Thanksgiving Visit with Birth Parents

I decided to take Nevaeh to see B and M the Monday after Thanksgiving. I figured since I had to take Jacob for his robotics team practice and it was only 15 minutes from them I should really make the effort. Nevaeh had a great time running around the playground with B(birth dad) and he always seem to have so much fun with him. M(birth mom) on the other hand was really more interested in telling me how they were acquiring another cat. This will bring their total up to 3 cats that live with them in the motel room.

On our way back to the car we met a lady and her dog. I guess they knew the dog and use to have a dog that would play with it. They didn't know the lady. Nevaeh was very excited about petting the dog and M introduced Nevaeh as our daughter. I'm not sure who the "our" was that she was referring to. She may have just meant her and B or she could very well have meant all of us. Either way it was the first time I felt comfortable with her calling Nevaeh OUR daughter. The last time we were together someone at McDonald's asked us who's child she was. I responded very quickly "mine".

It's weird that for the first 2 years of Nevaeh's life she was THEIR daughter. And then for a while I considered her Steve and my daughter and they would be like an aunt and uncle. But really, they won't even be that to her. But they will always be her birth mom and birth dad and it felt right for them to say OUR daughter.

After our 30 minute trip to the park I took them to get Taco Bell for dinner. We needed to get back to the motel so the lady could drop off the new cat. This is when things get hard for me. Nevaeh is not a clingy or passive little girl. She is extremely active and outgoing. They thought it would be great fun for her to play with the cats. The cats on the other hand did not agree. Nevaeh kept picking them up and squeezing them too hard. I was tired and didn't feel like having to deal with it. I don't mind when we are at the park or an eating place with a play area because she can run around and be herself. But in their room she kept picking up things she wasn't suppose to. She was even trying to clean the poop out of the kitty box. I could tell she was making M really nervous.

Next we made calls to grandmas. I think this was the highlight for B and M. Each of them called their mothers and had Nevaeh talk to them on the phone. Of course Nevaeh was her cute outgoing self and said things like "love you grandma" and "miss you" and blew kisses. This made both grandmas cry and in return B and M got all teary eyed.  Nevaeh thinks that anyone who looks over 60 is a grandma and grandpa and will run up to them and hug them but I didn't tell any of them that. She really is too young to understand who these people really are. Hopefully hearing her voice while she was visiting B and M was a comfort to the grandmas. I sure their hearts are aching that they will never get to be real grandparents to her.


B and M are still living in a motel room thanks to the generosity of a lady who met them while they were homeless. It amazes me that there are still very generous people out there. I was thinking that it cost them about $800.00 a month to live there but apparently it cost $1,600.00. I do really feel bad that I can't co-sign on an apartment for them. It's just not a chance I am willing to take. I am hopeful they get the mobile home they are looking at. Especially since they are suppose to be getting a dog too and their rent will go down dramatically.


We are schedule to go back the Monday after Christmas. This time we will be going to B's mom's trailer. I'm really not looking forward to it but this grandma isn't very mobile so it is hard for her to get around town. They asked me about what kind of things she likes so they can get her gifts. This is really a hard one for me. I want her to get gifts from them so she knows they care about her but she needs nothing and they are so poor. I hate to see them spend money on a toy that will just get thrown in the closet and be broke within a week. Then there is a part of me that thinks "If they can spend money on cigarettes than they can afford to buy their daughter a gift for Christmas."

At the end of the visit they asked me to search for siblings for them. It was sad to be reminded once again of the hard lives they lead as children. I don't know if their siblings want them to get a hold of them but I am trying to locate them. Maybe being in contact with them will help heal some wounds.

It feels good to be home and not have to deal with their drama for another month. I really do wish them the best of luck on getting their lives in order. And everyday I thank them in my heart for the most beautiful gift that anyone on earth has every given me. I guess they are growing on me.

Guest Blogger for Foster 2 Forever - Open Foster/Adoption

Today was my first experience as a guest blogger. I hope that by sharing our story it will help others in the same position or enlighten others.

http://foster2forever.blogspot.com/2010/11/zoo-and-open-adoption.html

What a Party

Nevaeh has been very excited about having a birthday party. She has been invited to a few and knows that you sing the "Happy To You" song and you open presents and blow out the candles. So she has been looking forward to her party for a few months now. Things have been really busy since her real birthday back in September and I was hoping to get the yard finished before having people over. But I finally gave up and decided I better have her 3 year old party before she turned 4.

I worked hard all week on the decorations and thought it would be cute to make a Wendy costume to go along with her Tinkerbell one. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and didn't finish it. The morning of the party, Nevaeh did not want to wear the Tinkerbell costume. She cried that it didn't fit and wanted nothing to do with it unless it was worn around her waist exposing her top half. I was finally able to fix it with some safety pins about 10 minutes before the guest arrived. By then she was so excited about the guest coming that she forgot she didn't want to wear the costume.

I had lots of activities planned and was hoping to do a lot of outdoor games. But out of all days in sunny California, today it decided to rain. The girls still all had a great time. We started out by playing with balloons in the family room. Next I got out the flannel board and we did some nursery rhymes together.

