A New Start?

Here we are again with it having been months and months since I last posted. I'm hoping to actually make a new start at blogging. I have more time now, since I have now transitioned to being a SAHM, but I digress. Let me start from the beginning and update you.

When last I posted, we were in the early stages of Monkey's adoption. I am incredibly pleased to report that we finalized his adoption on March 3, 2014! He is officially ours! We are so very excited and totally in love with our little boy =)

The last time I posted, we also had two other young children living with us who were available for adoption, but, due to circumstances, we were not going to be adopting them. I am pleased (for them) to announce they have now moved on to their adoptive home. They left us at the end of December (after Christmas) and are reported to be doing well.

We were back to being a family of only one child for about 5 months. In April, we determined we were ready to grow our family more and we requested a referral on some children living in North Carolina through Adopt Us Kids. We advised our caseworker we were doing this and she was suportive. Four hours (yes, hours) after our request for information, we heard back on the children in North Carolina that they had a lot of interest, so were restricting it to North Carolina families only. I called our caseworker to update her and she had news for me that she had received an email that morning about a sibling group of 3 who were in need of an adoptive home. She gave me the name of their caseworker and it was the same caseworker Monkey had! We felt it was a good sign.

I spoke with the kids' caseworker that same day and got information on them. They seemed to be a good match for us, so I asked for a meet and greet with them. The caseworker stated she would talk with the kids and try to arrange this. It took about 3 weeks, but we finally met with the children. We had an instant connection with them and began weekend visits with them in order for them to finish the school year out at their current schools. School finished on May 16 and the kids moved in with us on May 17! The Hubs and I discussed our situation in great detail and finally decided I should become a stay-at-home mom. So I finished my last day at work on May 30.

The kids have been living with us for just over a month and things are going well so far. We've had some minor problems, but that is to be expected. We have lots to learn about being a family of 6, but we're getting there! We feel very good about our family choices!

Termination of parental rights (TPR) is still pending on the new children. The caseworker is hoping for a smooth termination and for finalization by Christmas. They would put us finalizing all four adoptions in one year! The children are a 13-year-old girl (Prissy), a 9-year-old boy (The Dude) and an 8-year-old girl (Princess). The girls are very, very girly! They love clothes and makeup and nail polish. Total little divas! The Dude is a sports guy, so he and The Hubs have truly hit it off well! We're very excited about our growing family and are hopeful things will go smoothly. Please wish us luck while we continue to grow our family!

I'm going to be trying to blog daily. I'm hopeful I'll be able to do this and I hope you'll join me on my journey! I'm also planning to be redoing my blog design some. This would be helped along if I could find my Paint Shop Pro to install on our computer but, so far, no luck in locating it. If anyone feels like donating a blog design, I'm up for it, lol!! In the meantime, I'll be working on what I can find to update the design myself. Til next time!