First day...ish...

Bet you're all wondering how our first day with kids went...well it didn't. :-)  We still had some de-escalation training to finish up and had to have our TB test finished so they postponed our first day with kids until next week.

So in place of the "first day of school" post, I'll try to give you a better understanding of what life is/will be like here.  We have a big house.  It has 3 rooms and 2 bathrooms for us. We have chosen to put both kids in the same room so we can use the 3rd bedroom as a personal living room/craft room for us.  The rooms are actually quite big so it's not a problem.  When we finish getting everything unpacked, I'll post pictures.  We have a communal living room, kitchen, dining room, and office area.  Finally, there are three boy's bedrooms all with their own bathrooms.  "Our" rooms are all separate from the rest of the house and can be locked to keep our section private.  We have a private entrance through our room as well.

There are a total of six cottages all next door to each other.  Three boys cottages and 3 girls cottages.  We live in Cottage 2.  We will only be houseparenting boys.  We are the "relief parents."  All houseparents work three weeks on, one week off.  When the houseparents from Cottage 1 have their off week, their boys come live in our house. The next week, when the houseparents from Cottage 3 have their off week, their boys come live with us.  The 3rd week, we work as backup parents...basically help with doctor's appointments, help shuttle kids around, etc.  And then, we are off for the fourth week.

At capacity, each cottage can have up to 8 kids.  Currently, one cottage has 6 boys and one has 4.  The boys range in age from 3-19.  Once they graduate high school, the kids are assisted in finding a college to attend or another place to live.  All the kids go to school "in town" (2 miles down the road).  They get breakfast and lunch at school.  As housemom, I'm responsible for feeding them afternoon snacks, dinner, and an evening snack...and all meals on the weekends.  We treat them as part of our family.  If we run errands, they run errands.  When we go to church, they go to church.  We all eat dinner around a large table (think Duggar's). 

We are really happy here.  I'm not so naive as to think that life with lots of boys of varied pasts won't be difficult at times.  Still, we are thankful for this opportunity.  We have peace about our decision to be here and truly feel God's presence in this decision.

P.S.  Any questions that you all have?  Anything you're curious about?  If you know me at all, you know nothing's off limits!  Ask away!

The country

The picture doesn't do it justice...the air is clear, the grass is green, the sky is blue, it smells like the perfect mixture of dirt and grass, there are stars at night, big hills, beautiful sunsets, God bless Texas! :-)

It's really happening

The house is all moved...all that's left in our house now are things that are staying for the new tenants. Our new house is all set up minus a few odds and ends. Looks like we're really doing this.

Today was our last Sunday at Northside as members. Not forever, we will be back...just felt weird. I felt sad today as we got rid of the rest of our things and our house was completely empty. we brought both kids home from the hospital to that house...it's been very good to us. But, in the end, it is just a house.

We head out to Cherokee bright and early tomorrow morning. We have boys in our home starting Wednesday. Again, we are really doing this. Catch you all on the flip side!

Last day of work

Today was my last day working as a process engineer...at least for now.  Who knows if I'll ever go back, but for today I'm done.  It felt really weird walking out.  There have been a lot of weird feelings lately.  Feeling nervous and excited, feeling ready to go and wanting to stay, insecurity, hurt feelings, apprehension, delite, and many others.  It's been a crazy few weeks.

At this point, I'm ready to get there, have my house set up, and see what my new life looks like.  It's been a long day.  We did get most everything moved in this weekend.  Greg's mom is here and with her motivation we got pretty much every box unpacked.  Things are coming together!  We do our first aid/CPR training Thursday, and then we head up there with the last of our stuff.  Greg's mom flies out Sunday morning so we'll be dropping her off, heading to church, then heading back to Cherokee to start our time there.

Our new changes

I posted on Facebook, but thought I'd go ahead and give a few more details about what's coming up in our lives.

We are headed on a new adventure.  We're going to go work for Cherokee Home for Children as relief parents.  It's totally a fluke thing (AKA God thing)...we had not been thinking about doing this in any way.  Two days before Christmas my mom asked if I'd take her and my kids to Cherokee to see my grandmother who was visiting my uncle.  My uncle is the director for CHFC.  While there he was talking about this Public Relations position that was open.  I started thinking, "hmmm, I'd be really good at that!"  So, we talked more, he showed my mom and I around the home and everything and I texted Greg, "think you could live in Cherokee?"  There were a few problems with that already: 1) the position really needed to be a male since the other part of the job was to fund raise (sometimes in very conservative churches, hence why it needed to be a male) and 2) I'm the director's niece.  Not to mention the fact that I wasn't completely convinced Greg and I even wanted to move to Cherokee at this point.

We figured, what the heck...so, Greg and I submitted our resumes along with a proposal to split the position into two with Greg and I splitting the workload.  We were met with a phone call saying it just wouldn't work.  The position reported directly to my uncle and being that I'm his niece it just wasn't the right thing for the home.  We totally got it.  We were VERY disappointed.  I didn't realize how much I really wanted it to happen until my heart totally sank during that call.