Then I had them go to the kitchen table to make their very own fairy wands. The girls loved doing this. While we were busy making wands, Josh went outside and placed the prices for the fairy treasure hunt around the neighborhood. It had stopped raining so we were able to venture outside.

While we were outside on our treasure hunt, Steve was inside frantically making star sandwiches. We also had wand sticks (pretzels) and fairy berries (grapes). All of the grown ups could not believe how quite the girls were while eating lunch. It was so much different than having a boy's party.

 After lunch it was outside to Tinkerbell's Flying Arena for flight school. We got a kick out of watching the flying fairies. The girls had a blast.

Next we headed upstairs to Tinkerbell's lair. We played pass the wand and flying fairies. I let the girls take turns turning the music on and off when the wand landed in their lap. For the flying fairies game I took the sleeping bunnies song that we sing in nursery ever Sunday and changed it to fairies.

"Look at all the fairies sleeping till it's almost noon. Shall I wake them with a merry tune. Oh so still. Are they ill. No. Wake up soon. Fly little fairies, fly, fly, fly. Fly little fairies, fly, fly, fly."

Most of the party guest came in cute little fairy costumes. I love the cheesy grins they give when you tell them to smile.

Now it was time to open presents. I love how little children get so excited about presents even if they aren't the ones opening them. Nevaeh enjoyed looking at the cards just as much as opening the presents.

Finally, we concluded with singing "Happy to You" and blowing out the candles. One of the other little girls blew them out before Nevaeh could so we had to relight them.

I think the party was a hit and I loved that I was able to get so many cute pictures.

Nevaeh's Blessing and Jared's Ordination

Have you ever wanted something so much that you think about it and anticipate it happening and then when it finally does it doesn't turn out the way you had thought? Well, I have to say that is how my day started out. As long as I can remember I have wanted to have a little girl and dress her up in her white dress for her blessing day. I also wanted all my friends and family to be there to help celebrate with me. So after having all my boys and finally figuring out that a little girl was not in the near future I let that dream die.

Then when we got Nevaeh, I started to dream the dream again. But I knew that it would have to be different since we were not going to be able to bless her as an infant. I knew that she could possibly be 2 or even 3 when it occurred since she would have to be legally adopted to be blessed. And then there were times that I wasn't sure it would be able to happen at all since it looked like she was going back. But as soon as I found out the adoption was going to happen I started dreaming again. What the dress would look like, who would there, how we would celebrate afterwards and so on.

We decided to bless her on her birthday since it was on a Sunday and since she shared her birthday with her brother, Jared, and he would be ordained a Teacher on that day too. This way any family who had to travel would be able to attend both events. Unfortunately, I guess their birthdays didn't fall on a good day for most of our family and so our guest list was pretty small. Now you need to understand that I have a very large family and have probably been to just about every event that any of my family members have had. So instead of the 30 or so people I was expecting to be there, there ended up only being my mom (my dad ended up having to go to urgent care that morning), my sister Tami and her two girls, my sister Mary and her husband Jeff and their 5 children.


The next problem I had was trying to find a blessing dress for a 3-year-old. It was not an easy task and I finally found one on-line that I liked and was willing to pay for. I just couldn't see spending over $50.00 for a dress she would only wear once. But when the dress arrived and I tried it on her it was a little short. I wanted a tea-length dress not a knee-length dress. I still thought she looked really sweet in it so I figured I would be okay with her wearing it. The morning of the blessing though Nevaeh had her own ideas. She refused to put it on. She kept telling me "It no fit" "It too big" "I no like". Steve had already left for church and I was left trying to convince the 3-year-old she wanted to look like a pretty princess for church. I finally won that battle but the battle with her hair was just beginning. I finally decided it was not worth the fight and hoped that she would leave the headband in her hair once we got to church.
For those of you not of our faith, it is custom for the men to gather in circle and hold the baby while the father gives the blessing. Now, Nevaeh is not a huge 3-year-old but she is still too big to have everyone try to hold her. Plus, she normally talks all through our prayers so I wasn't sure how reverent she was going to be. I had told the Bishop that maybe we should just bless her in his office with just family attending. He asked me to please reconsider since the people of our ward (church congregation) had been on this hard journey with us and he felt like it would be wonderful for them to witness. I agreed and said that if I gave her a sucker she would hopefully just suck on it and not talk and try to grab at the microphone.

The morning of the blessing my plan was to go up in front with her and have her sit on my lap while Steve gave her the blessing. But when they called us to come up front I learned that I was not suppose to be in the circle and that Steve could just hold her. This turned out to work out perfectly except for the fact that I was now up front so everyone could see as tears poured down my face during the blessing.

