Mother's Day (:

Hi Friends!

I had a few people ask me yesterday what our big news was from Wednesday, so I figured I need to get this post written... and what better day than Mother's Day!

Evie update first: She's doing great! Had a little fever a few days ago, but I'm pretty sure she's just teething... and growing like a weed!

Okay, our big family news. On Wednesday John and I attended a luncheon to learn about Foster Care. It was put on by an organization called Christian Heritage, who place kids in Christian foster homes. We have prayed about adoption, fostering, and the prospect of additional kids for a while now, and thought we might go gather some info. Lunch was good, we both enjoyed it, and met some neat people who work for Christian Heritage.

Thursday afternoon I called to see if we could start training this summer, and training had started the week before. Bummer. So I chatted with the guy, thinking we would start training in the fall (we weren't really in a hurry) and by the end of the conversation he invited us to come that night, and just start a week behind everyone else. SO we officially started Foster Parent Training on Thursday night! It was the 2nd of 10 weeks of training, that will be followed by a home study, so I'm thinking we may not be licensed for 3-5 months, we are still new to learning how it all works. And Evie successfully stayed with a non-familial babysitter for the first time - and loved it! Huge relief for us.

We are hoping to ease our way into fostering, so our initial plan is to do "respite fostering" this fall. By doing respite we would take kids who are in foster homes already for a weekend or a week to give the families a break. This gives us time to get our feet wet, experience what foster parenting is like, and see how it affects our kids. Then we will pray about the right timing in doing long term foster care, and possibly adopting.

So we're excited that God has opened this door for us, and we're feeling really blessed that we have already saved money with the intent of adoption... because we're going to need a bigger car! My Honda Element has two seats in the back claimed by Lyla and Eve, so I'm seeing a minivan in our future. Luckily we have a few months before we will be licensed to figure out how more people are going to fit in our house and our car, but it will all be fulfilled with God's blessing in his time.

Lastly, we added a new member to our family yesterday (why not do everything at once right!?). We have been scoping out Harry Monster Elsaesser for a few weeks and made it official yesterday. He is Lyla's 4th birthday present from my wonderful grandparents, but we picked him up a few days early since we wouldn't have been able to get him any other time (: In her words "Is he a boy?" ("yes") "I never had a brother before!" She is thrilled, and he's only had one accident so far. We start "official" puppy training tomorrow (:

Love you friends! Keep us in your prayers as we embark on our new adventure(s) (: