changing table

I found these free printables that I thought would go well in the room. I used some old frames that we already had so these didn’t cost us anything.

Pictures

Finally, we used Jesse’s old dresser that we had in the guest room since it matched the other wood pieces we had in there. I put the cute, little matching lamp on top along with a teddy bear that my grandmother made for me when I was little.

Dresser

So… how do you like it?

Room leftRoom right

Clearly we’ve decided that we’d like our first placement to be a pretty young one. It seems like the natural place to start. We’ll likely expand to accepting older children later on as we get a little older and gain some parenting experience. We’re still working on nailing down the exact age that we feel comfortable starting with for now.

The next item on our checklist is to go for fingerprinting. Hopefully we’ll be able to get an appointment for that sometime this week. Yay for progress!

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Foster Care Licensing

July 1, 2011 By 10 Comments

We are very excited to share that we are working on becoming licensed for foster care! This is something that has been on our hearts and minds for a long time now, and we are finally at a point in our lives where we can really make it happen. We still have a ways to go until our house meets all the requirements to be a licensed facility, but we are slowly and surely working to make it happen. Although we have already shared our plans with family and close friends, we’ve kinds been keeping it on the down-low until we got a little further along in the process and had a better idea ourselves about what the process would entail. So that’s where we are now.

HomeBack in January, we wanted to start looking into adoption. We went to an adoption orientation class to see where we begin. Then… mid January we decided that it was time for me to leave my job and work full-time at home with Jesse. Having such a huge life change made us wonder if we should put the whole plan on the back burner for a while. Then, after several weeks of things going really well, we decided we might as well sign up for the next step… taking MAPP class.

MAPP stands for Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting. The class basically teaches parenting techniques and how raising a non-biological child is much different than raising a biological child. The class is required for anyone looking to become an adoptive or foster parent. I’ll have to go into more detail about what we learned later, because we learned SO much. However the most surprising thing that we learned was that God was not calling us to adopt, but instead He wanted us to foster.

The first MAPP class was about how adoption and foster care works and what the differences are. By the end of the first class I was absolutely sure that I wanted to foster, which really surprised me because I was completely against the idea going into the process. The next night at dinner I casually asked Jesse how he would feel about fostering instead. He felt the exact same way I did! I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it was that made me change my heart and mind, but we changed our status from adoption to foster at class the next week.

We were very glad that we decided to take the faith based MAPP class held at Idlewild Church. One of their ministries is called FACES, which stands for For A Child’s Eternal Salvation. The focus of the class was not only to learn how to provide a physically safe home for children coming into the system of care, but also share God’s love with them while doing so. We heard dozens of stories about how children’s lives have been changes through foster care. The main teacher of the class was a long time foster parent who also had both adopted and biological children. She was full of wisdom on how to relate to these kids. I think she said she’s had something like 150 foster kids over the years. They ended up adopting some of their foster kids, some were able to go home to their parents, and some were adopted by other families. She had amazing stories about the impact they are able to have on the biological families that they keep in touch with of the kids they have adopted.

Matthew 25:35-40 … For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“The the righteous will and him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Because of our many health challenges, it isn’t very easy for us to travel much. Therefore, it is not realistic for us to go on exciting missions trips around the world. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be a light where we are. In fact we want to bring people exactly where we are, right into our home. We are so excited to be moving along in this process and can’t wait until we are approved!

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