I recently came across this revised version of the old Mother Goose rhyme:

Old Woman in a Shoe
By Jordan Riak

From their days in the shoe
they learned this about living:
Kindness, not force,
Is the gift that keeps giving.

I have been praying that the Lord would show me what I’m suppose to do next to contribute financially. I dream of the day when I no longer have to clean houses or keep other people’s children, but I know it is only for a season to help us get out of debt faster.

I figured it would make the most sense to pick up a few houses to clean again since it’s the most money for my time. I’ve been trying to get the word out for anyone who might need me. However, God’s plans are not always our plans.

Two weeks before our last foster children were scheduled to go home, a friend text me to tell me her daycare had given her two weeks’ notice and would no longer be caring for 0-2 year olds. I asked her what she needed. She has twin two year old girls and needed someone 8:30am-4pm Monday thru Friday. We talked a little more about details, I talked to Josh, and with his approval I offered to keep the girls myself. I thought and thought (and prayed) about whether or not this was really what I was suppose to do. Afterall, one of the BIGGEST reasons I felt we needed to give up foster parenting was because of how difficult it had become to homeschool while taking care of someone else’s young children. At the same time, I weighed the cons of cleaning three or four houses every week. I would have to find childcare for my children while I cleaned, there would certainly be a lot more strings attached and it would take me away from my children for at least ten hours a week. Most of all, I prayed that if I wasn’t suppose to keep the girls, the Lord would shut the door and have my friend find a wonderful daycare to replace the old one.

In the end, she picked me. When I recalculated our budget without being employed by the foster agency and then added the income from keeping the girls, it was exactly the amount we needed.

This has been a week of trial and error. We usually take the entire of month of December off from everyday school work, but we’ve been doing a little bit of work everyday this week to see where it fits best. The girls and Owen sleep from 12:00-3:00 everyday. We’ve tried doing some school work in that time and other days I use nap time to do laundry and rest. One day we waited until the girls left at 4pm and did all of our school work then. I’m still not sure exactly what we’re going to do. Probably we’ll do a little in the morning before they get here, a little at the beginning of nap time, and finish up after they leave; before I start dinner.

Today ends week one (because I’m going out of town tomorrow). It has been a week of adjusting, but I can tell you it has been absolutely wonderful to walk back into my house at 4:01pm, after helping load the girls back into their car, and it be just my three boys. Some of my friends may think I’m crazy (or even foolish) to be jumping right back into caring for someone else’s children all day, but for us, it’s a blessing. We still have our evenings, nights, and weekends to ourselves and a small part of me takes joy in the fact that I saved two little girls from being in daycare 40 hours a week.

I take comfort in God’s constant, faithful provision for our family.

~audrey

Jesse opened book number two:

J is for Jesus: The Sweetest Story Ever Told

~audrey

Today was the first day in our 25 books of Christmas project. Each day the boys will take turns opening one wrapped Christmas book. My disclaimer is that not all of these books are about the real reason for Christmas. For example, Josh and I will have a good laugh when they open the Red Neck Night Before Christmas. I couldn’t resist. It looked hilarious.

We started with Owen since he’s the youngest. Day one’s pick was The Worst Best Christmas Pageant Ever. We read half of it on day one and will finish it today before reading day two’s book.

~audrey

ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover will be in Augusta for the next eight days giving one deserving family a once in a lifetime opportunity to start over with a brand new home. A family in our homeschool co-op was actually nominated and I’ve been dying to find out if they were the family chosen. We’ll find out Thursday!

Several weeks ago news started circulating that you could sign up to volunteer at the site of the build so I signed Josh and myself up for the 8pm to 2am shift on Sunday night, which will be day four of the build. We both got an email back from ABC saying that THOUSANDS of people signed up to volunteer and they could only accept a certain amount of workers so they would soon be sending “Congratulations” emails to all those who were chosen.

WELL…Josh and I BOTH just got our CONGRATS emails! We will have the honor of participating in this once in a lifetime opportunity. For a moment I panicked and wished I hadn’t signed up. I was afraid of having to go and work without Josh. Once he checked his email I got really excited.

I’ll keep you posted!

~audrey

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We left for my parents’ house on Wednesday and they treated me, Josh, my brother, and sister-in-law to a double-date that night. We ate sushi and went to a movie. It was SO nice to be out with only adults and have uninterrupted adult conversations…and really good sushi!

