The first 48!

October 23 2016.jpg

When it comes to fostering-to-adopt you, it fits different guidelines than a typical fostering guidelines. They want to prepare the kids and the family with whats to come, so they do kind of similar to a meet and greet with the foster kids and the adoptive family. That’s where an overnight stay comes in to play.

It’s amazing how quick all of this transpired, because literally by Thursday (a day after we decided to say “yes” to adopting these three boys), we were already going to have them for the weekend and get to spend the night/precious time with them before they come to officially stay with us.

Shane and I chose to meet in a common place (McDonalds), thinking it would be best for all the kids to get to know each other by playing and feel less awkward/apprehensive about the situation that was about to occur. What we quickly found out when we arrived was that there was no playground for them to play on, so we just had to make the best of the situation.

Both foster families that the kids are staying at, met up with Shane and I (and the girls), and the CASA( Court appointed special advocate) worker was there during the initial meet up/drop off. It went better than we thought it would. No tears were involved, the boys were pretty excited to be able to stay with us and have a weekend of fun!

We decided after picking them all up and loading them up in car seats (Can you believe we have 4 kids in carseats out of 5 now?? lol) that we would take them to the park to get to know them a little better with a lot less pressure of immediately going home to our house. It was SO fun and Brielle and baby girl loved being there, the everything just meshed so well that I know this is exactly what we were meant to be doing in life. We got some pizza on our way home and all ate dinner, and watched a t.v show before putting them all in bed. (there were NO tears from anyone, and they all went straight to sleep and just blended in with our night time routine.)

Once they all woke up in the morning, Shane cooked everyone breakfast (they ate SO well), and we started to get ready for church (I asked ahead of time from the foster families that if they could please pack a church outfit for the boys that would so great) and then we headed out(only 15 minutes late–amazing!) We had to make sure that we had all of their stuff packed up that they came with, because shortly after church, we were supposed to meet up at McDonalds to drop them back off with their foster families and meet up with the CASA worker again to see how everything went.

They all did SO good in church, and we decided to treat them to a little more park fun before meeting up at the drop off and just so we can have just a little bit more time getting to know them and cherish the little moments. They were sad to be leaving us, but we told them on Halloween we will have so much fun trick-or-treating and then they won’t have to leave again after that, and that made them feel a little better.

It was an exhausting but oh SO good last 48 hours and can’t wait until we get to make this our new “normal” on Oct. 31st! Thank you EVERYONE for the sweet comments and prayers! Keep them coming, we are going to forever need them.