A few days later we got another call with another opportunity.  My uncle asked if we would consider being house parents.  We really weren't sure...house parents are a whole different ball game.  We have small children, I have a great job, we live a very comfortable lifestyle, we live down the street from my parents, we'd have other people's kids in our house, could we be good examples, do we have what it takes, how would our children adapt...these and so much more started going through our heads.  Filled with questions we asked my uncle at least 20 different things.  We prayed, and talked, and prayed, and talked, and decided this is something God put on our hearts and in our lives.

To give more history: Greg is adopted.  He was adopted at age 2.  He lived with a foster family for over a year before his parents got him.  He (and I) have always felt strongly that without places like Cherokee and other similar resources there are far too many ways for kids to fall through the cracks.  By giving homes/families to children who need them, we are fulfilling something Greg has always felt passionately about.

We had one more hurdle...convince the board that we should be able to be hired despite my relationship with the director.  We prayed and prayed the entire board meeting.  We finally got the call late that night and were officially offered the position!  Wow.  We were really doing this!  After waiting for some loose ends (AKA my bonus) at work, I gave two weeks notice and we're heading that way soon.

We move next weekend and officially have kids in our home starting March 7th.  I still feel a little shocked and honestly ridiculously overwhelmed.  Packing up our house, deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, figuring out how to do a birthday party for Beth (who turns one this week), and still working everyday up until the day we move has totally maxed out my stress threshold.  So, prayers for my peace level are much appreciated.  I will hopefully continue to include you all on our adventures!

Exciting changes heading our way...

There are exciting changes heading our direction.  Don't really want them all on the internet quite yet, but I do hope that as things change around here that I will also be a little more motivated to keep my blog up to date! (and we are NOT pregnant...that seems to be where everyone's mind goes first!)

Other things going on in our lives: Bethany is turning ONE this month.  Crazy.  We've had some drama lately with her weight.  She was not gaining weight like she was supposed to.  I ended up deciding to wean her...that was a very difficult decision for me.  After having nursed Bruce for 18 months I was feeling a lot of guilt about weaning her, but in the end it was the right decision.  She just wasn't gaining weight.  She has been dropping percentiles and at her 9 month appointment she had dropped to the 5th percentile for weight (still in the 95th for length).  Our pediatrician was concerned so we started supplementing all her bottles, but she still nursed for most of her feedings.  When we went back for a check up at 10 months she had dropped to the 3rd percentile.  Red flags and alarms were going off.  I started crying that the drs office, asking if I had to stop nursing.  He said no, but that I had to record every ounce she ate so I'd need to pump exclusively.  Um, no.  So, we used up what was left in the freezer and supplemented with formula.  All of her bottles were double strength...

When we went back for her 11 month checkup she was up TWO WHOLE POUNDS!  Yay!  That shot her back up to around the 45th percentile.  The dr was thrilled and I was so relieved!  That being said, we're still watching her calorie intake very closely, but are hopeful that she'll maintain this weight gain.

Other news, Bruce is growing like a weed and seriously funny.  He says so many silly things and likes to talk about his brother "Rica".  Not sure about that, but supposedly imaginary friends are good things.  He loves preschool and comes home every day telling me that he had fun!

'Til next time...hopefully not 6 months from now...but I make no promises!

Silly things to remember about Bruce

He only likes to pee in the backyard...yeah...weird. He asked to do it one day and now thinks he has to.  We have at least established that other "eliminations" have to take place in the potty, no matter what Kaya (the dog) does.  Little boys still do that in the potty...Boys are weird.

He says "don't a-get" all the time.  He's really saying "don't FORget", but it is usually interpreted as "don't get" which makes him very confused...and us.

He LOVES his baby sister.  He's very sweet to her...almost all the time.  Except this morning, when she was crying and he was tired of it and I overheard him say "be quiet or put your head down, if you don't do it I'll do it for you."  Um, what?

He has a very strong love for instruments and a very good memory for names.  I bought him a shirt with a drumset on the front.  He loved it and remarked, "this is my 'Ray' shirt".  We had no idea what he was referring to and upon questioning more he told us, "um, you know, like the drummer at my wedding."  He was referring to my sister's wedding, also known as his wedding, in which she had the very awesome Walt Wilkins and his band.  None of us could remember the drummer's name, but I looked it up and sure enough it's Ray!

He can remember "movie" quotes as well as his dad.  Every day he speaks in multiple movie quotes (or TV) and we have to figure out where on earth it's from.  Its humorous and strange all at once....again I say, boys are weird.

And as I'm typing this he's eating a frozen waffle...no really, frozen as in straight from the freezer.  I have no idea why, he told me he likes it that way.  And he sure did eat the whole thing.