Thursday of course was the big food day and that was spent at my parents’. Since my mom is still recovering from her back surgery, my sister-in-law and I took on most of the cooking. My dad smoked a big turkey breast and cooked a small ham. Laura and I made macaroni and cheese, broccoli cheese and rice casserole, stuffed squash, and sweet potato casserole. The entire day was relaxing and enjoyable.

On Friday we packed up and headed to Josh’s parents’ house out in the country. Josh’s dad lost his job as a music minister two years ago. He found a new job about three months later but it simply wasn’t enough to maintain their budget. Their home has been on the verge of foreclosure for a year now. They’ve had it up for sale for over a year. If it doesn’t sell by January 4th it will be auctioned off as a foreclosure.

The Wilkersons have lived in this home for 18 years. It’s a beautiful white house with four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a mother-in-law suite including a kitchenette nestled on ten acres with two ponds. Believe me, if Josh and I could have sold our house and afforded a $250K mortgage we’d have done it in a heartbeat. It’s home. It was a very bittersweet time at their house. The entire family took one last walk down to the ponds, the boys climbed their favorite tree, threw rocks in the water, and simply remembered the last 18 years.

Camping, fishing, birthday parties, a rent-free apartment while Josh finished college, and home to some of my favorite memories over the last ten years; their house will be dearly missed. Through it all, God has been faithful to provide and Josh’s parents have stood firm in their faith knowing God would never leave them nor forsake them and He will ultimately lead them to their new home in the next few weeks.

It was wonderful having Josh’s older sister Mandy, her husband Matt, and their little girl Lucy down from Atlanta. Lucy and Owen are only five months apart and we celebrated her third birthday the day after Thanksgiving. They could be twins. I certainly wish they saw each other more often.

On Saturday we headed to the Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree. This has become such an incredibly enjoyable tradition. Every single year we head out to Clark’s Hill Christmas Tree farm the weekend after Thanksgiving. The all load up on the hay ride and the tractor driver drops us off at just the right spot to pick out our tree. Once the tree is cut down, shaken, and netted we all sit down to enjoy hot chocolate, hot apple cider, and boiled peanuts. The kids take pictures by the big Christmas Tree that shows how much they’ve grown since last year and the little ones love the bean bag toss. When it’s time to check out the cashier gives everyone in the family a miniature candy cane and we head home to decorate the tree.

Jesse with Josh’s younger sister, Erin.

I’m amazed at how relaxed I am now that the foster children have gone home. I haven’t officially resigned yet, but I plan to by the new year. I can’t explain to you just how wonderful it is to just be back to “our” family again. Even daily tasks like laundry, dishes, and preparing dinner are so much more enjoyable now that the stress level in our home has flat-lined. The constant feeling of being overwhelmed has completely left me. I just can’t put it into words. I’m so thankful for the season we spent in foster parenting, but I’m also thankful to be moving on.

God is so good.

~audrey

Oh I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow to post this delicious info!

Our Books-A-Million store just up and disappeared about a month ago. It was the strangest thing. Then all of a sudden there was a HUGE ugly, orange sign in its place:

2nd and Charles

To be honest, the sign makes it look like one of those cheap, ghetto clothing stores….well that sure taught me not to judge a book by its cover! It’s a new project by the owners of Books-A-Million! We’re only the second city in America to get one. It’s a gigantic used book store! When you walk in you feel like you’re in a library. Aisle upon aisle, row upon row of gently loved books for Goodwill prices.

Last year a friend purchased and individually wrapped 25 different Christmas books for her children. Every day of December they got to open one book and on Christmas day they opened the book telling the whole story of Christ’s birth. I thought it was a great idea but also knew it would be quite expensive. Well this store made me feel like I’d hit the jackpot!! They had FIVE book cases full of holiday books. Some were Christ-centered and many were just fun books about Christmas. I ended up buying 28 books in all, including several readers for my big boys to use during school time (Boxcar Kids, Magic Tree House, etc.), some hard back books with the dust jacket still on it (Jan Brett, Max Lucado, etc), and even a few golden books from my childhood (the Pied Piper and the Three Billy Goats Gruff) and my total was $78. It averages out to only $2.78 per book. Some of these books were originally priced at over $20 a piece! I cannot wait to wrap them all and place them in a basket where the boys will choose a new one each day to lead us up to Christmas. It’s going to be so fun. I think I will pass them along to my niece next year so she can join in on the fun.

