QUINTON JAMES TURNS 3

My sweet boy Quinton is 3 years old this month.
One of my reasons for this blog is to remember what the Lord has done in my family.

These are a few of Quinton's favorite things:
His favorite phrase is ,Whatcha makin mom ?He is serious about his food !

He loves Elmo and especially the Elmo from Poppy and Grammy ( this furry monster toy can sing and dance)

He loves Hockey and wears his helmet all the time !

He loves to be held and cuddle.

He loves pie ! We had so many party's over Christmas and many of them contained Grammys Pies and so for his birthday he did not want cake , he wanted pie ! A new tradition?

He loves to play outside !

He is sleeping in the big boys room and he get so giggly at night because he is so excited to be a big boy !

We have preschool time every morning with the little ones and we sing songs and he loves the song, The Lord is my Shepard. While the rest of us are singing one part of the song, he interjects , THE LORD IS ! My future Worship leader.

He is good at anything he tries.

Overall, we are completely humbled that the Lord has chosen us to raise such a precious, sweet, loving little guy !

Happy Birthday Quinton !

HAITI

Such horrific devastation ! We have tried to use this disaster as a teachable moment in our family . We are not in control of anything ! Our life is but a mist! There are people who have it bad , real bad ! We are not those people .We cannot complain about anything ! We are richly blessed ! And today, we have no disaster facing us .

We continue to pray for the people of Haiti ! We pray for the hearts of the people that have lost everything. You cannot turn on the news without your heart breaking. Their faces say it all.
We pray for those people that God will be real in their lives and that they will come to know Him.

There are many places to donate money at this time . If you are a Christian the best donation would have the gospel attached ! Know who you are giving to and how they allot the donations .

Happy New Year !

OUR WHITE CHRISTMAS !

I hope you all had a joyous Christmas and a great New Years !We had a great time visiting with Family and friends over the holidays.

I love Christmas time ! Everything is prettier when it is sprinkled with Christmas. We took our holiday decorations down last week ! I am always a bit sad when we box everything up and put it away until the next year . I usually use this opportunity to reorganize or redo a particular room or area. See, I am a knick knack girl ! No, I do not have collections of precious moments or miniature ceramic dogs . But, I do have stuff ! Too much stuff ! I am such a bargain shopper that usually if I find something that I like I buy it and then find a place for it. I am clearly out of places for things.

Needless to say, we (as a family ) have been on a radical cleaning spree these past 2 weeks ! Yea ! I have 7 black trash bags full of stuff to donate and I am just getting started. I have found that having all these people under one roof, encourages the habit of decluttering ! It is a do or be buried , kinda thing ! We have very limited attic space and so last week I cleaned out our attic. It is a great feeling and while it is not fun to do these kinda "projects" on our vacation, it is hopefully teaching all of us ( and by us , I mean me ) to acquire less stuff.

We as a family are trying to focus this year on the little details. In our relationships with one another, in our "jobs" at our house and mostly to be faithful children of the Lord ! I have been reading a great devotional by Elisabeth Elliot called "Keep a Quiet Heart" on this day she talked about Luke 16:10-12. The verses about "He who is faithful in a little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous in much. "

I do desire to be faithful in all my "roles" this year !

We know what Ethan wants for Christmas !

A NEW SON !

While there were many great things that happened on National Adoption Day, the greatest in our family was the adoption of our son !
Quinton James !

This day was again surreal ! Volunteers were all over the courthouse to welcome the families. There was a balloon arch ( like at the prom ) that we entered under. There was food , family pictures and all the kids received a sweet teddy bear. Our courthouse has very long pew benches that lined the hallway and our courtroom was at the end. The benches on that day were filled with families and kids. If I had to guess I would say 90 % of the families were African American. It was a precious scene all of these parents taking these children into their homes. There were families with 8 kids in them . There were families with several teenagers. I was so moved I could not help but tear up at what was taking place in this building on this day. I know some of these kids will not have to live in the cycle of sin that their parents were raised in. Like our babies many of these kids were removed from horrible situations and placed into families that love and adore them. I am so thankful for these people who have opened their hearts and homes to these children. Who like most of us just want to be loved and accepted. But , who unlike most of us have experienced awful situations .

We had many sweet people celebrate with us on Quinton's special day ! Matt's sister and her husband and their kids , our favorite worker at our agency and Quinton's sweet CASA worker who drove in from out of town . As well as Poppy and Grammy , Aunt Ann and Uncle David, our pastor and his family who had been at a sporting event all day and came over anyway, my closest friend Tiffany (who has prayed over all the kids we have been submitted on, probably 75 ?)and her family, and many other sweet friends who came over to celebrate our adoption.

We are so excited and we really cannot believe we get to have this little cutie in out family. We are of course thrilled to have all the paperwork, visits, and caseworkers over with for now.

