Children of God

My friend Tammy who is also in the process of adopting a handsome young man from the foster care system shared this video on facebook this morning. I've been a fan of Third Day for a long time and I love this song, but I had never seen the video. It gives an entire new meaning to the song.

Thank God I'm adopted too.

Children of God- Third Day

Summer Bucket List

So this is a big summer for the McIntoshes. Obviously my last post explained the big news that we have been matched with J - EXCITING!!! But this is also our last summer when all of our children are heading back to school in the fall. K & T are both graduating high school in 2013.  So when I got an email from one of my favorite blogs All For the Boys about The Happy Family Movement I thought this is just what we need - a summer bucket list. We will be having visits with J so we get to know him and he gets to know us.  We want to keep things as normal as possible so I'm hoping for some really great and fun things that keep us away from most of the Florida theme parks and to keep from setting expectations too high.  Honestly we usually avoid the parks in the summer months - too hot and too crowded.

As our girls have gotten older we have had to entertain them less.  K is very happy with a great big book, biking, or swimming. T is busy with her summer babysitting job, a week at camp and this year she is adding volunteering for the month of July. R will be attending Middle School church camp this year for the first time... "Mom, promise me you won't sign up to chaperone." I know she loves me. I know she loves me. I know she loves me.

But putting J into the mix this year will require an effort for more family time. It makes me think about when the girls were little all the days spent making play doh from scratch, making crafts and painting rocks.  They really did think it was fun to hang out with mom and my ideas (yes, painting rocks) were amazing. :-) They still enjoy our family game nights and family movie nights, we just don't have them as often as we used to. T spends a fair number of nights babysitting now so unless we want to start offering to pay her to stay in for family night I'm not sure we can compete with that. I can't blame her and I can't complain. As I mentioned before she graduates next year and every dollar that is banked or spent on her own clothes is helpful.

So I'm now inspired to return to memory making mode for the sake of J and what an awesome excuse to revisit some favorite childhood pastimes with our girls.  Of course new "boyish" games and fun times will be added into the mix. So I think I will revisit my Pinterest boards and create a new Summer Bucket List board. 

His favorite color is green.... now it's blue

So it has been too long since I have posted anything. Here's the deal. Remember way back in April? I know that was just last month but in some ways this has been an incredibly looonnnng month. We went to the Match event in April and ended up inquiring about 3 boys in total. After three initial phone consultations with our adoption specialist and each of the boy's case workers we felt one of the boys was a stand out as far as a potential match for our family.  We had a few days to talk it over and consider the limited information we had been given, then we asked our worker to please submit our home study for consideration at his match meeting which was scheduled for April 25th, just 11 days after the Match event. Things were happening fast.  We were not the only family presented as a potential match for this boy but we were the family chosen by his "people." His "people" being his case worker, her supervisor and his Guardian Ad Litem among others.  Our worker presented our home study and she wasn't eligible to vote for us. A Pins & Needles day that was.

Today (Friday May 18th, 2012) we had disclosure where we were presented with his Child Study (similar to our home study) of how he came into foster care and general info on his health, school performance and his interests and so forth.  A very general yet as specific as possible meeting. As disclosure meetings go it was fairly short, just 2 1/2 hours, due in part to his relatively brief time in care. We did receive lots of info to take home and look over with a fine tooth comb and that has been challenging.  Imagine someone handing you a thick book of your child's life - this book is filled with things you work to protect your child from experiencing as a child - heck even as an adult! I look at our girls and I am thankful for the innocence they have been able to maintain as children. I mean that.  It has always been important to me that they get to be children for as long as possible in this world where I think most children grow up way too fast. * PLEASE STEP DOWN OFF THE SOAPBOX - BEFORE YOU GET STARTED!!!!*

Why have we waited so long to share this exciting news you might be asking? Here is where it gets a little complicated.  This is what is called an "at risk" adoption placement. There is a very, very slight chance that a complication (we will not be sharing for the sake of his privacy) could result in the adoption failing. Please understand this is very unlikely and we went into this knowing full well the situation and have withheld the wonderful news of being matched because we didn't want to have to explain the complication of "at risk." After further information gained from the disclosure meeting we feel even more certain that this potential complication will become irrelevant at some point within the next 2-3 months. In the meantime we will proceed to meeting him officially - hopefully within the next two weeks.  Please insert giddy, giggliness here.  We will have a long period of "getting to know you" because that is what he is going to need.  We will be moving at his pace and his level of comfort with our family will be the guide for when we move to unsupervised visits, when he comes to spend an overnight with us and especially when he moves in - wow did I really just say that?

