Throwback Thursday Thanksgiving- July 2001

Hi! Yes, I know. It's been a bit. But...well...life. It happened. I could give all sorts of reasons but basically, it has just been a crazy time in my life the past 18 months. Which will give some fodder for future blog posts, so I guess that is good!

Going to reach back years ago...to a time frame where we had a lot less of everything...

July 2001 held some very special reminders of God's love for me. I used to be a lot better about keeping a journal and I really enjoyed writing down answers to prayer. Of course , that wasn't the only year of such amazing answers to prayer. Daily God amazes me with his care of us! However, through the remainder of 2020, I want to spend once a week, reminding myself and sharing with others, the ways God answers prayer.

2020 has been a year of changes for everyone around the world. It could be easy to only see the negatives. All the things we weren't able to do because of this pandemic. So I want to focus on the blessings of God, both past and present, to remind myself, my children and whoever reads my blog, of just what an awesome God we have.

Here are a couple things that I gave praise to the Lord about back in 2001:

To set the stage, I was at our annual church camp. We barely had enough money to make it up to camp, but we were sure excited to be there. Two neat miracles happened:

"I only had a couple dollars and I needed to buy diapers for my 2 month old baby, Jordyn. I met up with another mama who gave me a bag of diapers that her son had outgrown! Praise the Lord!

Another day, I went to go grocery shopping and spent the rest of our money. As we left the store, I checked to make sure my wallet was in my purse and it was. When I got back to Camp, the Lord blessed us by directing someone to give us $50. As I went to put the money in my wallet, it was gone!

My cabin was clean, so I didn't have too look to hard to see that it simply was not there. I looked through my dad's truck and I called the store I had been at to see if it had been turned in. I looked everywhere with no success...

Finally, I went back to the cabin and prayed, pleading the blood of Jesus! As I started to tidy up the mess I had made looking, I heard something fall. I took my broom and pushed out whatever it was and there, underneath the bed at the very farthest corner it could be, was my wallet!

Once again, He comes through! If you have time, share a way God has answered prayer for you in the comments section!

Have a wonderful day!

Family Friday: Adoption Awareness Month/Day One Of Thankfulness

Dear Friends and family-

November is National Adoption Awareness Month. It’s a time to celebrate adoptive families and spotlight the thousands of youth and teens across our country who are still awaiting permanent, loving homes.

Reference: adoptionsupport.org/general/national-adoption-awareness-month-2017/

Throwback Thursday: Thanksgiving Post from 2008

Welcome to Throwback Thursday! Tomorrow starts a month that we recognize for giving thanks all month long. While most of us do a great job of giving thanks throughout the year, I do love taking time to really focus on what I am grateful for. This November, I hope to send a picture a day of what I am thankful for. Here is a blog post I posted back in 2008, so many things have changed in the past 11 years, that I am going to note in red anything that has changed. Hope you enjoy!

Throwback Thursday: Crazy Day...

Dear Family and Friends,

Do you remember when we had a couple of sets of twins back in 2016? The following post was written when we had a set that I like to call M&M's. They were an adorable pair that laughed a lot and went through a TON of diapers.

Thanksgiving with M&M

It's kind of nice to currently only have one baby (at the time of this writing) and get a bit more sleep, I have to admit!

Take a step back a couple years and see what a day in the life of a foster mom with twin babies was like. It was a Crazy Day!!

May God Bless Your Day,

Heidi

Monday Madness: Journal Of A Mom

I wrote this in my journal the day after Thanksgiving:

Family Friday: Thanksgiving Weekend

Dear Friends and Family,

I had truly thought there was a possibility that I would be able to get into my blogging full time again. Trust me, there is content coming out my ears of all the things I would love to place on here! However, having a foster baby and extra teen these past few months makes an impact on blogging time, believe it or not!

Today it was in my heart, with it being Thanksgiving weekend, to give an update to our "peeps".

I want to thank all of you for being supportive in our fostering and adoptive journey. It's not a journey we planned but one we have happily traveled as the Lord has laid it out in front of us. I think it is fitting that at this point I give a loose update on where we are currently with the placements in our home:

If you read this post a few weeks ago about The Ever Changing Numbers Of A Foster Family, I mentioned that we didn't know how long we would have either of our extra blessings. That has since changed a bit: The teenager that has been living with us will be going home next weekend. As every change, it is bittersweet. It's time for their family to be reunited, which is our desire and prayer. She will still come over regularly for respite, as she has for the past two years. So we will still get to have her around! Our little baby will also be going home sometime in the next two months, more than likely.Their little family will still be monitored for months to come by DHS per protocol but they will be all together. We sure have enjoyed having this sweet little one in our home! He has been a joy and blessing. We will absolutely miss him. (Although I will enjoy sleeping at night again!!)