I only have one niece and she and Owen are five months apart. Her name is Lucy and her birthday is this Saturday. While we were out today, I bought her birthday present. One of the gifts is a Christmas book that I found at the used book store, but the other gift is this precious magnetic dress-up set by Melissa and Doug.

It will be even more fun to shop for her Christmas gift in a few weeks!

I will leave you with this: As my foster children were loaded into the vehicle that picked them up to take them home, Owen stood crying in the driveway because he wanted so badly to go with Sister. They became best buddies and I know he will ask where she is when he wakes up in the morning. It broke my heart.

~audrey

I just got the phone call (well actually it was a text!). The kids will be picked up and taken to their parents by lunch time!! I can hardly believe. It’s so bitter sweet. They will be missed dearly and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know their parents, who are wonderful people who love their children more than life itself. I look forward to keeping in touch with them. This is the kind of success story that makes foster parenting worth every pain and inconvenience. What a great way to end this season in our lives.

Here are more pics from the photo shoot with Ashley. LOVE THEM!

Happy GOING HOME DAY!

~audrey

Ashley so graciously took pictures of my family and the children on Saturday evening down at the Savannah Rapids. The weather was gorgeous and the kids were pretty cooperative. Ashley is bringing me the entire CD this morning and I can’t wait to see them! She did an amazing job. Would you believe this is the first family picture we’ve ever made?! That’s pitiful, I know.

Here is your sneak peek 🙂

To top off a great evening, a girl stopped me when we were first getting started and she said,

“I hope this isn’t weird, but I follow your blog and I wanted to come over and say hi.” That was so fun and exciting! The girl’s name was Ashley and she is a photographer and was actually there at the river waiting for clients to arrive.

I’ll post more pictures later when the CD arrives.

Happy three-days-before-Thanksgiving!

~audrey

The hearing came and went and the judge ordered that the children return home!! We just have to wait a few more days for the order to be signed and filed and we’ll be back to the Fab Five.

Tonight I’m going to a young women’s event out in the country. It’s not really that far away, but it’s at the home of a friend who has five acres and lives off a dirt road. We’re going to have a bonfire, food, lots of laughs, and a ton of fun. I hate leaving Josh in the evenings after he’s been working all day…but I need a break too so I’ll just go for a couple of hours.

This weekend we’ll get things tidied up before the kids return to their parents. Yesterday actually went by very quickly. I watched Anne of Green Gables while I folded and put away about four loads of laundry, I cleaned the kitchen, and most importantly I thoroughly cleaned out my van. I like my van so much better when it’s nice and clean.

I can hardly believe Thanksgiving is in six days. I think I’m finally getting in the Christmas spirit. I’ve had Christmas music playing and the weather has turned cool again; it’s been wonderful. I’m planning something wonderful for Josh and I for Christmas. I can’t give any details now because every once in a while he reads my blog! 🙂 🙂 Can’t wait!

Happy WEEKEND!!!

~audrey

Today is the day (again). The hearing is at 4:30 this afternoon and if everything goes as planned I should hear by 5:00pm whether or not the kids will be going home today! I’m so torn between being super excited and trying not to get my hopes up. Their bags are still packed from the uneventful November 1st hearing. All I have to do is bathe both of the children this afternoon when Sister gets home from school and then W.A.I.T.

Sister doesn’t even know there’s a chance she could be going home today. I don’t want to get her hopes up again if it doesn’t happen. Plus, it will be SO exciting to see the look on her face if I get that phone call and am able to tell her, “YOU’RE GOING HOME TODAY!!” Oh I can’t wait! It will be so exciting.

I have plenty of things to do today. Publix has an excellent week of buy-one-get-ones and items under $.50. I got 35 items last night, spent $31 and saved $54!! The only problem is, I don’t have room for all of the boxes of food that I bought! I have to get in the garage today and clear off some shelves and do some reorganizing. I also need to clean…..my entire house. So that should keep me preoccupied.

I just put baby down for his two to three hour nap, so I had better get to work.

P.S. Homeschool buddies: The boys and I did our first lesson in Saxon today and it was a lot of fun. Definitely more interaction and variety than our old faithful Miquon. I think we’ll enjoy it. I decided to put the boys on the same level since they’re only a grade level apart and I feel like Miquon kind of launched Jesse into more difficult concepts that will allow him to hang with us just fine in Saxon 2. Ali, I think you guys will like it if you decide to make the switch.

Happy “hope-to-send-the-kids-home-today” Thursday!!

~audrey