Of course I'd love to post an adorable photo of him and share all the wonderful things we learned about him today but obviously I'm a little restricted due to the "at risk" status. So I'm going to say this.... Uncle Edwin if you are reading this I know you will love his name as it is the name of your one and only son. :-) He is a little brother for our girls but only by 7 months younger than R. After Michael and I left the meeting today we stopped at Target on the way home and bought a big blue box of Lego's and a shiny new soccer ball. And his favorite color is green.

Rockin' the Big Sister tee

Getting ready for the boy...

I spent today finishing up some more Pinterest ideas for the little guy's bedroom.  I did a collage of three signs and finally hung up the shadow box of Michael's old Matchbox cars. Other than adding a bed the room is ready. Now let's get that boy home.

Adopting Mamas

Melissa, adopting Madison from China, Deidra, adopting from China, Sara, adopting 2 boys from Russia,  Debbie, adopting Hope and Maggie from China & Yours truly, adopting from domestic foster care in the United States.

Yesterday was a fundraising day for the five families adopting children at our church.  It was a looonnggg and fun day.  9am - 9pm there were a group of dedicated scrap booking ladies with their heads down cropping, gluing, honestly I'm not sure what they were doing.  They only looked up every half hour or so when Sara would announce another giveaway - EVERYONE won at least one awesome giveaway donated by local businesses.  The ladies occasionally got up to partake in the breakfast, lunch and dinner that were provided, of course lots of sugar and caffeine were available throughout the day.

Being as it was my first time at such an event I had no idea how it was going. Like I said heads down - focused - not a lot of interaction.  As the ladies were leaving the rave reviews about the event and requests to do it again soon have been reassuring that this was a very successful day for the scrap bookers! Thanks to everyone who came out.

Not our average Saturday

So what did you do today? 

Our family went to an Adoption Match Party. With exception of T who diligently wrote her ACT exams today.  But I digress, an Adoption Match Party is where potential adoptive families with completed home studies come together with children waiting to be adopted from foster care in a party style event.  If it sounds a little creepy to you I have to say that was our initial thought too, but you can't deny that it works.  After attending today's event hosted by The Junior League of Tampa I think it was a tremendously well executed event.  Forever families are made from every event - the most successful party to date occurred in 2009 where 20 children were matched and eventually finalized.  That is incredible don't you think?  There were definitely families who made connections with children today.  We saw families talking with case workers in between all the games and activities like laser tag, midway games, face painting, balloon animals and the petting zoo.  There were enough activities to interact with the children in a non threatening manner that it wasn't like they were on display waiting to be approached like a puppy at the pet store. That was one of my biggest concerns going into today was how the interaction would occur.

We inquired about two boys today, one boy who was at the event and another who wasn't at the party but we saw his photo on a display board inside.  No idea if either of these inquiries will go anywhere but we have officially started the matching process. We asked about these boys, both of whom have names that start with "J." Now we wait for our adoption worker to connect with other workers to determine how many inquiries each child got and who they think is the best family for each child. If we happen to be one of those families we will get a little more background information on them.  If we choose to proceed we get more detailed info and then we can decide if we want to continue on to meet the child or not.  If neither of these boys is a good match for us we will likely wait to get a match suggestion from our adoption worker. We are still hopeful for a match before summer to have lots of family time before school starts. If that doesn't work out we would definitely consider attending the next Adoption Match event in October.

On our way home we stopped at IKEA - because we were in the neighborhood. We picked up a shadow box to display Michael's old matchbox cars in our little guy's bedroom (thank you Pinterest.) 

Good Friday...and Happy Birthday Saturday

Although I didn't spend Friday making Easter related crafts with my daughters I was very productive.  I spent six hours painting our future son's bedroom.  When we moved into the house it was a lovely shade of yellow, which had worked fine for K but was a bit too feminine for a boy and had become quite marked and grungy looking over time.  The ceiling fan was also pink butterflies - I already painted those blades black.

Soon to be big sister got to make the first swipe of color (Benjamin Moore Gray Horse) In a completely unrelated coincidence R was wearing her Carlos Pena tshirt and yesterday just happened to be the Tampa Bay Rays home opener against the Yankees and Carlos Pena is back with the Rays AND the Rays won their home opener yesterday, in no small part due to Carlos Pena!

It is a great feeling to have this little (SIX HOURS!!!) step out of the way.  We don't plan to do too much to the room other than the fresh paint and a very basic bed, yet to be purchased.  We want the little guy to be able to put his own personality into his bedroom when he arrives,  So his favorite color and his hobbies will dictate the rest of the decor.  I do have a couple of little crafty projects - thank you Pinterest - that I hope to have complete for his room by the end of this month.  Now for the after shot...

Yes it would appear she did ALL the work, and if you ask her she will tell you she did.

 Now about that birthday, today is my mom's birthday.  Wish we could be there with you to celebrate. We love you and miss you. Hope you have a wonderful day. Here is one of my favorite, not so recent, pictures of my mom. Fish for dinner anyone?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!