Blessings

Today, I just want to use my blog to ask God to watch over my former co-worker's (Joe) wife who just had surgery/treatment for her cancer. I haven's seen him in a long time, and I have never met his wife but they are on my mind today. She's a very young and brave woman and I pray that she heals and recovers fully.

Also, praying for my great-niece who isn't feeling well today. We love you and hope you get to feeling better soon.

Prayers for my step-daughter who has a new baby at home and I know she isn't getting a lot of rest but the reward of having a beautiful healthy son out weighs the lack of sleep.

Prayers for my friend "J's" new relationship. They deserve to be happy and have a stable an fruitful relationship.

Prayers for my husband, who works so hard and has been putting in so much hours this year in his new position.

Prayers for my friend "A", and I hope that she and her husband can adopt their beautiful son they have been raising for the past several months.

Prayers for my friend "J" that he can heal mentally and emotionally as well as physically from his surgery. I hope that his self confidence can start to be built and that he understands that he is worthy of friendships/relationships.

Prayers for my family and my friends that all of our aches and woes be healed and that we continue to enjoy our time together for a long time to come.

Prayers that this cold and fever that's been plaguing me this week will finally run it's course and let me get on with what I have to do this week. (God I know you must be testing me at THIS time!)

And lastly, prayers that our homestudy and interview for adoption goes well this coming week. If it's YOUR will for us to become parents together, then please make it as easy as possible for us to attain that dream.

AMEN!

Finally!

So we finally heard from our caseworker. Our homestudy is on June 29th. Can't wait, I've been praying for patience which I have been lacking. Cannot wait to meet our child/children and start our forever family so hopefully after we are licensed we don't have to wait long.

Going through the "process"

So, my husband and I have been married for about 7.5 yrs now and children have been something that we have discussed since our first date. My husband has a 25 yr old married daughter from his first marriage and we also have 2 grandkids, the oldest being 5. 

As the years have passed, all (5) of my brothers have started having their children, at one point within a year, 4 nieces and nephews were born. I have gone through the baby blues, and with my diabetes finally under control at the age of 36, I've decided that we will not try for our own child. 

Adoption is always something we talked about from the first year of our marriage and something that I have consistently looked into. Well, last year I looked at the Texas adoption website and I saw a pair of little girls that just stole my heart and I thought, at 36 and 46 yrs of age, would we really want to start from a baby?

The answer to that was probably not. Then my brother and his 3 kids came for a visit, 2 of them still babies and our answer became "ABSOLUTELY NOT!". Not because I don't love babies, because I absolutely do, but I know that I do not want to change diapers, wipe butts or give a kid a bath every night. 

When we decided that adoption was our option (haha I rhymed!), we said we'd possibly like to start from the age of 4. So we scheduled our orientation meeting with Dept of Family Protective Services and went listen to see what it is all about. That was in October 2011. We filled out a background check form and submitted it that week. In December of 2011, we received a call from DFPS stating that we had passed the initial background check and we were scheduled to go through P.R.I.D.E. training classes in April 2012. 

In the meantime, we received a 2 inch thick envelope of paperwork we had to fill out and what to expect in our class. The paperwork leaves no stone unturned in your life, everything from how much money you make, what you spend it on every month, marriage licenses, divorce decrees, references that have been in your home, family references, etc....just everything!

So you bring that to your first class and you get a lovely .....4 inch binder filled with paperwork you need to fill out!  Not to mention that we went through only 4 classes on Saturday's but they were from 9-5 and you filled out paperwork, watched videos, hear lectures and role play. There's a lot of ROLE PLAYING and everyone has to participate. There are a lot of breaking into groups and group discussions. If you are thinking that any of these classes talk about how great it will be to be a parent, well, you are wrong. 

The classes discuss realistic expectations of what life will be like with a child from foster care, because if they came from a perfect home, then they wouldn't be in foster care. All of this aside, because this was the path we chose and already knew what we would be dealing with, you are also expected to go to a lecture on Psychotropic Drugs and Medication Handling, HIV/AIDS & Communicable Disease Classes, CPR & 1st Aid (which you pay out of pocket for), FBI Fingerprint & Background Check (you have to pay for this too) and a Home Study and interview. This all must be done during the time you are attending classes so if you both work, one must take vacation to run around and get things done!

We are 7 months into this process and the longest part is waiting in between appointments. We are just waiting on our Home Study and Interview to get licensed and then we will be assigned a new caseworker to start matching us with a child. 

Now during all that process, you are given a form to decide what type of child you are willing to accept and by that I mean it was several pages that listed everything from race to characteristics to medical issues. Now, this is gut check time, where you have to be honest at what you can handle! You can't be embarrassed to say  (examples) "I cannot take care of a child in a wheelchair" or "no kids that have shown cruelty to animals" etc etc. 

We discussed what we wanted, they're things that I said I could not handle, they're things my husband said absolutely not and they're things that we both agreed would be too hard for the both of us. In the end, we both decided 6 or older, female, any race, 2 if they are siblings. The other things we decided on are our own private matter. 

We hope that we are given 2 sisters which would complete our family. It is something we discussed with each of our family's and my husband's daughter before we made the decision b/c we want to give our future child/children a family that is complete and accepting.

