After four months of hard work, (going up to eight kids and down to seven) we are back to five.  Yep, the foster children are gone, we decided we couldn't adopt the oldest boy...so in order to keep the siblings together we (the state workers and my family) decided to have both of them moved to a new home tonight.  It took a few weeks, but they ( Read more... )

What I did yesterday:
Elected assistant coach of my 7 year old daughter's soccer team.  First  game.  Utter chaos, but we won. 

( Read more... )

This is a little boy who has a sad start to life...

He came here and found it was okay to play with other children, some who used to be just like him.  It was okay run outside in the backyard and even laugh out loud.   He no longer wants to run away all the time.  He is so much happier.  He loves book after book being read to him, when before he ( Read more... )

Seriously...

Story here

I have two foster kids right now.  I have worked with many children with disabilities.  I have worked with many DHS workers.  Many incredible people.  The two workers I have right now I see every week, plus the additional workers I deal with all week who coordinate the programs these kids need to get and keep healthy.  They ( Read more... )

Yesterday was the last night of my foster parent training classes.  I've done them twice before over our  years of foster parenting, but this new state's training is different...GREAT (Totalling about 200 hours of hands on training.)  There was a panel of teens that are currently in the system.  There was such a diverse group of kids speaking and ( Read more... )

 I've just finished my third, three-hour class for foster parenting...again.  This is the third time I am taking this 30 hour crash course taught by LCSWs, caseworkers, and vetran foster parents.  I've had 10-12 hours of extra training a year on specialty topics.  (Besides all the training I had before that working for a different division of DHS ( Read more... )