In other foster news: We will be taking a break from fostering for a undetermined period of time. Since our adoption of Noah, we feel it is important for him to completely understand that he is a permanent part of our family. With the coming and goings of other kiddos, it reminds him of his early time in DHS care when he was moved regularly before coming into our home. So he assumes that means he will have to move on as well. As a result, it's important for his emotional well being that we focus on our core family and take a sabbatical from fostering. This wasn't an easy decision to come to, however, our family is our first concern. We have taken a poll with the girls and they also agree that it's time for a break. 

That being said, there are many other ways we can continue to support the foster care system. I plan on doing a blog post on this soon as we have had many people ask how they can help out. So look for that to come out!

In other news, school is going good for all our kiddos. There have been some changes that have come along, but all in all, they are changes for the good that our family has embraced. The girls, that are in school, are still homeschooling. Tony continues to homeschool and use the resource (or SPED) room at the local elementary school. He has been receiving a little more help there this year. I'm not sure if I mentioned before but we had more testing done at the beginning of the school year and  intellectually, he is not where we hoped he would be at this point. However, the team at school still continues to believe that we are doing the right thing for him. So we continue doing what we are doing! Noah continues going to a private school we found for him last year. We are so blessed by the team there and their willingness to help us train him with his social behaviors!

We are looking forward to the holiday season! How about you? This year sees us blissfully scaling down the activities outside the home to concentrate on our family and the blessed meaning of Christmas. Recently we had everyone write down their favorite traditions or even traditions they thought might be fun to start. It was neat to see what the kids favorite traditions were. What struck me, however, was that most of them simply had to do with spending time doing different activities with our family! And that, I can appreciate!

Does your family have any favorite Christmas traditions?

Well, my free moment of time is swiftly disappearing as the house is starting to wake up! Our little baby is gleefully chuckling at Peter, Noah is tossing in bed waiting for the all clear to get up and play while Tony tucks his head under his blanket for a few more minutes of sleep. I don't expect the girls to wake up any time soon, but once they do, we will be decorating the house for Christmas!

Praying that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!
From our house to yours: God bless

Heidi

Thanksgiving Throw Back Thursday: Thanksgiving with Gigi

Welcome To Thanksgiving Throw Back Thursday!

My goal this month is to share some memories of Thanksgivings in the past few years.

I hope you enjoy!

Thanksgiving....Traditional or No?

It's funny how time changes things....when I was a child, I loved the familiarity of tradition and knowing exactly what was going to be happening.

Blast From The Crazy Past- Happy Thanksgiving

This was originally posted 10 years ago in 2006. Reading through it, there are things I completely forgot happened to our family that year.

Fostering...New Experiences...

For the past two weeks we have been working on the process of transitioning a little boy into our home. He will be joining us officially tomorrow.

Last week, I met his mother and grandparents and let them know that our family is there for their family. That we are family advocates and want to see them succeed. We don't know the exact circumstances of this family. But one thing we do know: God brought our paths together for a reason. We have been praying about this family before we knew they would be in our lives. There are no accidents in life.

The past couple days were spent on the road with his current foster mom going to a Dr's appointment several hours away. It was a great experience getting to know his foster mom better, seeing his behaviors in action and learning more about him in general.

Like most kiddos in foster care, he is like an onion with lots of layers....as time goes on, more is revealed about him, his life and how he processes all of that.

Our life is going to change....every placement has their special needs, requirements and change to your family. It requires you to stretch, grow and learn.

It is an adjustment....and so worth it.

Over the next few days, as you enjoy your family Thanksgiving....please remember those whose families are disrupted. Families that have little ones that are not currently living with them...

I'm Thankful For: My Husband and Children

As I sit here thinking about my family....I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for each one of them...

So let me tell you a little about each member in my family and why I am thankful for them:

Blast From The Crazy Past- Wow! (Part Three)

Here is the final episode in my Thanksgiving Trilogy of Answered Prayer From The Past: (Originally posted in 2009) You can find Part One here and Part Two here. Enjoy!