as you wish

so i have been trying to obstain from m'lady stories but i just can't resist this one.
today she asked if i could help her with a form she had to fill out, which is basically just watching her because she doesn't let you do anything, and as i was sitting there she said "could you close that door, i can't think with them talking" so i got up and started to close her door and she said "oh no, i'm clausterphobic, you'll have to close his door."
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAA! i mean really-who could keep a story that good bottled up?

honest truth

sorry for the lack of posts. i didn't want to see Tatum's picture move down the page. and...i didn't want to have to be painfully honest. but since that's what this is all about, here goes. and again, this post may disappear if i chicken out later.
last night was a melt down night. i have to confess i have tried with everything in me to put this whole baby business behind me but last night was too much. we watched the adam sandler movie "click" and it made me sad on 2 counts. 1-i'll never have kids to wish i had spent more time with when they are older. and 2-am i fast forwarding through my life waiting for the day i have kids? after those two realizations i bawled. and then we talked about it and decided we still, no matter how much we try not to, will want kids of our own. and i don't know how to change that.

skiddish

yesterday we exchanged paul's camera for the one he really wanted. it takes incredible pictures. this is one of them. i love the lighting. tatum is not so sure of it because the first time he took her picture, it blinked at her and beeped 10 times because he had forgotten to take it off of the timer setting. so now she's not so sure about this new camera. she usually sits right up and smiles.
in other news, we finally broke down and called the vet yesterday because ever since this incedent she hasn't been regular (i'll leave it at that), even though all she's had to eat is boiled chicken breast and white rice. he called me last night to tell us that she had "some kind of bacterial infection in her bowels that her body just can't get rid of." gee, i wonder what piece of raw chicken she got that from? she is now on a medication that she has to take twice a day for 10 days. little booger.

yellow, red, blue, green

if you are not an angelo you have no idea what that title means. let me explain it to you. when we were little my mom assigned all 4 of us kids colors so that we wouldn't fight over bowls, pencils, cups etc. missy=yellow, cheri=red, dan=blue, brock=green. so now that we are all grown we still subconsciously abide by our color assignments. for instance, my sister lives in a yellow house, my house was red, brock is going to be painting his house this summer...what color you ask? green. with out even realizing it we have all stuck to our color assignment. i'm blogging to you from my new computer. paul was a little disappointed because he tried to stick to the color scheme but he got me the green one. i wear green all the time because my eyes are green and i just love the way they pop out when i wear green. so guess what i got for christmas? a green computer (which i love even though it's not red) and a wii AND a wii fit! i think paul won the lotto and didn't tell me. poor paul, he gave me a budget and i stuck to it so he got a camera that was the wrong one, some harley stuff to shine his bike and a bandana that was the wrong one. his christmas sucked. mine was very good. ok-i'm going to go play with my wii.
and Tatum wishes you a very merry christmas too.

not a word

tonight was our first home study meeting. it was very informative. we have a bunch of little projects we have to work on in the meantime. we also have to find a 3rd bedroom. sooo...dust off those boxes and here we go again. not sure where we'll land but i SURE hope god makes it clear because i'm not good at this stabbing in the dark thing.
we were also told we will not be able to say a word of any of this foster care business to ANYONE. and then there was a dramatic pause in the conversation to drive home the point. i'm scared already. and here's a couple fears i have.
1. what if we get a child that says we accused them of abuse and we really didn't? do they believe us? do the dig to the absolute bottom to find out the truth? and if they decide we are lieing and not the child will we EVER be able to adopt again? because if not i'm not sure i can do this. it's very scary.
2. what if we get kids that drive us against each other. that's scary too. up until this point we've had a fairly good marriage. sure we have our fights and our times where we'd rather be islands and not have to deal with the other. but truth be told, we don't fight that much. when we do they are quick and we resolve it. what if that doesn't stay the same?
3. what if we get kids that we can't handle? i don't know that i could "send them back". i seriously don't know how you do that. how do you give up on a child that doesn't know any better?
4. what if i say something i'm not allowed to say? i'm an open book. how do i not tell everything i know? i'm not a good liar either. for instance, when i lie, i giggle afterwards, which then makes the other person say "are you lieing?" and of course i blurt "yes." i didn't last long in DC for that exact reason. not that everyone in DC lies, i'm just sayin'.

so if you're a prayer, you can start praying for these things. now instead of saying yikes, all that comes to mind is *gulp*.

debbie downer

yesterday was a down day. i don't really have any reason why it was.
well, that's not entirely true. a couple little things that should make me feel very excited and happy kind of made me feel sad and left behind. and by kind of i mean very much so.
*sigh* why? i already had moved on. i was already beyond all of this and calling it my last chapter. i guess no matter how much i move on, i'll always feel the hole of the what could have been if _____ happened. i'm not sure how to get over that part. or if you ever do get over that part.