So, if it is something you are interested in, know that the process can be very discouraging, the wait is long but in the end we hope to be rewarded with a daughter/daughters to be forever in our family. 

Pouty Doggie

So, someone is being a bit pouty today and refusing to come out from under my comforter. I put baby powder on my doggie last night b/c she has been scratching her tummy after getting groomed this week.

1st Post of 2012

So I found my old blog page, cleaned it up because it used to be anonymous, and figured I'd go ahead and make my first post in over a year. 

Things that have happened in the last year:

~We've decided to adopt! I'll post more on that in a later blog but we are currently seven months into the process of getting licensed. 

~My husband was promoted to G.M. at work. He's traveled to several countries already this year. 

~ We found an amazing church that I actually look forward to going to every Sunday. 

~ Our grandson was born last week!

~My 2 lovely god daughters both turned 18 in the last few weeks and they both graduated high school! I am so proud of them!

 

~ I went on a Craigslist bender in Jan and Feb and bought 10 pieces of furniture that I sanded down and refinished to complete our two guest bedrooms. We are hoping that we can adopt siblings. 

~I've been witness to relationships ending and new ones beginning over the past several months.  I wish all parties the best in their new endeavours.  

~I've made many new decisions that I may or may not blog about but it makes me feel productive. 

~We took a lovely vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida last September and my husband invited my two best friends along to share it with us. What a wonderful man!

~One of my best friends is currently also going through the adoption process and I am praying that the outcome will be positive for her family and her new child. 

~I've made new friends and hope that even though Houston is a transitional place, I don't see them leave here just like everyone else we have made friends with. 

And that is my short update for this past year.

 

Bon Temps!

I grew up in Southern Louisiana. I am what is considered a Cajun, which means that my ancestors were once Acadian's who were exiled from Canada. My dad's side of the family only spoke French, just like everyone's family who lived in our small town. When my dad started going to school, all the teachers spoke French too. Then, when my dad was 10, the schools decided that students could no longer speak French in schools. The problem was, they didn't know how to speak English. Their parents did not speak English either. Did this deter the schools from slowly integrating English into their studies while still teaching them in French until the crossover could be made? No. They beat any student who spoke French at school. French was "bad". So my dad and his younger brothers and sister learned the language, while their parents only learned a little bit over the next 40 years. My dad's grandparents never learned English, although the both of them were still living, until I turned 30.

I remember being a little girl and my dad would tell us something in French sometimes, then have to repeat himself in English. We never learned French because my father learned that it was "bad" and in turn, he did not want his children learning the "bad" language. As an adult, I feel such a tremendous loss of my heritage and knowing that it has taken only one generation to kill the Cajun French language. My dad is only 58. He and his friends still speak French to each other but their children can only stand there and nod when we hear a familiar word here and there.

I guess this was all just on my mind this morning as I was fixing myself a cup of coffee and pouring in some milk and Splenda. And I just thought "Grandmere' used to make me cafe' au lait when I was a little girl". She used to make me what you'd call "coffee milk". It's more milk than coffee, with a lot of sugar. And I used to be able to sit at the table with the grownups who were drinking their coffee and they'd converse in French. I really miss my grandparents and always wished I'd have learned French so that when I was older and visiting them early in the mornings, that they wouldn't have to struggle through English to converse with me.

Who writes this stuff?

I know many people write about their weight loss journey and about their food choices but I like writing about all sorts of things which eventually, if you think about it, really just leads back to what's going on and how it affects you and what you eat.

I'm sure I can go all Dr Seuss and say we eat when we are happy, and when we are sad. We eat when we are excited, and when we are mad. But................that's not what my blog is about today.

Today my blog is about unintelligible instructions or explanations that are given to us in written format as to explain what we need to do or what you can expect from something.

Confused yet? Yes well, example: Have you ever tried to do your own taxes and was like WTH are they talking about?

Well, today I tried to go through my dental handbook that is supposed to explain what's covered and what's not and the circumstances in which something that is normally covered, isn't and what might not normally be covered may be covered in "x" circumstance. Blah blah blah. And the services themselves? I didn't know what any word meant. I had to look up every word except "bitewing". I think the Dental Association and the IRS are in cohoots. I think I may go to H&R block and throw down my dental booklet and say "I need a routine cleaning and maybe a new filling, how much am I going to have to give?"

And while we are at it, I took a "comedic" defensive driving course the other day. It promised to be full of laughs, but lo and behold, they totally gypped me. I didn't laugh. The truth was, it was a class that sat you in a comedy club and gave you the standard state mandated info. There were no jokes told, there were no smiles cracked, only early 1990 videos that showed bad driving and bad clothes choices. Had I not been a teen/young adult during that time frame, maybe I would have laughed at the Koosh-ball-bang hairdo's but I could only cringe, remembering I have pictures that look just like that.




By the fourth hour I was fighting (as was the rest of the class) to stay awake. Six hours of hell that I could have done online, at home, in my PJ's while watching House of Payne.

Well folks, that is all for now. Don't get used to these long, drawn out paragraphs b/c I am normally short, sweet and to the point.