I’m feeling like a new woman this morning. The babies slept eleven hours through the night, two nights in a row…if only Josh and I hadn’t stayed up till almost 11:30pm watching My Sister’s Keeper! It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep does for you psychologically! Moms, you know what I’m talking about!

Our foster children will be leaving soon. Their case went back to court and DFCS is allowing them to go to a family member. Even though we’ve only had them for two weeks, it will be harder letting these three go. We’ve really fallen in love with the babies. I wish so much I could post pictures of them; they are absolutely adorable. And Sister and I have really spent some quality time together. Unfortunately, everything that I’ve observed at visitations tell me that she doesn’t get much attention at home. It’s all about the babies and she’s just another “momma” in the house. It’s sad. She’s such a sweet girl.

Still no news on ‘our daughters’…any of them. The ones from out of town are still in the process of checking out the grandparents, which aren’t expected to be approved, but it can be a long process. And the girls that are with my friend’s parents are going to have to stay put until their parents’ TPR hearing takes place. For those of you not from Augusta, we are about ten minutes from the South Carolina state line. Going back and forth from SC and Augusta is a daily thing for many Augustans, so when I say the girls are in a different state, they are, but it’s only about 20 minutes from here. If they were in foster care in my county, they could be moved to my home and remain there, even before the hearing takes place, but everything changes when they’re out of state. So once again, we wait. I feel like a cartoon character walking around with a huge question mark floating over my head. Someone at church last night was asking me for updates on everything and once I told her all the updates, which were: we don’t know, we’re still waiting, haven’t heard, and should be soon, she just laughed and said, “Girl, your life is just one big question mark right now, isn’t it!” Yep, sure is. But, you know, I seem to rest better in God’s sovereignty when my life is up in the air like this. I guess because I’m a planner and I like to be in control, I have no choice but to chill out and wait on the Lord in situations like this.

Joshua has music this morning and his first recital tonight. I’ll try to video a little clip of his recital. He’s very excited.

So many of my friends are at home with sick kids; fevers and throwing up. I’m so thankful mine are back to being healthy.

Okay, more later!

~audrey

Clearly I’ve been a little busy lately. I’ve hardly even sat down since last Saturday…at least that’s how it has felt. I’m tired.
I have lots to write about:

Joshua’s seventh birthday
Update on our current foster children
Celebration of our 8th anniversary
Enjoying the spring weather…

But…I do not have time right now.
Hoping to catch up tomorrow during nap time.
Don’t give up on me just yet! 🙂

~audrey

It has become quite apparent, even though it is only the end of February, that God intends to give us daughters this year. First we had the situation with the two little girls out of town and that is still up in the air, but doesn’t seem promising. Of course right now we have a temporary placement of three children, but they will likely be returning to family sometime in the next week or so.

I got a call from a friend the other day. She said she’d had us on her heart and wanted us to consider praying about two little girls who are currently in foster care with her parents. The girls are 5 and 10, which would normally not sound like the ideal adoptive situation, but the more she told me about them, the more my heart broke for them. By the end of our call, I was ready to go pick them up and rescue them from a childhood of moving from foster home to foster home. It is very difficult to place children of these ages in adoptive homes. Most families that are taking the adoption route are looking for babies.

We are praying earnestly about these girls and plan to meet them in person as early as next week. Please pray that God would give us wisdom in this situation. We came into foster parenting with no intention to adopt. We wanted to strictly foster. I had the idea that if we adopted, then we wouldn’t be able to help any other children. But what better way to help two little girls than to give them the promise of a permanent home with three little brothers and two parents that will love them forever, no matter what? I’m astonished with how quickly the Lord has changed my heart. I now long for the children that we are meant to adopt. The yearning to have “one more baby” is gone. Just a month or two ago, I was ready to be pregnant again. That is no longer the case. Even if neither of these situations work out with the girls, I feel confident that we are meant to adopt any additional children that will be added to our family.