Us elfed...it never gets old

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

It's SANTA!!!

Tatum got to go see Santa today. She did ok. We had a couple wigging out photos but then he got this one. Sorry for the glare, I had to take a picture of the picture.

Rooney

today i found out when i took tatum to daycare that rooney died in an accident this week while he was out hunting with his dad. roonie is the one that on the first day of school mrs doolittle said "FINALLY we have someone that can keep up with roonie. poor guy hasn't had anyone to play with until tatum got here." he would have been one next month. he is actually dog of the month this month at mrs doolittle's. they went out to the kansas border to do some hunting and he ran out in front of a car and got hit. and he is so darn fast. i'm sure he went out with a smile on his face and his owner waving frantically behind him to stop. oh it breaks my heart. mrs doolittle and i shared a good cry this morning when she told me. i just can't help but think how awful this will make their christmas. ok, i'm crying again. he was such a great dog.
tonight i went to mrs doolittle's church because she was singing in their choir christmas performance, which was amazing. patsy, dixie's grandma, was one of the greeters and we talked about it. i guess dixie's mom and grandma also had good cries at the news of roonie's crossing the rainbow bridge.
the good ones are always taken so quickly!

signs

you know how i've talked about signs. like here...and here...well when this happened wednesday morning, i should have listened to the sign and just crawled right back into bed and stayed there. yes, it is in fact, my toothpaste lid. somehow it flew right out of my hand, while standing at the sink, and landed smack into the toilet. *sigh* when will i learn to listen?

My office Elfed

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

remember when i said i was so over it?

well, i'm there again. i followed this rainbow only to find out the ugly little leprechaun has OCD and she's (to keep it PG) a witch with a capital b. mmm-hmmmm.
today i cried. i haven't done that in years. but today i did and that is over the line. you know how people say "oh gemini's, don't mess with them. they are all sunshine and cherries until you cross the line." that's the line i'm talking about.
by the way-i didn't know i was a gemini until i started working in the DC office and they were all into astronomy. turns out i'm a gemini and i have two sides. the nice one and the you-just-crossed-the-line one.

the ball is rolling

we got a call from one of the women from social services on friday. i called her back and then waited patiently all day yesterday for her to call me back again. we learned in the very first meeting that we will be waiting alot. so i didn't think much of it. but when we got home there was another message from another woman introducing herself as our home study worker. yikes! it's really happening.
i just got ahold of the first woman and she wanted to make sure that we understood that when we marked "adoption" on our application that the kids that we get won't be free to be adopted right away. they will be foster. they REALLY want you to understand that this might not work out. i appreciate that. i'd rather them do that then promise me worry-free-perfect children ages 0-3 months that are free for adoption.
the second lady wanted to know when we'd like to meet for our first home study meeting. it will be about an hour long. then we'll have 2 meetings with both of us that are 2 hour meetings. then we will have individual meetings that are 2-3 hours a peice. YIKES! (i think i'll be saying that alot in the next few months.) at the rate we're going i feel like we'll be done in 60 days instead of the traditional 3-6 months. i guess i'd better start looking for a bigger place quicker than i thought.

A Christmas Story

in the winter of 1975 when i was just a wee 6 month old baby, the story goes that my father was in ace hardware and found this nativity scene. my parents were dirt poor but it was a steal and they didn't have one so he brought it home. for years it sat on the mantle above the fireplace in our childhood home. a few years back my parents went through some of their extra decorations and i inherited the nativity scene since it was bought in the year of my birth. a couple years later i pulled it out, and displayed it proudly. it doesn't have quite all of the bible characters, but it has the important ones. mary, joseph, baby jesus and the pied piper. [record scratch] WhAt ThE hEcK iS tHe PiEd PiPeR dOiNg In ThE mAnGeR sCeNe?!?! this makes no sense. in all the years this thing was on the mantle not a single one of us 4 kids questions the pied piper behind jesus, who seems to be worshiping said piper.

in news that makes a little more sense, today tatum was inducted into the family christmas stocking tradition. when we were first married and paul was in school i had no money for stockings. i guess dirt poor runs in the family when it comes to early years of marriage. i did, however, have this great fabric left over from when i made our futon cover. the green one is paul's, the red one is mine, so tatum's is red since she's a girl too. she has different trim, and hers is a bit shorter. she loves it. ok, so she doesn't quite understand yet, but she will. here she is posing next to it in the sweater she got from uncle wesley for christmas this year.

