Our Adventures & Ready for Summer

Some people think we are crazy. Maybe we are a little. 😝😜

Our life is full of craziness. Our life is always busy. Our life is full of some unknown.

But honestly I couldn’t imagine our life any other way, because our life is full of love.

While everyday we live with the question of what the future holds for Sister and Sissy, we also cherish those days knowing at least for now they are in our arms. They are safe, happy, and blossoming. They’ve been with us for almost a year now. They turned a year old just yesterday. They’ve grown so much. They are walking, eating table food, and transitioning to whole milk.

Our Lil Man is not so little anymore. I can’t believe he’s 13. And he’s almost as tall as us (like .5-1 inch shorter but I’m claiming it as long as I can). He’s about to finish his 7th grade year. He has changed so much in the last year. 

Manda is about to complete her first official year of teaching (4th year in the classroom). She has had a busy year with some challenges thrown her way, but she has been a champ and done an amazing job. I’m so proud of her and her dedication to her students. 

This year, I have focused more on our business, but I’ve subbed some too. I’m really excited about the adventures we are embarking on together. We love our personalized apparel and gift business, ASJ Creations[link]. We love getting to create fun, custom gifts for our customers and shirts they love. In March, we embarked on another adventure! We became travel agents, and started ASJ Travels[link]. We have always enjoyed planning big vacations for our family every summer, and we love sharing our love for all things Disney with everyone we know. Now we get to help others plan the trip of their dreams to Disney destinations and beyond! We love getting to help families plan trips to anywhere they desire!

We are so ready for summer!! This is the first year that we'll all be home together all summer. We'll still be working our businesses, but we neither of us will be working outside of the house this year! We have a few trips planned for this summer including Disney and short family beach trips!

Fostering Love: The Anticipated Yet Unexpected Call

Feb 2019 - Sister, Bubba, & Sissy

May 2018 - picking up Sissy from the hospital

Time to play a little catch up! We've had a busy 9 months!

After Sweet Baby C left us, it was 18 days before we received the call for our next placement. The wait for the call was hard since we had only waited 3 days after our approval call, but we also knew that we had a packed schedule and it all would work out when it was meant to.

Well...on the afternoon of last day of school, we received the call for our next placement. 4 day old twin baby girls. Had we received the call any day before then, we wouldn't have been able to say yes because daycare isn't an option that young. The timing was perfect, and we said yes to the exciting, scary adventure we were about to face.

Baby KA (Sister) and Baby LM (Sissy) have been in our care for right at 9.5 months now. Sister was picked up from the hospital and brought to us on the day we received the call. Sissy had to stay in the hospital just a little longer. We went and picked Sissy up two days later at the hospital. Sister and Sissy met for the first time (outside of the womb) at 6 days old.

These sweet girls have changed our lives and the lives of everyone in our family. We are so blessed to be able to shower them with love.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothering people. To mother is to "bring up with care and affection" or to "look after kindly and protectively".

Today, I ask that when you are out and about or when you see your various friends' posts on social media, please remember to be kind. Mothering comes in so many forms.

Whether you have mothered through birth, adoption, fostering, or just leading and supporting, thank you for caring for and mothering others.

Fostering Love: First Goodbye

Us with Baby C

Well the time has come to say goodbye to our first placement. Sweet Baby C has left our home and gone to a relative placement. We are happy that he has family that was able to get approved and take him in. We know that being able to be with family will be good for him.

However, it doesn't make our hearts ache any less that he left. We've cried and cried some more. We expected the heart ache, but goodness you really can't prepare yourself for it.

As we prepared for his departure and since, we've made it a point to put away things that were kept behind. Things like some toys, play pen, bottles, etc. that were ours. It has helped to not have these things still laying around as reminders that he left. Lil Man has been an emotional wreck this week as he doesn't do well with emotions, and he was really smitten with Baby C.

Honestly, we're looking forward to more placements. We know we'll get a call in the near future.

Did you know the state of Georgia has over 15,000 children in foster care? You can help by becoming a foster parent, becoming a relative placement (if you have a relative in care), becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), or just reaching out to your local DFCS for information on volunteer opportunities.

Fostering Love: First Placement Call

Baby C has been with us for 2 weeks now. Yep that's right 2 weeks! Let's rewind a little...

So as you know, we received the call that we were approved on April 9th. Well on April 12th I received a voicemail while I was at my afternoon car duty at school. It was from our new foster parent case manager. She was introducing herself and letting us know they had a potential placement. As she said, "Yes, it really does happen that fast."