Nevaeh could not have been more of an Angel and I don't think anyone will ever forget her sweet blessing. Along with a blessing the father says what the child's name will be on the records of the church. As Steve started to say her name he got chocked up and started to cry. The next thing you hear is Nevaeh saying "It's okay daddy. It's okay" As the blessing continued, Steve would start to chock up again and Nevaeh patted him on the back, kissed him on the cheek and said "It's okay daddy. It's okay". I did not witness this because I was sitting behind them but I had several people recount what happened to me and I could hear her sweet small voice consoling her daddy. As I sat up on the stand crying, trying hard to keep my eyes closed for the prayer, I looked out into the congregation to see almost everyone else crying too. I realized at that point that although my immediate family was not all there with me, my ward family was. And these were the people who every Sunday checked on me to make sure I was okay. Who had watched us go through so much pain and anguish and then to see such a wonderful miracle happen. I felt so blessed at that moment. Knowing how many people really cared about her outcome and my family's well being. Knowing that God had blessed me with so much that the length of the dress, the hair all a mess and the missing family members were not an important part of the day. But the fact that we had so many people around us who loved us and that God was aware of us was all that really mattered.

My sweet Jared was ordained a Teacher that day too. Of course, with all the excitement of the blessing, the bishop forgot to sustain him and I had to send Steve up during church to ask about it. But everything worked out in the end on that too. I guess I spend way to much time stressing out about unimportant things. I am truly grateful for all that God has blessed me with and will try harder to remember that the next time things aren't working out the way I think they should.

Time does soften the ache of some wounds but it can never fully ease them

Because I am still trying to move things over from the other blog, last night I was rereading some of the things I had written and all of a sudden realized it was Labor Day Weekend. I knew it was Labor Day Weekend but I had forgotten until reading older post that Labor Day Weekend had significant meaning in my life and really the whole reason why we ended up adopting Nevaeh.

It still amazes me to this day how Heavenly Father works and how sometimes you get to see why things happened that at the time seemed so painful and unnecessary. Seven years ago I really didn't understand why we felt like we were suppose to have another child only to lose that child 6 months into the pregnancy. I didn't understand why I had to have morning sickness for 5 months and then lose a baby.

Most failed pregnancies happen within the first trimester. I had had 3 healthy boys without ever having a miscarriage so it was hard to understand having to carry a baby so long only to lose him. So looking back now it amazes me that because of that lose and that hard pregnancy I decided I just couldn't go through it again. Yet I still felt as if Heavenly Father had little girls waiting to come be a part of our family. So that is how the thought of adoption was first planted in my mind.

We looked into adopting through Riverside County but that was a huge turn-off for us. The next thing I knew we were moving and it didn't really make since because we ended up moving further from Steve's job instead of closer.

Looking back now it is all so clear. The only reason we were allowed to be a part of Angels Foster Care was because we moved. They only worked out in this area for 1 year and then decided to pull out because they weren't getting any calls from Riverside County. So we had a very narrow margin of time to be with them. We told them the furthest we would drive was to Fallbrook and that is were Nevaeh came from but then her birth parents moved to Escondido for rehab the week after she was placed with us. The two foster children that came and went quickly from our lives were here to keep us from accepting other placements while Nevaeh was being born. The time that it took for her parent's rights to be terminated was so I could grow to have compassion for her birth parents and so they could feel comfortable with our family and letting her go.

Although my heart sometimes aches for the little guy I lost, I now know that God had a much bigger plan for our family and am so grateful that He always gives us what we need even if we don't think it is what we want at the time.

Hurricane UT

Yay, we finally made it to Hurricane, UT. I don't normally drive for this long and there were times I thought I was going to fall asleep. We ended up leaving only about an hour behind schedule. That's not too bad for us. Steve, Josh and Gabe (Josh's friend) rode in the truck and pulled the wave runners. Jared, Jacob, Nevaeh and I rode in the car. Jared and Jacob were good sports trying to keep Nevaeh happy on our long 7 hour drive. Our hotel room is not much to speak of. I guess that's what I get for wanting the cheapest price. I guess as long as we keep the bathroom door shut we should be okay. So it's off to bed now since we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Here's hoping Nevaeh wants to go to sleep.

Lake Powell at Last

We woke up this morning, had breakfast (I guess you can call it that) and were on our way. We were suppose to be at the dock to check in by 10:30 a.m. but were running just a little late. That seems to be normal for our vacations. I stood in line at the check-in counter for about 20 minutes but at least it was cool inside. I felt bad about leaving everyone else outside waiting with the cars because it was so hot.

We started loading up the boat around 11:30 a.m. Luckily they had a motorized cart to help get stuff from our cars. It's funny to see how different families pack for vacation. I told my family they could each bring 2 swimsuits, 2 rash guards, 2 pair of PJs, 4 pairs of underwear, one outfit to wear there and one to wear on the way home. Our only shoes were flip flops and I purchased an extra pair for everyone in case one pair was misplaced on vacation. So all of that fit in two suitcases. We also brought 2 beach towels per person and that took up most of our luggage space.

Steve drove the houseboat to our first spot. It was only about 45 minutes from the dock. It is a nice sandy beach and we were all ready to get off and get in the water. The boys really enjoyed the slide that is connected to the houseboat. It's a little cloudy out right now and I'm hoping it doesn't rain tonight because a lot of our group is sleeping upstairs. I'm going to bed now because the heat has really worn me out.



Looks like a storms a brewin.

I don't think she's too sure about this whole water thing yet.