A Place to Write

Girlies, I love your Dad. I want you to know that. He is awesome. Today as I was walking into work I thought about a trip we took a few years ago to Prescott. It was the first time we had left you alone (and if I remember correctly it was just Kaybree at the time). While we were there we walked to a book store by the square, picked out a thriller, and then read it together, silently, for the whole day. It was really romantic and cute--even though the book was kind of scary. This time of year I always think back to when we were dating. Our first date we went to DI, bought each other outfits, rode a double bike to the park and then went back to his house to play sidewalk Pictionary. It was a double date. We won the game. We have photos to prove it. A few weeks later for my birthday we went to Schnept Farms in Queen Creek and your dad gave me a Suns jersey, tickets to the season opener (my first Suns game ever) and a photo he had photoshopped of the two of us in Hawaii together--bec...

This Saturday will be our final foster care training class. Then your dad and I will be considered professionals I guess. It may still be several months till we are officially licensed and I'll probably request to hold off on placement till after the holidays. I'm worried. Not necessarily about the child that will come to live with us but about everything else. I'm afraid people will judge the child that comes to live with us--and that you will too. Because people are ignorant and so are you. You don't mean to be, I just need to be better about preparing you and teaching you. We have a group home in our neighborhood and the girls from the group home often come to church. They don't go to class, they just hang out in the foyer. They eat snacks and sit and talk. They wear jeans and sweaters. Apparently people in the ward are annoyed with that. They think the girls dress inappropriately and are disrespectful. They shouldn't be wandering the halls. They encourag...

I'm not even sure how to begin this. We're about to make a huge life change. It's so big I don't even know how deeply it will effect us. It will change the course of our lives and possibly several others as well. How do you explain that? We've decided to become foster parents. To teenagers. One teenager, actually. We don't know who yet. We just know we have one extra bedroom and one slice of love left to give. My job is challenging. That's not the right word but hard isn't the right word either. My actual job duties are satisfying and sort of come natural to me. I enjoy researching and writing and educating. That's all good. What's challenging is being surrounded by stories of broken families all day and not doing anything to directly effect change. There are so many kids out there in need of a good home and all day I'm a cheer leader to everyone else saying "Get involved!" and yet I'm doing nothing. Yes, I'm busy. I w...

We've had a good summer. So it's time to include ALL the photos in one big post. We planned a big trip to Provo, Utah at the end of June. We technically went for a wedding but we took two days to get there and two days to get back and stopped everywhere in between. Of course Eisley ended up getting sick the night before we left. Made for a very miserable little girl the first day in the car but luckily once we stopped for the night the barfing was behind us and you were perfectly healthy the rest of the trip. We just didn't eat eggs. I put so much planning into this trip! I made all these games for you to play on a cookie sheet. They were magnetized so they wouldn't slide in the car. Kaybree loved the puzzles. We stopped briefly in Vegas. It was freakin hot and miserable. We sweated it out long enough to get lunch and then decided we'd never like to go back again. Vegas Temple You two held hands the w...