Life Lately (Because I can't think of a title any better than that)

I've been quiet on social media lately and that's because I've fallen into what I call the "social media lie". For the most part, we post on social media when things are happy and positive, we don't want to show the dark, bad sides of our lives, only the positive. Well, lately every time I've gone to post it's been negative so I've deleted it.

Today I knew a blog needed to be written about life lately so even though it's gonna be a little (probably a lot) negative, here it is.

Adoption update....*DRUMROLL PLEASE*.... We are.....



STILL WAITING. Now that we have signed our part of the contract we are now waiting on the other state to get their *stuff* together and sign their part so we can begin ICPC.
ICPC (Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (I knew that without even having to look it up, that's how much we've all talked about it)): Once everything is signed, all our paperwork and the boys paperwork will go to the other state's social services where they will check  and make sure everything is there and send it on to Colorado. Denver's social services will check everything, make sure it's all there and send it on to our county, who will also make sure everything is there and once they ok it, we get to go get the boys!!! We have heard time frames anywhere from 1 month to 3 months. It just depends on how long our paperwork sits on someone's desk. The good news is that once the paperwork gets to Colorado, our caseworker has said she is familiar with Denver and our county's social service departments so she will be able to call them and at least see where the paperwork is, which will be really nice!! We love our caseworker so much!!

Lately, I have just been feeling frustrated. I am very thankful for such a kind, caring foster home. I am thankful that the process is going fairly smoothly and quickly. Our caseworker out here is so wonderful and on top of things, we call her with questions all the time and she always has answers. She has told us she will call the caseworker (or foster family), however we just don't want to rock the boat. It has been difficult for me because all the people on our side are out here and it sometimes feels like there is no one on our side out there. (Does that make sense? Probably not). We just want to feel more involved, I think. Someone else, right now, is raising our kids and we are not involved in the daily decisions (or any decisions, really). I worry about how some of the decisions that are made will affect my kids in the future. Sometimes I just want to scream "I'm going to be raising them for the rest of their lives, don't make it harder on me!" We are not in control, we have no say in anything and that is freaking hard. One of the hardest parts is that we don't know what the caseworker out there is saying and telling the foster parents. No one is sharing that information with us and maybe there's no information to share. Maybe she's telling them the same things she's telling us. There are SO MANY questions in my mind. And FaceTime is wonderful but the connections aren't always great, I miss what my boys say sometimes.

I guess what it all boils down to is just that we are ready for them to come home. We are ready for them to call us (and only us) "Mom and Dad".  We are ready for them to be a part of our lives already. We just miss them so much.

As far as the store is concerned, something VERY EXCITING did happen!!

After SIX MONTHS, WE FINALLY GOT OUR SIGN!!! There is one on the other side of the building as well and we are SUPER EXCITED! It has been difficult running a business out of a building with a banner (and then when the city made us take that down) no sign. There have been some bumps in the road lately but now that we FINALLY have our sign, we believe we will be busier. Plus we still have St. Patricks to go through! February just sucks because its one week short. If only we could have had another week in February, that would have really helped!

Chewey's "castration" finally healed and is looking really good. That was a tough week and a half on both us and him. He really hated wearing the cone and the onesie (and neither one kept him from licking the spot) so we had to keep an eye on him 24/7. There were a lot of days where I just sat on the couch with my laptop ALL DAY LONG. We are very thankful to be past that and it actually does seem to be helping with his marking! We're glad we got it done before the boys get here too!

Tron had a crick in his neck, where he would cry when he would turn his head a certain way so he got to go to the vet and get some anti-inflammatory pills. He seems to be doing much better now, I think he just slept the wrong way!

So this post was only partly negative! We'll get past the hard days, there just seem to be more of those lately but all we can do is pray, trust in God's timing and try really, really hard to focus more on the good and beauty in each day rather than focusing on the negative and hard stuff.

xoxo
nikki