Tatum in the Snow

Christmas Music

It's that time of year again where one good radio station in town will play all your favorite christmas tunes non-stop and it begs the question: which one is your favorite? you know which one i'm talking about. the one you wait all day for and then when it comes on you shush everyone in the room and turn it up just one notch. here's mine...Dominick the Donkey.

I must say, it's the first time I've seen this YouTube version and I gotta admire a bunch of guys willing to put down their saturday beers long enough to film this.

shock and awe

tatum just pulled a george bush. it's snowing out and she LOVES the snow. i was making dinner. i got it to the point that i could walk away, bundled up in my best woolen mittens and hat, grabbed the leash and off we went. well as soon as we got out there we heard our neighbor calling tucker. tucker is a 140 pound chocolate lab that lives in the next building. tucker is a very bad boy. he's a bully. to people and to dogs. we learned that the hard way with tucker dragging his 80 pound owner by the leash one time all the while she's screaming "tucker NO! tucker STOP! tucker HEEL!" ya right, like NOW's the time to convince me he's trained. tatum doesn't even know what heel means and she speaks english. needless to say she wasn't as interested in staying out and playing in the snow since tucker was on the loose. so we came back inside and while i was taking my snowy boots off at the door she ran into the kitchen real quick. past her water bowl. past her food bowl. and beyond where i could see her. then she grabbed a toy and came out to where she thought she would no longer be connected with the scene of the crime and began to eat her toy really really super quick. i could not quite make out what the heck toy it was until i realized it was one of the pieces of chicken i had on the counter!!! see the blue plate in the background? and the sheepish look on her face? ya, she got jail time for that one. all i said was "CRIB!!!!" and she tucked her butt and ran up here into her crib. crazy dog.

Support the Literacy Center

I got this email from a friend from college and thought it was too neat to just delete. Any amount you can give helps a good cause for those that just need life to give them one more chance.

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to help Dan fundraise for his job. Each of the staff at his center has been asked to fundraise $1,000 for the company he works at. For those of you who do not know, Dan started working for a non-profit agency this summer that helps people earn their GED. He specifically works with people on probation at the court house. Dan loves his job. I might say it's the first time he has ever loved his job, and the people he works with love him. He has been complimented numerous times and has offered hope to many individuals who never hear "good job, you did it, keep up the good work." One thing he has started, is reading a poem at the end of each tutoring session. When he first started doing this the students were not sure what to think, but now they request a poem if he forgets. If a student passes the GED, Dan's present to them is a chapbook he has created with various poems he has written.

So I'm writing you to see if you might be interested in helping support Dan and his company. Here is a link that tells more of his story. If you give, you can leave a cool comment, like I did. See if you can find it. (I had no idea it would actually show up for everyone to read!)

For those of you who are poor (like us) if you give $5, that's awesome. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Kristin

eek.

ok. so i did it. we filled out the application thursday night after our information meeting. then this weekend we called our references and got those on there. then yesterday paul finished it up by signing it. today...i mailed it. we are now officially in the process of becoming foster parents. by sending in our application it will automatically start our home study. and our classes are january 9th, 10th and 31st. after the home study is completed we're on "the list" and we wait for "the call". don't the quotation markes make the words seem more daunting?

yesterday was my mayan abdominal massage. i have to say-it was so relaxing i'm still sleepy today. it was good though. it kinda hurt when she went over my ov's. i was expecting to be a little more emotional. but i wasn't. i guess it's supposed to release some serious emotions when they massage your belly. maybe it's a sign that i've let go of expectations. or maybe deep down inside i always saw this coming. not sure. but it was good. and i think i'd better go get another massage next month for good measure.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

we have been getting snow this week which, to tatum, is the ULTIMATE delight. she absolutely LOVES the snow. the other night i took her out for a late night walk and she got to be off leash since no one else was out. she dove and rolled in the snow. then she'd bury her face in a snowbank. then she'd run up ahead and try to catch the snow that she was kicking out in front of herself, which only made her run faster. she just can't think of a better thing to be on the ground. but when we come inside she has these little snow clumps all over. here's a picture after our late night walk. see all the snowballs attached to her tummy? and she gets this look on her face as if i'm the one responsible for making her tummy so darn cold. (click on the picture to see a close up...)

