The Holidays

So, it's been a couple days since I posted anything... You know how it is with the Holidays :) Speaking of, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! We celebrated a little early this year because my husband had to work :( The joys of working in law enforcement! We had a lot of fun though. We started it out with taking our kids on a train ride to the "North Pole" where they got to hang out with Mr. and Mrs. Claus as well as an elf. We had snow on the ground, so it made for an even better trip! They got milk and cookies at the North Pole as well as a picture with the jolly couple in their sleigh. I'll try and get some pics up one of these days! We went ahead and had our Christmas the following morning to carry on the "magic" from the train ride. The kids loved their presents (of course) and we all indulged in some yummy orange cinnamon rolls!

On of our favorite gifts this year came from my sister-in-law and her husband. They just had a litter of puppies (boston terrier and pug = Bugs hehe) and they gave us one. His name is Boss and he is the sweetest thing ever! He is still too young to leave mama, so we will be getting him around the 1st week or so of January. We are all so excited :) There will most def. be pics of him in the near future!

I haven't spent a lot of time getting things together the last few days, but will try and be more productive after the Holiday hustle calms down. This week my husband, Dan, gets to stop working the graveyard shift! I can't wait. He's been working the 10:30pm-6:30am for the last 8 months and it's been nuts. My husband doesn't do well when his sleep is messed up, so he hasn't been the happiest person the past 8 months! Sunday he starts his new shift, the day shift, and will now be getting home around 3-3:30pm. It's going to be nice having him home at night and getting to spend the evenings together again :) He also has been given a conditional offer of employment as a state trooper, so he could be changing positions in the future. Hopefully we won't get bumped back to graves! He will be required to do them a couple months a year, but not steady like this past year.

Ok, so back to the main topic here, Foster Care and or adoption and everything that goes with it! Let's talk about the very 1st step. The first thing you need to do once you've decided you'd like to be a part of this process, is decided exactly what area you want to pursue. Do you want to adopt? Do you want to be a foster parent? Or do you want to Foster-Adopt? In order to answer that question, you'll want to understand each "category".

Tonight, let's start with Adoption. First, you will need to decide if you want to adopt a child in the U.S. or another country.

Domestic Adoption - Adopting within the United States
International Adoption - Adopting from another country outside the United States

The next thing you will need to think about is whether you want an Agency Adoption or Independent Adoption.

Agency Adoption - You have two options here:

• Private Licensed Agency
• Local Public Agency - This would be adopting from the Foster Care system.

Independent Adoption - This is where you have located a placing parent (someone wanting to put their child up for adoption) yourself or where you work with a lawyer to adopt.

**Each State has its own set of adoption laws, so you will need to verify what types of placements are allowed**

I will leave you to think about those tonight, as they are big decisions! I recommend you do a search for each category to get more information and I will be back to add some more information soon.

This is a long process that can get discouraging, and overwhelming at times, but hang in there! The end result will be worth the time invested :) If you have any questions, comments etc. please don't hesitate to ask. There is so much information that I, of course, won't be able to fully cover, nor do I even know it all, but I hope that I can be of some help! It is a time consuming journey, so I know it's nice to be able to find as much information in one spot as possible.

Until next time!