I mean wow! 3 days?!?! Granted, we were comping at the bit waiting for a call, because we know there's such a high need. But honestly, we didn't think the call would come that fast. And we thought for sure we would have to have the transition meeting before we received a call, but nope!

I instantly text Manda to get her to reach out for more info since I was still at work for my after school tutoring. She called me and said they had an 8 month old little boy, and we knew instantly that he would be the perfect fit for our first placement.

Once he was dropped off that evening, we headed to Wal-Mart to grab some necessities that we didn't have at home yet. Then we when home, snuggled, and got ready for Friday. Friday meant he had to start daycare. We definitely had some adjusting to do with our schedule, but we're figuring it out.

Like I said we received the call on April 12th. He's been with us for 2 weeks now. We're still somewhat adjusting to life with an infant, but it's definitely starting to feel more routine. We're all so in love with this sweet baby boy.

Lil Man has stepped up and is already a great big brother. The boys are both smitten with each other. Baby C adores Lil Man so much. Baby C really has just fit his way into our lives perfectly. We already fear the day that he may have to leave us. We keep reminding ourselves that's what we signed up for, but it doesn't make it any less scary. But one thing is for sure, as long as he's with us we will love him and spoil him rotten!

Fostering Love: Journey to Approval

It's been a while, but we are so excited to start sharing an exciting journey with you! See, fostering is something that we have talked about for a long time. We always said that it would be hard to love them and lose them. We also said we'd probably do it after we had more kids of our own and they were older. I'm going to share a brief (super brief) snapshot of our journey from inquiry to approval.

Sometime in early 2017, a friend (who was already a foster parent) shared a couple of things about foster care. First, she shared the numbers for our county. At the time, we had less than 20 DFCS foster homes and nearly 200 children in our county that were in state custody. Later, she shared a post that was basically "If you've ever said _____ about becoming a foster parent, you'd be perfect" and it was a list of 3-5 bullet points. We realized then that it wasn't about how much it would hurt us when they left, it's more about the love we can give them while they're with us. That's when we decided to find out more about the process.

On May 15, 2017, we attended a prospective foster parent information meeting. It was a brief session where they told us what we could expect of the process and more about the need in our county. We were able to complete our IMPACT pre-service training classes in June 2017. All that left was finishing up the paperwork and home visits.

We finished up all of our visits in late fall and had our last bit of paperwork submitted in early January. The sub-contractor that wrote our home study report submitted it to our county DFCS at the end of January. Now it was time for three people to review the home study and gives us the final decision. Our case manager had to come out and take a few more pictures of the house per her supervisor's request. Then just more waiting.

After nearly eleven months after we started the process, we received the call on April 9, 2018 (two weeks ago) that we were approved. Our case manager said that our new case manager would be reaching out soon to set up a transition meeting so that we could begin accepting placements. Receiving that call brought so many emotions. We had waited for this, and now the time was finally here!

Book Review: Habit Changers by M.J. Ryan

I've heard good things about M.J. Ryan's books, but I hadn't ever read any of them. Well, I grabbed this book up and started reading! Habit Changers is a book full of mantras and advice to help you reach your goals in life. 

Ryan organized the book of mantras by categories such as acceptance, communication, prioritization, self-care, and so much more. Seriously, she thought of it all. And it really works let me tell you!  

Manda and I were excited when the book delivered, and we cracked it open to see what it was all about. We explored the whole book at first, but then we decided to pick a couple of mantras to focus on for a little while. 

The first one we chose was in the 'Happiness' category: "Change it, leave it, or accept it." This one really hit home for us, because there are some things we haven't been happy with in our lives. We kept repeating this mantra to ourselves, and it really has helped make a difference. We changed up and rearranged our whole house thanks to this mantra, and we have been so much happier with our living space as a result!

The second one we chose came from the 'Procrastination' section: "All you need is the first action." We are both so bad about procrastinating! Do you ever feel like you don't know what to do when you have a long to do list or large project looming over you?! This is us! But I can say this mantra really helped me. When I would start feeling anxious about something I had to do and trying to figure out all of the steps, I would remind myself that I only needed the first step.

I really enjoyed this book as not only does Ryan provide the mantras, but she shares stories of clients she has worked with (or personal stories of herself) and how these mantras have helped.

Have you read Habit Changers? If so, share your favorite mantra and/or how it helped you below in the comments! If not, I definitely recommend it! Let us know if you decide to check it out!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link. 

For more information about the book and author click here.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.