Soccer

We just finished up our first soccer season with Brantley. He loved it, and he is already asking when he will get to play again. We did learn that Brantley is VERY competitive through this experience. So we had lots of opportunities to teach lessons about sportsmanship. My camera doesn't take very good pictures in motion, but here are a few action shots:

Halloween

Halloween was very low key for us this year, which is just the way I like it! Our church had our Fall Block party at a a local park the weekend before, and we were able to help out at the ring toss booth. It was a great outreach to the community. On Halloween, our family enjoyed carving a pumpkin together and having a family devotion time as we remembered that Jesus is the Light of the world! We then put the kids in the costumes and headed over to Justin's parent's neighborhood for some early trick or treating because we had important things to do like Longhorn football! We made one block and came back to their house for dinner and the game.

Brantley was an astronaut this year (anyone surprised??), and Brayden was Thomas the Train. Well, not really. I carried his costume. He's been telling me for a month that he was not going to wear a costume. This child doesn't even like to wear clothes (he wants to strip to underwear the moment he walks into the house...he even starts talking about it on the way home!), so I'm not sure why I thought he would wear a costume. It was still worth a try so I bought the cheapest costume I could find on ebay and one that could just be pulled on over his clothes. I paid 99 cents for it with $5 shipping. Justin told me it looked like a 99 cent costume!! Given that we only wore the costume for 5 minutes, I was glad that I only spent $6 total! Brayden put it on and said in a very, very, pitiful voice, "It's really, really bad, Mommy." He didn't want to walk up to the houses, and he didn't care a thing about getting candy. You've got to love the twos!!

Here are Brantley and his friend, Jonah, at the Fall Block party.
I managed to get Brayden to smile for one cute picture in his costume. He was supposed to wear a cute little hat with it too, but that was wishful thinking on my part.
Brantley in his astronaut costume. Also a steal on ebay (even though my mother-on-law had to make a couple of repairs)!
Heading out for trick or treating:
This is the way Brayden walked around most of the evening. Definitely not worth a battle!

Our Journey

We have begun a journey that is going to change our life. We have decided to become foster parents and hopefully adoptive parents. To a lot of people this sounds like a sudden decision for our family, but it is actually something that we have talked about in our house for years, and we have been praying about it for at least the last year.

After I finished graduate school, I went to work for a private Christian foster care agency. In the time that I worked there, I was a case manager for six foster families and all of the children that were placed in their homes. I had the privilege of seeing one child, who I placed in an emergency placement in my foster home, become adopted by that parent a year later. The interesting thing was that while I worked there, I always found myself wanting to be the foster parent instead of the case manager. I often wanted to take the kids home with me. The Lord had planted a seed in my heart.

I left that job the day Brantley was born so that I could stay home with him. That has been 5 years ago, but my heart and passion to foster and adopt a child has continued to grow. In the last couple of years, Justin and I have been praying about the next steps for our family. We both had a strong desire for another child in our home but we had been unsure where God was leading us. I continued to have a heart for fostering, yet Justin wasn't at a place where he was ready to do that. So we committed to pray both individually and together about what the Lord would have us to do. I knew that I had a desire for fostering, but my husband is my spiritual leader. Unless he also felt called to such a ministry, I knew that we would never move forward with it. I really didn't know what the Lord was going to do with the passion I had, but I knew that He would reveal it to me in His timing.

Back last spring, we had the opportunity to help out a young family at our church. The mom had four children under the age of 2, and dad was not at home. The Lord began impressing on my heart to help out with occasional childcare for the older two children. I developed a special attachment with the one year-old. There was an occasion that the mom needed to take the twin babies to Dallas for some medical care, and she asked if I could watch the one year-old child. She stayed with us for 3 days, and during that time it felt like she was a part of our family. The boys were wonderful with her, and I found myself caring for her and protecting her like she was my own. Even though she wanted nothing to do with Justin (she was fearful of most men at the time), he also enjoyed having her in our home. I forgot to mention that in the same week before we had the little girl, we kept a single mom's 2 girls for a couple of days while she had to travel. So in one week, we kept three different children in our home. This happened all while we had been praying together about how the Lord wanted to grow our family.

