Busy, busy, busy

I can't believe it's been 2 1/2 weeks since Trish came. This summer is going so fast!!! Everyone has adjusted really well, and it seems like Trish has been part of the family for much more than a few weeks. The novelty has pretty much worn off and she is just one of the gang now. She is great with the kids and has enjoyed being able to be a kid herself as she does things with them.

We've been running 3 miles almost every night (Trish and I are planning to do a half marathon this fall), went to watch my brother at Special Olympics, went to Bio Blitz at the Wildlife Refuge, fed the ducks, went to the zoo, went to the Discovery Center Science Museum, went to Messiah's Mansion (a life size replica of the tabernacle in Moses time), had Cub Scout Day camp, and spent the last 3 days doing Idaho Youth Games. For the Idaho Youth Games, Trish volunteered with Stephen and I and had lots of fun helping the other kids do swimming, bowling, a one mile race, a mini triathlon, and a "fun night" with lots of bounce houses and activities.

She has jumped into the youth activities at church and is going to be leaving for girls camp on Monday morning for 4 days! She is also taking 2 high school classes this summer, Health and Eng 10A, so she spends time each day working on those. I think she has been surprised at how busy we are and how many fun things there are to do. She also loves to take photos, so now I have tons of fun pictures to add to the blog; I just have to get her in front of the camera too!

Here are some pictures from the zoo!

She's here!!!

We picked up Trish yesterday, finally! We are happy to be through with this set of hoops and I think she is happy to be settling in. It will be an adjustment for her to get used to the kids, and hopefully the kids will move past the novelty stage quickly. They want to follow her everywhere, sit next to her, help her. . . . Jeanisha is especially loving it and copies everything Trish does. If Trish has eggs, Jeanisha wants eggs, if Trish puts ranch on her sandwich, so does Jeanisha. Trish seems to think it is cute for now. Hopefully Jeanisha moves past it before it becomes annoying. She is just so excited to finally get a sister. And to have it be a big sister who likes make up and clothes and girly stuff is just bonus!

Patience

I don't really like learning patience. I would really like to just see where I am going and not have to trust. We still don't have Trish. They didn't give us some paperwork they needed to have filled out before our home visit until Friday the 21st. (We were planning to get Trish on the 22nd.)The different regions of the state have a hard time working together and communicating, plus the caseworkers are a bit overloaded right now. But it's still frustrating. I turned in the paperwork on Monday, they came and did the home visit on Tuesday and told me we needed a screen around the fireplace and to get the carpets cleaned. I knew they needed cleaned, but I was waiting until we finished potty training Adam. And they had told us over and over in our 27 hour training class that the home visit was not to look for cleanliness, but for safety issues. (And I had everything else clean and ready anyway.) Luckily, I have a good friend whose husband has a carpet cleaning business and he came the next morning. My carpets look brand new, which is pretty impressive considering the wear and tear that comes from 5 kids! (If you live in the area, their business is Superior Cleaning and the number is 453-2945.)

She came for the revisit on Wed. afternoon, and passed us off to get our foster care license. Thursday I tried calling every 30 minutes, but the phone system was down or something and I was never able to get through to Trish's caseworker. Then they were off for a furlough day on Friday, and then the long weekend. Maybe we can make something happen this week.

Update: I just found out TODAY that the office I was working with was closed on May 27th due to budget cuts. Nice of them to let us know. The phone number I have was disconnected and I've spent the morning tracking down the caseworker's new number, only to get a message saying she will check her messages after she gets all moved over to the new office. At least this explains why I couldn't get a response to phone calls or emails all last week! Patience is NOT fun!

As far as Emilio goes, we've went through the big box of paperwork, and the additional paperwork they sent last week. We are waiting to hear back on a couple things, but then hopefully we can proceed there. So much for being able to bring him home in early June, we havn't even went down for a visit yet. We were told by friends to expect the process to take 4-6 months, even though the state workers were saying 2 months. Every step so far has taken much longer than we were told, so we just keep waiting and praying for it all to work out.

And, just in case we don't have enough waiting to do right now, we put an offer in on a short sale house yesterday in Nampa. I guess I'll learn patience one way or the other.