2016

Ok.. so things did get busy, but not in the ways we expected.. lol.. so I haven't had much chance too keep things updated.
Firstly, my computer had some issues.. it was mostly ok, except every time I'd open my browser and go online, everything would freeze up and crash..  which eventually meant switching browsers and a bunch of other craziness.. but I finally more or less have it sorted and behaving again :)
This made things a bit hard at times. We did get our homestudy completed, submitted and approved!!! We are home study approved (up to 2 children, ages 4 and under) as of early January 2016!! We are so happy about that. And we are really hoping we can find a match soon. We are still working independently, though we might later switch to an agency assist.
We have our profile booklets completed and one has been sent off for review. Will see if our consultants think we need to make any changes to it, but we have it done :)
We also had a bunch of craziness happen with our foster situation.  We still have the toddler, now 3, E. She is doing great. She had some serious developmental delays, SPD and probable autism and she was pretty much non verbal. We got her into an early intervention program at the local school and she has made huge improvements. She's now talking! She's still below where she should be, but it's so wonderful! She's about a year behind now verbally, but she's learning and using new words every day. We're now in month 8 with her and still no indication of when she will be going back. We know she will be, just not when.. at this point we are hoping to keep her through the school year so she can maintain her progress. Still need to work on potty training :) But she's doing so much better. We haven't had the screaming tantrums in absolute ages.
One of the things that made a big difference for her was that in mid November we had MK and R (now 8 and 6) return to our care, so now she has a big brother and sister closer to her age to play with her and encourage her. We are not sure what is going to be going on with those two. They had spent 6 months back on trial placement with their bio mom. In September we were contacted about the possibility of having them come back to us, but then they were placed with their great grandparents instead. They stayed with them for about 2 months, but their great grandparents just couldn't keep up with the kids, so we were contacted in November about them again. Of course we said yes and took them back. Sadly, the kids have some behavioral issues that they didn't have a year ago, but we are working on them with them and progress is slowly being made.
So we currently have a full house with 3 youngsters. My step daughter M decided that she wanted to finish out her schooling by doing homeschooling, so she is now doing that. At 17 she's capable of deciding and being responsible enough to make that decision, and it frees her up to help her older sister, B2 with her new baby. That's right, we now have 3 granddaughters as well. G is now 8, I is about 19 months, and ID was born last October, so when we do adopt, there will be lots of niblings for them. B2 also has 2 older step daughters, ages 7 and 11, so we've a large groups of niblings. (Nibling is an older term that T discovered. It refers to cousins, friends, nieces/nephews and other related individuals of a similar age. We like the term and it serves us well.)
So that's where we are. We are hoping to find an adoptive match soon, but until then, we continue to foster. We would love to adopt our fosterlings, but it doesn't seem to be their plan, so we search elsewhere. If you know of anyone looking to place a child, newborn or toddler, please let them know about us :) We're not concerned about ethnicity or gender and are willing to discuss health issues, potential or otherwise. And we're willing to work on finding a level of openness that everyone is comfortable with.
Thanks so much! 

April

Well, looks like things are a bust at LDSFS.. They have a policy about not working with families that have more then 2 children.. so, since Hubby has kids from his first marriage, even though we didn't raise any of them, etc, etc.. we're not eligible to work with them.
I'm a bit of a heart broken mess. Not sure why they didn't nix us for that the first time we spoke with them years ago, but here we are. They won't even provide us with a home study that we could maybe use elsewhere... Was hoping for at least that much since they charge much less then everyone else we've been told about in state (like 2-3 times less...) So now, I don't know where we're going on that front. I really thought that maybe this would be something.. 

And, of course, it's National Infertility Awareness week, which just makes things all the more painful.. but, what can I do?

We're still waiting for another foster placement. Who knows when that will happen or what that will bring. And I'm going to be going low-tech for the next month or so.. one of our neighbors is going out of state to deal with some family medical issues and couldn't take her kids, so I will be watching them during the day while her husband is at work. Was planning on using the little bit of money I'll be getting from this on our home study. Now, who knows.. from what we've been told it won't cover the cost from any other agency.. But I don't know..

I just want to be mommy so bad and it just hurts so very much that I can't be.