As many of us travel along this journey of adoption and foster care, few of us will make it without finding ourselves knee deep in the trenches. It is while in those trenches that we truly realize the importance of support in adoption and foster care. Rose Colored Glasses Daniel and I first started the adoption process quite young. He was only 19 and I ... Read More
Meeting My Child’s Mother
Several weeks ago we had a momentous event in our family. We met my son's birth mom. It was amazing, wonderful and filled with more emotions than I could have ever imagined. Rewind to almost 14 years ago when we first began our adoption journey. We were only 19 and 20 years old at the time and just babies ourselves. In our adoption training session they had originally asked ... Read More
How Cats Help with ADHD and FASD
I want to start out this post by saying it is from a completely unbiased viewpoint. That I am in no way trying to promote the love of cats over dogs. I do not love cats more than dogs...I do not secretly watch cat videos in my spare time, and I have no sentimental feelings towards cats. Ok....well...maybe I love cats. So I guess it is only fair to say I have heard of similar ... Read More
Concurrent Adoption
Daniel and I had been adoptive and foster parents for roughly 3 years before we decided to expand our family once again. Mathieu was 3, Robby was 2 and Alaina had just turned 1 years old. We didn't have any other foster placements at the time so we figured it was a good time to begin. We pondered between a regular Ministry adoption, like the one we did with Mathieu, or a ... Read More
Achieving Your Dreams As a Mom
Several years ago I wrote the following except in an old blog: Recently I was watching the movie Conviction, detailing the real life story of Betty Anne Waters. Waters, who had a brother wrongfully convicted of murder, spent 18 years putting herself through law school in order to prove her brother’s innocence. She was a waitress, had 2 children, and had limited time and ... Read More
Foster-to-Adopt – Part 2
A few days after our son Robby turned CCO in June, we got a phone call that his birth mother was pregnant again and due in January. Due to her unique circumstances the baby would be apprehended at birth and we were asked if we wanted to take the new baby. We of course said yes and went on with our lives while we waited. (I later discovered I had a fluky blue camera...hence the ... Read More
Foster-to-Adopt – Part 1
Enter Robby. We had been fostering for a little over 3 months when we got the call for our very first newborn. We had never parented a newborn before, and despite already parenting Mathieu and a few other children through fostering, I was nervous! ... Read More
Big Family Renovations – Part 3
Last post I was sharing the similarities between our renovation and what happened in The Money Pit. We had finally come to the end of the boring (when I say boring I really mean traumatic, expensive, horrible, yet not decorative) stage. ... Read More
Becoming a Foster Parent
Daniel and I had just adopted our first son, Mathieu, in June of 2005. We were loving being parents and were soaking up every moment with our precious new blessing. During that process, however, we had met a wonderful foster parent who had been caring for Mathieu. Listening to her journey and finding out about fostering, Daniel and I immediately knew we wanted to become ... Read More
When Teenager’s Adopt – Part 2
In my previous post, When Teenager's Adopt - Part 1, we had just walked into our last home study visit. Our social worker had on a very concerned look and I was worried we had done something wrong. Instead she proceed to tell us she had a proposal for us. Jaw drop. For those of you who don't know much about the adoption process, a proposal is when social workers propose a ... Read More
When Teenager’s Adopt – Part 1
Last post I introduced you to A Teenager's Wedding; a look at our wedding day at the ripe age of 18 and 19 years old. For this post, I actually squeezed myself out of the teenager category (fewf), but my husband sure didn't (I still had my strange collection of stuffed pigs on top of my kitchen cabinets, so I suppose my exit from childhood isn't 100% conclusive)! Our first ... Read More
A Teenager’s Wedding
If you read my very first entry, How It All Began, you likely know the crazy start Daniel and I had to our relationship. It is no surprise then, to find out that our wedding day followed suit perfectly. Our wedding day, as mentioned in my previous post, was January 2nd. Daniel was 18 years old and I was 19 years old. It was a cold snowy Thursday, yet we were both so excited! ... Read More
Big Family Renovations! – Part 2
So there we were. A week away from our rental ending and no where else to go. Our reno, which was supposed to have taken only 6-8 weeks (that was my schedule...to be fair Daniel DID say Christmas and I kept saying never), was no where near where it should be. ... Read More
Big Family Renovations! – Part 1
My husband and I have been married for 14 years. We have owned many homes, and done a few renovations here and there. Mostly small scale, and with my husband being a carpenter, it was all manageable (That is what I am saying...if you asked my husband he might interpret it all very differently haha). ... Read More
Good Bye My Daughter
This is an excerpt from an article I wrote the day before my foster daughter left to return home. The emotions were raw and I still miss her to this day, but not much has changed in how I feel when a child leaves my home. ... Read More
How It All Began
If you had asked me how my life would have looked during high school, I would have told you I was going to be an actress...or a psychologist making loads of money. ... Read More