November Family Update 2008
Happy Thanksgiving!
We are so grateful to the Lord for His mercy to us and His so many blessings we have received. The first we want to tell you about is Hunter and Gage's adoption, it was final in April! They are doing great, we enjoy just watching them change and learn new things. They are very much a joy in our lives that keep us challenged and desiring more. More on that later.
Hopefully all of you have received this actual photo in the mail, if not you have it here too. We kept trying to get a family newsletter along with a picture since May as we wanted to announce Hunter and Gage's adoption in April. Well, here it is almost Thanksgiving and we are only just now mailing these out. It is our plan to keep this site updated more frequently though.
We do plan on deleting some pages in the near future and wanted to let you know in case you wanted to read them. Some are over a year old and we thought it would be better to have new and fresh info.
Also please email us by clicking on Contact Us if you want to receive updates in the future, you can just check back as well on your own if you wish. Getting emails can also be alot to keep up with we certainly don't want to overload people.
What we've been up to.
Looking at this picture taken in Septmeber makes me laugh as I think over the past 8 months of our lives. It doesn't reflect what our family has looked like at all. We have been foster parenting since April and have had 12 placements as of November. Getting this picture was one of the reasons it has taken us so long, with Myles coming and going and just coordinating all of us. I know to many of our friends with so many more kdis than us this must sound quite comical, it does to us too. 
Robert is keeping busy and enjoying working at his job that he has had for the past 10 years. There have been changes during this time but he still loves plumbing, people, and meeting needs along with others. We don't see ourselves leaving here in the near future and don't know what the furture holds with the recent elections but we marvel at being a part of this time in history.
Myles has been learning alot about becoming an adult with working full time earlier in the year and then changing jobs and working on his education. Purchashing his first vehicle and all that goes on with that. Most recently he is serving with the ministry we are with at their headquarters in the Chicago area. He then transfered to Oklahoma to help them with their needs and is currently here helping with a health conference. He has been doing construction mostly with learning in the evening about health related topics. He desires to go back to Mexico where he spent a couple of months last year only in a different place. If he can afford to go then it looks like he could go in the spring of next year. In the mean time he thinks he will to return to Oklahoma to help with some construciton projects.
I (Heidi) am busy with our Hunter and Gage and the many foster children we have had. It is our desire to adopt more and we have felt like the fostercare system is in need and not many want to go through them as it is not without risk. It has been alot of fun and has caused us to want a child even more as well as try our patience too. We certainly did not expect to have as many placements as we have had, 12 so far with two returning to us. We had not experienced babies before this as Myles, Hunter, and Gage came as toddlers, this is all we knew. I thought I might be "cured" of wanting babies once we began to have them. Quite the opposite happened which has been encouraging on one hand and a heartache on the other.
Life has changed for us!
We have taken in only babies and toddlers. Of the ten we have had there have been 3 we have so wanted to keep and had a hard time letting go. I have learned that God is very merciful to me now when I look back because we have had these little ones a short time compared to most foster parents. I just can't imagine having them for months on end and then letting them go. Our longest has been between 2-3 months.
We are taking a break so to speak after these two girls we have go home in the next couple of weeks. Meaning we will be more "picky" in the placements we will receive. Just two weeks ago we returned one and the case worker says, "So then you have an opening?!" They are always needing homes and we have gone only a week and a half with no placement since April, with many times only hours between or a day.
We are looking forward to it just being our two boys with Myles coming back here and there as he moves into this phase of his life. The boys keep me (Heidi) challenged in that they learn so much so fast, whether I am consciously teaching them or not, teehee. Gage is our little pretender and one who is alwasy imagining things like going to work, in his "monster truck", letting us know he is dirty from workin, and his claims of building things all by himself. Hunter is our little learner, he announces one day to me, "Hey, mom, I don't know how to read, you have to teach me to read." He thought this was quite a revelation that needed to be remedied. Yes, indeed I am challenged to keep up!
We are asked about how the boys are doing with us doing the fostercare, they have a playmate right now and they say things like, "Mom, I want to keep one, i hope we can keep this one." Or, "I don't have a baby sister, I think we should get one." I don't think adults realize that children don't think like adults in regards to knowing how much time is being spent with them. That being said though we have learned that since we have a choice we are choosing to only take one at a time, an infant less than 6 months. We currently have a 1 year old, a 2 year old and then Gage is 3 years old and Hunter being 4 years old.
Our children and these children have been a blessing to us, they teach us about ourselves, we have learned some pretty interesting things, all not so pretty.