I look forward to keeping you posted!

~audrey

Not sure if I mentioned that Joshua was throwing up last Saturday night. Josh stayed home from church with him the next day and I prayed no one else would get it. Well, last night, Jesse didn’t want to eat dinner and was complaining of a tummy ache. He fell asleep on the couch and I was going to let him stay there since I had already prepared a little trash can beside him and if he did get sick, it wouldn’t disturb the rest of the kids. About an hour later, everyone in the house was asleep but me. I went back into the living room to get my Bible study book and noticed that Jesse was asleep sitting up. He was laying down when he fell asleep. I went over to the couch to lay him back down and I noticed puke. EVERYWHERE. Puke on the couch, the blankets, his pillow, his clothes…he hadn’t even woken up!! GROSS!!!!!! I know I’ve mentioned before, I CANNOT clean up puke. I can do poop all day long, but I cannot do puke. I will puke.

So, I had to wake up my husband who was in bed at 8:45pm because he had a fever. Just for the record, I tried to do it myself, but Josh heard me gagging and dry heaving from the bathroom.
We got Jesse all cleaned up, Josh stripped two of the cushion covers off of the couch (I pray they make it through the wash!), and we settled Jesse back to sleep on the love seat.

Then the fun really began. **can you sense my sarcasm?** We finally got back into bed around 10pm and within 30 minutes, the two babies began waking up crying. They don’t want food, juice, bottles, etc, they just wake up screaming and one of us has to put the paci back in the mouth of who ever is crying and normally they go right back down….except this night, they woke up over 15 times. This is not an exaggeration. I saw every single hour on the clock; many more than once. It was truly a night from hell, and those are the nights you just have to keep saying, “Thank you Lord for healthy babies. Thank you that I have the ability to wake up every 30-45 minutes to take care of these babies. Thank you that they are in a safe, warm bed. And thank you for a husband that helps in the middle of the night!”

Poor Josh is back in bed at the moment. He has a 3:00 meeting this afternoon, so he’s trying to get some rest and hoping his fever doesn’t come back.

Please, please, please pray that none of the other children get this stomach bug! I’m not sure we can take another night like that. Ironically, I prayed over the babies last night before putting them to bed…it was their worst night yet!! I’ll definitely pray harder tonight! Haha!

~audrey

I can’t believe the ‘new children’ have been here six days already. If we can just get past the first ten days, that seems to be when things start feeling normal. Baby Bear slept 13 hours straight last night!! If only we can get Brother Bear (1yr old) to do the same! Ugh.

Sister is very helpful with her brothers. She’s warming up to us, slowly but surely.

Josh has been the most uncomfortable this time. It’s definitely different with two babies, but I’m still banking on the fact that the extra work with babies far out-weighs the extra drama with older children! I’m enjoying these children. Tomorrow will start our new routine when I register Sister for school and get back to schooling Joshua. It’s been a nice long, snowy weekend! Here are a few pics from our snowy extravaganza!

Believe it or not, these pics were taken at 9:00pm at night! The snow was so bright white (obviously! :), it looked as if it were still a little light outside. It was crazy…for those of us who haven’t seen snow in almost ten years!!

See boys, God does make it snow in Georgia!! LOL!

~audrey

Well, here we are again, a family of eight. We got a call from our agency last night while we were still at church. There was an emergency placement that needed a place to sleep at the very least. Three children, ages 6yrs(girl), 17mo.(boy), and 6mo(boy). I picked them up at 9:00pm last night and they were all asleep by 10:00pm.
Between the three of them, I think I only slept an hour or two at a time all night. Surprisingly, I’ve been fine today; probably still a steady flow of adrenaline! I’m sure I’ll crash tonight.
Once again, they came with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, so I’m taking little girl shopping tonight. It should be fun. We ate lunch at Chick-fil-A today and she had never even heard of Chick-fil-A….she asked for a hamburger. 🙂
Once again, God is already pouring out His grace and goodness. We’ve had friends give us baby clothes for the boys and unused cans of formula for the youngest. Good grief, I haven’t used formula in seven years–that stuff is EXPENSIVE! Holy Cow!
I’m looking forward to whatever amount of time we have with these children. The boys are already doing very well. Owen has been so sweet with the babies and Joshua and Jesse are playing well with the six year old.