People have asked us , if we will continue to open our home to kids. We are open to however many children the Lord would bless us with ! We do pray there will be more, we would of course, like to even out the 5 to 2 guy /girl ratio in the house.

Thank you for all of you who have supported us so faithfully on this long, bumpy road.
We feel blessed and totally overwhelmed at how good the Lord is to bless us with people like you !

NATIONAL ADOPTION DAY !

This is a very special week across our country ! In courtrooms everywhere there will be around 4,500 kids taken out of the "broken failing system". They will get a new name and become a part of a family that will hopefully love them unconditionally ! They will now have someone in their life that will be there when they need them. There will be much hoopla going on at the courthouses ! Family pictures, presents, balloons, clowns, food and just excitement.

While this will be an amazing week !

Here is the reality ! There are 510,000 kids in foster care. There are 129,000 kids that are legally free to be adopted right now .This does not include the millions of orphans in other countries who will go to bed tonight in conditions we would not let our dog live in. They are just children !

I met a young lady last week. Beautiful young girl ! She could be a model ! If you did not know her story you would think she lived a great life with no problems. This sweet girl about to age out of the foster system had lived in 30 homes since she was 4. She had lived through things children should not experience. The hope for her has come through foster parents who would not give up on her, even when she kept running away. This precious girl will get adopted this week . I do not know if her adoptive parents are Christians. I would like to think they are. They are however setting an example for us all !

There are so many foster kids who need someone like this couple to just love them, the way Jesus loves us ! He takes us with all of our "issues". He loves us with a love that we cannot fathom ! He takes us back with open arms when we run away ! Most of us are the picture of the prodigal son . I know I am. He loved us while we were yet sinners. We deserve nothing ! He takes us in and heals our wounds and makes us his kids.

Please join me in praying for the kids who will be adopted this week! Pray that they will find security in our Heavenly Father. While there are nice people on this earth , we are all sinners and our Heavenly Father is the only one who will never leave us or forsake us.

Please also pray for all those children who are waiting for a forever family. I only know what some of these kids have experienced and I cannot imagine having to cope with things like seeing your parent be killed or being treated so badly, by people who are supposed to love you. Sin is an ugly thing !

Pray that more Christians will open their homes to these kids ! You can look at the adoptable kids in Texas at the Tare website go to dfps.state.tx.us/adoption . They change this every week.

If you have any questions about fostering , I would love to answer them. Post a comment and I will get back to you.

Fostering to Adopt

Fostering

Matt and I are updating our license to continue to foster to adopt. It can be a long process with much to do. We believe it is what God has called us to , so we are going through it . Some of our stuff can just be updated and some "requirements " have expired and we have to go back and do them over again.

I thought I would take a minute and in case someone knows someone who wants to go this route , I would share an overview of most of what it takes.

Fostering children is NOT for everyone ! I know people who stopped after the first child left and they were not able to do it anymore. It was too painful and emotionally so draining.
Here are the facts:
In order to foster or foster to adopt you must do these things:

Complete training

There will be some classes that will bore you out of your mind.However, you might be surprised and get some training that is interesting and educational. One of the classes we were required to take was infant CPR. We were glad to have had this training when I was holding a 5 pound 3 month old who turned blue on me and stopped breathing. Thankfully Matt was home and he started CPR, I called 911 and the baby started breathing again . The baby lived and was fine. This was a medically fragile baby and most people will not get a baby with these issues. You never know when something you learn in a training will apply.

Your House in order

Cleaning supplies
It is good to have all cleaning and chemicals locked up somewhere. We bought a Rubbermaid storage piece that is in the garage and we attached a lock with a key. That means they do not want any cleaning stuff out on counters or under sinks.

Plug covers on all plugs.We already had locks on cabinet's in the kitchen which is great because we knew we wanted little ones.

Your agency or CPS is not looking for a perfect house,but , everything must be working. Toilets, hot water from sinks, etc.They are also looking for anything that could be dangerous, an area with many cords sticking out, for example.

Fire inspection- needs to be done and you need a carbon monoxide detector as well as smoke alarms on each level and fire extinguisher's on each floor.

Firearms-reported and secured. They just want to make sure your house is clean and safe for children.

Background checks

They will check to see your criminal history to make sure you are not on the most wanted list or anything serious.

Driving record

They will want a copy of your driving record. No big deal !


Getting to know you

They will interview you and get to know all about your childhood up to the present day. They will probably interview you and your spouse separately. They are looking for anything weird in your history that might not qualify you to foster kids.

Paperwork

All of these things will require paperwork and there will be times that you think, it is too much , I cannot finish all this. You can persevere and press on because it will be worth it !

My Church is putting together an entire booklet together on Adoption. If anyone wants a very in-depth version of what you need to do to adopt a child please email me .

I will write about the plus side of fostering to adopt another time. There are certainly many great reasons to going this route.