At the end of that week, Justin and I had a date night. I will never forget it. When went out on a beautiful spring night for a picnic on the boat, Justin told me (without me bringing it up) that he believed God was calling us to adopt a child. He said he did not believe it was coincidence at all that the Lord sent children into our home that week. God used that experience to change my husband's heart. Of course I was in shock but so overjoyed at the same time. We agreed to continue to pray about it over the summer, and see where we were by the end of the summer.

So here we are today. We feel called to move forward with this journey. We are excited, yet we also have no idea what the future holds for us. It is a major step out on faith. We don't know what this is going to look like for our family. We don't know how many children we will have in our home before we get the opportunity for adoption. We're not even sure that we will get that opportunity. God may keep the door open, or He may close the door. All we know is that for right now He is calling us to walk through the door. We are just taking it one step at a time. The details are fuzzy for us, but honestly we are choosing not to worry about those. We are called to obey even when we don't know how the Lord is going to work out His plan.

So what does this all look like for us right now? We are in our application process and are hoping to be licensed to accept children by the end of the year. We started out going directly through Child Protective Services (CPS), but after a few red flags there, we sensed God taking us in another direction. We are now working on becoming licensed through Methodist Children's Home. They have a local outreach office here. They work with both state placements (through CPS) and private placements (families who voluntarily turn over custody of their children to the agency before CPS gets involved). We have talked to a couple of families from our church who have had positive experiences with this agency, so we feel good about moving forward with them.

We have a LOT of stuff to do in order to get licensed. Here are some of the things we have been doing to get our license:

-Copies of documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, social security card, proof of income, proof of education, our monthly budget, etc.

-TB tests for everyone in the family

-Medical exams for both me and Justin

-CPR/First Aid certifications

-Environmental health inspection of our home

- Fire inspection of our home

- Online training modules

- Submitting reference information

-Pictures of the exterior of our home

-Drawing up a floor plan of our house

-Completing a lengthy autobiography document

-Writing up a disaster plan

-Getting a room ready for the child

-And I could keep going on!!

We start our formal training with the agency next week, so this month is going to be a busy one with that added into our schedule. But we are hoping to get our training completed in the month of November before the craziness of December starts.

Oh...I forgot to mention that the boys are excited too. They are both hoping for a baby sister, but we are open to a boy or girl. We're doing a lot of talking about this with them now as we prepare for the future! We know this will be a big transition for them too. We will be accepting only an infant or a 1 year-old due to the current ages of our children.

We are going through a lot of work for this, but it is also very exciting knowing what may be ahead for our family. We hope each of you will support us in this journey. We are going to need it! We know it is not going to be an easy road. Every step we take is one of faith, but isn't that right where we need to be? Isn't that what following Christ is all about, stepping out on faith and trusting Him? My new life verse is, "He must increase, and I must decrease," (John 3:30). I pray that this journey will be all about Him, and not about us.

Pumpkin Patch

The kids get so excited every year about going to the pumpkin patch. The fun includes a hay ride, tractor train ride, feeding catfish in the pond, play time with their friends, and of course checking out all the pumpkins and choosing one to take home. We bought a "pie" pumpkin at the patch this year, and Brantley really wants to make a pumpkin pie from it. So I guess I am going to try out cooking a real pumpkin rather than taking the canned shortcut this year!

Spider Cupcakes

Brantley and I made these spider cupcakes today for his class party tomorrow. I think they turned out cute! If you want to know how to make them, click here.

State Fair

We had a great time at our local state fair a few weeks ago. Brayden surprised us and wanted to ride all the rides with Brantley. They had a blast, and of course we enjoyed some yummy food! Justin and I love to go to the fair, so this has become a fun family tradition for us.

Hook 'em!