If I were to go back and retrace my footsteps, I'd get lost...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:37:00 +0000

December 25^th, 2010; I am lying on a twin mattress that is on the floor of my brother's house in upstate NY. I am woken by the rustling of my niece as she is trying to sneak out of the room. I lay there, eyes closed and can hear her walking down the hall. I hear her gasp, a second passes and then I hear her little feet running back to her bedroom where I am waiting pretending to sleep. Then I feel it; a single finger tapping my forehead. She’s whispering “Aunt Jenny, Santa came and he brought presents for you and Uncle Cris”.
It was there in that very moment that I knew we had to adopt.

Fast forward 10 months. We are smack dab in the middle of the adoption process. There are a lot of factors and events in our lives that lead us to adoption and to the decision to adopt an older sibling group from foster care. Through my blogging you will get a look into the events that lead us to our decision and the process that we have been navigating to make our family.

My hope in writing is to give families looking to adopt from foster care a place to get an honest view of the adoption from foster care system. This is slightly different from Foster to Adopt. In a Foster to Adopt, the children who come to you are still in the process of reunification with their biological family.
Many states including North Carolina, where we reside do everything in their power to keep children with their biological family. The role of a foster parent is to help facilitate this reunification. I will be honest, this is not something I can do. I know that I would be too attached to be able to let the children go to their families. Adopting from Foster is adopting children that are free to be adopted, parental rights have already been terminated and there are no family members that are able to adopt the children. The latest statistics are that there are over thousands of children available for adoption in North Carolina alone. Our hope is to adopt 2 or possibly 3 of these children.

We are 9 months into the process of adopting and yet to be approved. The first thing I will share is that no matter what anyone says, this is a very long process. We were told 3-6 months to get approved.
I will start to share our journey in my next blog. I would like to make each entry 2 part. The first will be letting you know where we are today and the second I will talk about where we came from in chronological to be able to share the details of the process.

I look forward to sharing our story with you all.

Lorem Ipsum

noreply@blogger.com (The Mommies Network) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 02:31:00 +0000

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec adipiscing massa non nisi accumsan condimentum. Ut sit amet aliquam tortor. Vivamus sit amet augue massa. Morbi tempus lacus aliquet lacus elementum vel faucibus elit ultrices. Suspendisse vestibulum ornare tellus, egestas pulvinar leo pretium sed. Suspendisse varius dignissim mauris, vel dapibus ipsum egestas nec. Praesent bibendum accumsan vestibulum. Sed ac ligula quam, pharetra sollicitudin nunc. Suspendisse ultricies lacinia magna ac tristique. Quisque neque quam, dignissim egestas aliquam id, pharetra nec eros. Duis ac nunc tortor, vel tincidunt enim. Integer fermentum erat quis augue commodo facilisis. Integer blandit vulputate eros at lobortis. Donec porta metus id mi viverra commodo faucibus magna euismod. Ut a ligula in tortor luctus sollicitudin in vitae dui. Nunc a ante mauris. Maecenas magna purus, ultrices in commodo nec, consectetur imperdiet lacus. Sed ultrices, odio eu laoreet suscipit, ligula enim accumsan augue, id auctor orci lacus eu mi. Nam pretium diam eget eros tristique mollis.

Vestibulum interdum tortor at metus suscipit fermentum. In posuere sapien id mauris convallis condimentum. Nunc non aliquam velit. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Quisque condimentum sapien ac erat interdum quis ullamcorper libero commodo. Nulla pulvinar, felis sed ultricies lobortis, purus turpis consectetur nisl, ac convallis tellus tortor at sem. Praesent ultrices, arcu sit amet blandit accumsan, ligula est feugiat mi, et aliquam risus ipsum feugiat nisi.

Duis mattis enim imperdiet ligula cursus ac tristique sapien interdum. Ut erat arcu, congue vitae rhoncus eu, fringilla at magna. Quisque consequat sapien vitae purus viverra consequat mattis ligula accumsan.
Aliquam cursus cursus leo nec molestie. Aliquam eget velit sit amet lacus tincidunt pretium laoreet quis orci. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In id orci interdum nunc luctus tincidunt id quis dui. Nunc eget nunc mauris. Pellentesque in aliquam lacus.

Mauris sodales placerat nunc nec vulputate.
Sed ac orci at sem sagittis suscipit ut tincidunt nisl.
Duis consectetur ullamcorper justo, id feugiat nisi eleifend ac. Ut eget lacus nec nisi posuere cursus eu a massa. Maecenas feugiat, nibh ut varius facilisis, mi justo varius massa, a tincidunt nunc neque a leo.
Integer facilisis, ligula sit amet volutpat vehicula, est ipsum consectetur eros, consectetur molestie mauris est ac metus. Maecenas varius, est a venenatis imperdiet, magna sem congue justo, eget ornare turpis lorem ut nulla.
Etiam viverra pellentesque felis, laoreet sodales metus feugiat ac.

Unconventional Family

If I were to go back and retrace my footsteps, I'd get lost...

Lorem Ipsum