The first 48 hours

WOW! what a difference 48 hours can make!  B is honeymooning GREAT and is super sweet! Very helpful around the house and gets along great with all the kids. Turns out her reason for being removed from the home was real, not made up.  Arrangements were made so that the family could still keep all the kids in the home.  But B didn't want to go back even though she was very bonded to her foster parents.  The young lady who was the instigator of the trouble in the foster home is in the process of being adopted by the foster family.  B does NOT get along at all with this young lady and never has.  So she doesn't want to go back and mess up the chances of this other girl being able to be adopted.
During church last night a lot of changes were taking place in the hearts of my children. My oldest has been totally against having a child her age in the home.....until last night. She told me on the way home that she would be open to B staying with us longer. So we all talked more today while B was gone and decided we needed to talk to our Bair worker. When I picked up B today after her meeting, I got to talk to our worker and found out what all had transpired. I shared with her what was happening at home. She nearly had to pick herself up off the floor in shock, but said that with B being treatment level and us only a basic level then we would have to do more training. No big deal there! Anyway, to sum things up it looks like a Greater Hand has been involved from the start. If B truly doesn't want to go back to her foster home then she will become part of our family. We will foster to adopt. What about the group of 4 we have inquired about? well, if we get word to go ahead on them, then we will be reclassed as a group home and take them too! Yes, I'm out of my mind.....but I have such peace about all of this and everything is falling into place without any effort from us.....I don't believe in Co-incidence.  Her biggest issues are anger management and depression. Nothing we can't handle with the help of a therapist!

A side step

We were discussing this evening over dinner how we might be open to doing respite care so we could "get our feet wet" in dealing with kids from the foster care system.  No sooner had we decided that we would be ok with it, since it would be just a break for other foster parents and very short care situations, than the phone rang and it was Jackie asking us if we would be willing to take a teen girl for a week or so as she was needing to be moved from her current foster home.  I agreed that we could take her.  We were not expecting our experiences to start so quickly, but I don't believe in co-incidence, only God-incidence.

next step taken

After emailing with Jackie a bit, I asked what we should be doing now....if we should go ahead and submit our interest form on the adoption site for the group of 4 we are interested in.  she said YES! That would be wonderful!  So I did.  Now we are waiting to hear back from the worker on the other end.  Don't know how long to expect to wait but there are always projects to keep us busy in the mean time!

It arrived!

We did in fact get our verification letter today and our home is now certified to hold foster/pre-adoptive kids!  On to the next step!

In the mail

just heard from our worker Jackie, she said good news is in the mail to us!  I'm sure that means our certificate is on it's way and we should have it by saturday.  She has started the process from her end on getting us more information on this group
http://tare.dfps.state.tx.us/search/SibDetail.jsp?SibGroupNumber=30308
Time will tell if these are the ones we will bring home or not. 
My heart is overflowing with joy as we are at this point in the process!  Our family will be expanding soon!

Rejoicing!

Just got an email from Jackie and we will have our approval next week!  The long awaited information that we need was put in the mail today!

An email

I got an email from Jackie today asking us to consider a pair of sisters.  They are into basketball and we don't do organized sports so I replied that I didn't feel they would be happy here.  Jackie also said they have still not heard back from hawaii.  I said they probably wouldn't without some SERIOUS badgering.  She responded to that asking me to write out a little about us and what we are looking for in a group of kids so that she could send out something written by me to her connections.  I really wonder if this means they are going to work around not having that paper.  Guess time will tell.