More to come later…like when I told sister to stop rocking the baby because he had just eaten and might puke on her. Her response was, “Why do you always use hard words?? What in the world is ‘puke’?” lol. 🙂

~audrey

One of the very best things about homeschooling, is the joy and satisfaction I receive from being able to teach my children. Joshua took the scenic route to finishing his reading curriculum. I felt like we’d NEVER get through it. He loves math, but getting him to do his reading lesson with no complaints was like pulling teeth. We finally finished, and in celebration of that accomplishment, we went to the Christian bookstore to get some sort of devotional or Bible study that Joshua could read. I was actually looking for a book that Ashley had gotten Sam called, I Can Read God’s Word, but they were sold out. However, what I found instead was absolutely perfect!!

It’s called His Mighty Warrior, A Treasure Map From Your King.

The first page is titled, “A Plan and A Purpose”. It starts out like this:
My Mighty Warrior,
I have a powerful plan for you, my son. I know you are just a young boy, but so was King David when I chose him to become the future king….

…Love, Your King, who has a plan for you.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11.

Each entry is only about two paragraphs, but it’s just enough for my young, beginning reader. And this is what Joshua said after reading the first line: “Ok, so who is the son and who is the King in the story?” I said, “YOU are the son and GOD is the King!” His response brought tears to my eyes:

“GOD is talking to ME!?!”

Joshua is loving his new book. He’s already on page 10 and has read to both his brothers and to Josh last night. I highly recommend this book. It almost reminds me of a young Wild At Heart.

~audrey

That’s what went through my head as I tried to get a picture of all three of my boys, still, and maybe even smiling! …maybe when they’re 20.

This is what I got instead:

However, I also got these, and I think these are pretty great…

I love my boys.

~audrey

We did finally receive a phone call, however, it was not the phone call we were praying for. Without going into too much detail, a family member is in the process of being checked out to possibly take the girls. Apparently that situation isn’t looking good, but we don’t know when the home study will take place. It could be a week, it could be a month. We’ve been given the option to leave our home open until we hear more news, or allow the agency to give us another placement if one becomes available.

I don’t know what to do.

I suppose the only thing to do is continue to pray.

I just knew this situation was from the Lord.

Too many things were right about the whole thing. It’s the perfect case.

But God’s timing is perfect and His plan isn’t always our plan. I asked the agency to only call us with a placement if they were very young, like this case. I can only pray that if we are indeed meant to have these girls, God will keep our house open until we receive the final answer from DFCS. If we get a phone call in the meantime with another seemingly perfect placement for us, we will accept and continue to trust that the Lord knows what He’s doing.

I am momentarily very disappointed, but relieved to finally have some answers, even if they weren’t the answers we were looking for. My God is sovereign and one thing I now know for sure, I am so very ready for another baby, whether it be through my womb, fostering, or adoption. Please make it soon Lord.

~audrey

I can’t believe it! The boys spent the night at grandparents’ houses two weekends in a row! Of course it would have been even better if we didn’t have work and church stuff packing our schedule, but it was still wonderful.

Last night Josh’s company. Powerserve International, attended the annual ADDY Awards. It is an awards dinner put on by the American Advertising Federation. It was a lot of fun, food, and music…Oh, and Powerserve won NINE ADDYs; three of which were Josh’s projects. I’m so proud of Josh and all of Powerserve for kicking butt in a year where other companies closed their doors. God has been good to Powerserve and the Powerserve families. We are very grateful.

Are you still praying for my girls?? Please don’t quit yet! I’m praying for some news tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted!

~audrey