more things to think about

tonight was full of information. here's some of what we learned.
there are currently 500,000 children in foster care in the united states alone. 126,000 of those children are legally free, which means, either their parents relinquished their parental rights, or the courts did it for them. 92% of the children in foster care have had some kind of abuse. (to keep this PG, i'll let you think about that.) just for understanding, children NOT in foster care have these statistics: girls abused 1 in 3 or 4 (about 28%); boys abused 1 in 4 or 5 (about 22%).
every year 126,000 children age out of the foster care system with no one to care for them and no where to go. of those 126,000 30% end up homeless while only 2% get their college degree. the math on that is 37,800 end up homeless while 2,520 finish college. eye opening isn't it? to adopt a baby from china we are looking at $20,000 to $30,000 and about a 3 year process. are you ready for the numbers on foster children? it is going to cost us $139 to adopt (no, i'm not forgetting any zero's) and it will take us anywhere from 3-6 months to get certified. does this mean we'll be bringing babies home left and right in the spring? no. this means that our home will be open and available to any child that is pulled out of their home. i know the next question: what kind of child is that? any child that is in a home is the kind of child that could be taken out. it could be a baby, it could be 17, it could have broken bones, it could be burned, it could have been sexually abused, physically abused, neglected, left to fend for themselves and siblings, it could be a single child, it could be 1 of 5 children, it could be the oldest child, it could be the 3rd in line, it could be all 5 children, it could be a sweet child, it could be a problem child. it could be a child that is like your neighbor, the kid at the park, a kid you just saw at the store throwing a fit, the degenerate you saw key a car in the parking lot. if it's under 18, it could go in foster care. BUT - just because they go into foster care doesn't mean we get them. we will go through a home study that will help us evaluate what we are truly willing and qualified to care for. i don't think we are old enough, wise enough or seasoned enough to take care of the degenerate that just keyed the car in the parking lot. but it will help us take a step back and say "ok yes, we like babies, but maybe we'd be better with 3-5 year olds." we think we want a 7-10 year old boy, but maybe we'd be better with a 6 year old girl. we don't really know. again, we are just knocking on every door to see which one opens. the other fact in this game...the process will take about 12 months for the courts to decide that the child would be better off available for adoption than with their birth parents. it is also the duty of the court to keep the biological family as intact as they possibly can. what this means is, while we are working to bond and educate and love this child, their parents are working to get them back. they will see a judge at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and 12 months. in that time the judge could say "well, you took 10 steps back, but OH LOOKY THERE! you did take 1 step forward. let's give you another 3 months and see how you do." if at any point in the process the parent is able to provide the MINIMUM STANDARD to care for the child, the child goes back. the minimum standard is: food, shelter, clothing and education. it is not halloween costumes, saturday morning pancakes and a stocking full of their favorite candies every christmas morning. regardless of the fact that we would be able to better provide for the child, fact is, we would be the bottom of the list after ALL KINSHIP was established unsuitable. by the way, our county has won awards for establishing kinship. that means, and is not limited to, finding fathers, that may not know they are fathers; finding grandparents states away; locating a long lost aunt or uncle, or cousin or sibling. all of these people have precident over us in the pecking order of who can adopt this child. so we are going through the process. it will be an emotional roller coaster and there will be many times that i am posting with tears in my eyes and beating my head against the wall that we even tried. but in the end, it won't cost me a penny. just a few days of my time for training and a few nights of filling out endless paperwork. but if that will make the difference in the life of one child, it will all be worth it to us.

excited. but trying not to be.

today i'm excited. i'm trying my hardest not to be but i can't help it. tonight is the first "information meeting" for foster kids in colorado and i can't wait to hear what they have to say. the other night was a story sharing time with other foster families. tonight is the nitty gritty information. and january we are signed up for a 24 hour class to get certified. it's just the beginning and we have a long way to go but it's something. it's a direction other than standing still or backwards, both if which we've been in this past year and a half.
tatum is excited because we had snow up to her belly this morning when we went out to potty. she LOVES snow. you should have seen her at grandma and grandpa's this past weekend. the snow was knee deep on me in some places. grace and alyssia even made a snow man. darn-i don't have any pictures to post but it was cute cute cute.