looking for blessings

We attended a foster care and adoption orientation meeting last night with a non-profit group called DePelchin. They have been coordinating foster care and adoption for the state for a long time. They are one of the bigger organizations to work with children in foster care in the state of Texas.

Some good things we learned about foster care to adoption:

• There are a lot of good kids that need homes.
• Foster to adopt will allow for quicker placement of a child in our home.
• There is a lot of support offered to families who adoption children in foster care.
• Parents of adopted foster care children are given continuing support even after the finalization of adoption.
• Kids have been in foster care will get free college tuition to Texas schools.
  
• We can learn more about an older child as to their abilities, interests, and personalities than we can with a baby.
• We can match (to a degree) our interests and personality with your child-to-be.
• Older children can interact and play with us. We can DO things right from the beginning with your child: take hikes, plant bulbs, bake cookies, roller blade.
• With an older child, we may be given a window into their past lives. They may have special memories of grandparents, or favorite foods. We can help them retain and synthesize their memories of their past lives.
  

There are, of course, disadvantages to older child adoption, just as there are disadvantages and advantages to adopting babies or having kids in general (sleepless nights, messy diapers, sassy teenagers) but the trials of being a parent are greatly out weighted by the benefits. We are encouraged by knowing that we can work together to love and support our family.

No matter how children come into our life, it's a bit like most of life - lots of wonderful moments mixed in with enough challenges to make sure we appreciate the good times!

Has anyone had experiences with foster care? Please share our insight with us.

We are still considering several options. This month we have appointments with LDS Family Services (for infant adoption), a fertility specialist, and foster care. We want to keep our minds open to inspiration and suggestions.

-Lonnie and Alisa

it takes a network to build this family

As far as I understand from the science books, bringing children into the world usually involves just two people.

Adoption, on the other hand, involves two people, plus a million other connections that have to fall into place in order to bring the child into the home.

Our hope is that someone, will know someone, who might know someone, who is hoping just as hard as we are to find the connection that will be right and good to form an extended family of birth-parents, children, and adopted parents.

Luckily, Lonnie and I both know a lot of people. And the people we know also know a lot of people. Plus, we live in the age of social networking. If Lonnie and I were find each other, why not find our family through a wide network of people. We also hope to meet many more people. So as a first step we have created this blog.

We will also sign up with an adoption agency. We are working on that this month. But even with an adoption agency the timing of adoption can be quite lengthy and foster care is only temporary. We want to do whatever possible to help increase our chances of finding the children that are looking for us.

We haven't sent out our blog link to many people yet....a couple family members and close friends. Some of those people have sent it on to others. I've been hesitant to send it out to many people who will only look at it once and then forget about it.

So suddenly we are dependent upon the graces of kind people who we know, as well as many we don't yet know, to find our children, upon whom we can spread all our love, patience, tolerance, and parenting affection. Feel free to spread the love.

-Alisa

happy mother's day

photo of Alisa's mom Cookie, and nephew Sam
Happy Mother's Day to all. To be honest, I have not always enjoyed Mother's Day. It is a day that can often make mothers feel inadequate and those who are not mothers, unfulfilled. But this year has been different. I'm sure it helped that my kind and thoughtful husband made me breakfast and brought home beautiful hanging flower pots for the backyard. But there is also something more that has made this Mother's Day different.

As a child, I loved Mother's Day. We made crafts at school, and I loved seeing my mother smile when she received our simple gifts. (My mom has an amazing ability to make the simplest gesture seem like something grand.) Flowers from the garden were my frequent Mother's Day gift, and my mom made them seem like a gift for a queen.

The past few years have been more difficult on Mother's Day. I have waited longer than I expected to become a mother and receive ceramic hand prints of my children to hang on my walls. My heart yearns for motherhood. I have often been sad when I looked at young mothers and wished for what they had that I lacked - children.

But this Mother's Day, my perspective has changed. Since thinking more seriously about adoption, I have been much happier. As I look at the world, I realize that anyone could be the birth parents of my future child. Possibly a friend who I have not talked to in years could be the one who connects us to our children. I am finding myself more patient with those around me. I want to smile at the people I pass on the street. Consideration of adoption has caused me to ponder how my personal relationships may eventually affect my future familial relationships. I think of the connections in the world on a much broader scale. And I hope that adoption can bring peace and joy not only to my heart but to many others in this world.

-Alisa

relying on the improbable - READ THIS FIRST

I always thought that I would start a family by having a baby in a traditional way, you know...falling in love, getting married, months of planning...then on the predetermined date...candles, a night alone, and then nine painfully pleasurable months later...an amazingly, perfectly peculiar child keeping me up at night. Then over the years, I would bake pies, take the kids to soccer practice and coach the team, make the world more beautiful, vote with my heart, be a friend to those in need, save the world, and be a loving wife as well as a patient mother to my children.

Yet, what I have come to realize, is that my life is not often what I have planned. And, in most cases, life has given me gifts that have been far greater that anything I would have imagined for myself.

It never occurred to me that I would be using the internet as a tool to bring children into our family and home. Yet, for some reason, this method, although possibly less romantic than the way most children come into families, makes sense to me.

I actually met my wonderful husband through a large network of contacts. So it makes sense that our family may grow through the benefit of mass electronic communication.

-Alisa