Changes Are A-Comin'

Lots of changes are coming to our family this month.

Tomorrow is Joshua's birthday.  He'll no longer be 5.  It's hard to believe he's going to be 6 years old and that when we first met him, he was 4.  But in a way, it's a sweet thing, because it means that I've been able to watch him grow for an entire year of his life.  He's been my son for the entire time he's been 5.  That year belongs to our family.  And what a year of change it has been for him!

Abe is turning 4 in a week.  He's come a long way since he was the tiny little 2 year old boy that came to our home.  He's now going to be a tiny little 4 year old.  :)  But for the same reason, I'm excited that we've gotten to see his entire 4th year of life.  He's excited because after a few devastating attempts at allowing him to chew gum, we've been telling him that he had to be 4 before we ever gave it to him again.  And he remembers and is counting down the days!!

We had our disclosure meeting with DHS the other day, and now we are waiting to set our finalization date.  It should be some time this month, though.  I am weary from this process and I am so eager to move on without all the red tape.  It's been so hard because I don't think we've been a normal foster family.  We've known for a long time that we would end up adopting the boys, and we've always felt like they were part of our family and not just visitors.  So it's been hard to have to keep on dealing with DHS and the knowledge in the back of your head that you're not a legal family when you feel like one in your heart.  I'm ready for it all to be official.

School starts tomorrrow.  Yikes....  School starts tomorrow!!!  We've actually been working on school throughout the summer, but we switch to our new books tomorrow.  Liliana is super excited because she gets to switch to notebook paper and pens rather than tablet paper and pencils.  Little does she know that she'll have more work as well.  I know it's going to take about a month of blood, sweat and tears **literally** before the kids will finally settle back into their new routine.  So while I'm excited to start something new after a year of the previous topics, I also know that it ain't gonna be easy. :)

So with all of these changes coming, I will be able to start back to blogging.  I haven't been able to blog for a long time because I wasn't able to post anything about the boys when we were fostering them.  I just didn't feel like I could blog about our family or post pictures without including them.  Now that we are adopting them in the near future, I'll be back to blogging on a regular basis! Yay!  So stay tuned for more!