My First Mother’s Day

Well, the Friday before Mother’s Day we got our first foster care placement! We can’t post very many details about them, but we got a baby girl almost a year old and her older sister, about 3 years old.

Needless to say, for our first time as parents, we totally freaked out! The girls were soo well-behaved, but I think the idea and reality of parenthood took my husband and me by surprise. I was excited and scared and worried and a million other emotions all at the same time. And my husband felt even more overwhelmed than I did!

 

When they were placed with us, it was an emergency placement, so they were still in the process of contacting family. On the Monday after Mother’s Day, they ended up going to stay with their grandma. We were glad for them to be able to stay with their family, but also sad, since we had grown to love them during the short few days they stayed with us. But we also felt a bit relieved because of the overwhelming feelings we felt over the responsibility of suddenly becoming the parents of two little girls.

 

Looking back, it was a great weekend. The girls were so well-behaved, given the situation they were in. The baby really took to my husband, which of course he loved! He has always wanted a daddy’s girl. It was great to have a taste of motherhood over Mother’s Day, but we are glad that they can be someplace familiar. We have definitely missed them over the past week and half and will continue to miss them. We pray that they are doing well and can grow up to be beautiful young ladies.

Why Am I Starting a Blog??

I recently started reading Jon Acuff’s book “Quitter.” Well, actually, I found the audiobook version for free online. It was released free for a limited time in celebration of Acuff’s new book “Start.” Anyway, the book starts out talking about how people are so fed up with their job’s that it has become a habit to just quit a job. Then you realize all your bills become your boss and you are forced to find another job to be able to pay all those bills. Basically, it is more risky to leave a job to create your own ‘dream job’ or opportunity than it is to start that ‘dream job’ while you still have your day job. For example, let’s say your dream is to own a lawn-mowing business. You love lawn mowers, are good with people, and feel this would be great for you. So instead of just quitting your job and doing it, during which time you find out there’s already 20 lawn-mowing companies in your neighborhood alone; you start putting your feelers out and mowing a few lawns here and there in your downtime to build up your dream. That way, you haven’t completely lost out on income by starting slow while you are still making a steady income besides your dream venture.

Anyway, the point is, it made me think. I don’t like my job. It is an office job that I got while my husband was finishing college so that we could afford to pay our bills. It’s not that I don’t like the work, or the people, it’s just that I don’t see myself doing that particular job for the rest of my life. My dream job is to be able to work from home or even be a stay at home mom (someday!). After some inspiration from “Quitter,” I realized, that blogging is a way to reach my goal. I need to get my feelers out there and figure out what I want to do. I have dreamed about writing a book, but I’m a long way from that. But I feel that I have knowledge in my brain that could be helpful to others.

A little bit about me: Well, I’m 26 years old. I’ve been marred for almost six years to my wonderful husband Jeff, who just turned 29. I grew up in Iowa and attended a small community school in my hometown. I met my husband at the Christian college we both attended and got married when I was 20 (a month away from 21) and he was 22. Yes, we got married young, but we didn’t really see it as that ‘different’ because there were so many couples at the college that also got married around our age. I didn’t finish my degree, but instead went to work at an office job so that we could pay our bills after we tied the knot. My husband finished attending school to get his degree in Youth Ministry. He graduated in 2011. Since he was in school, we held off on starting a family. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to afford the added expenses kids bring and didn’t want our kids to have to grow up in an environment where we weren’t sure if we could make it through each month financially. I have since realized that if you think this way, there will never be a ‘right’ time to have kids, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, after my husband graduated, he got a part-time job with a church and we settled in a small town not far from my hometown. My husband has always dreamed about joining a fire department. His grandfather was an EMT for years and was always an inspiration to my husband. So when we settled into our new home, he joined the fire department in that town. He became certified as a firefighter and is currently taking classes to become at EMT. About the time my husband’s student loans came due, we heard about Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace. We couldn’t afford to attend the Financial Peace classes at the time, but a friend of ours let us borrow her CD’s of the classes. I had always been a cheapskate and tried to pay extra on our car loans, but this was an actually financial plan! We have been loosely following the baby steps, but as of last month, we were actually able to afford to attend a Financial Peace class! In the midst of our baby steps, we tried to figure out where kids fit in. About that time, some friends of ours got us to thinking about foster care. A relative of theirs wasn’t in the best life situation and ended up with their child in foster care. Ever since I was little, I have wanted to adopt kids someday, whether from foster care, or internationally. We always thought this would be that perpetual ‘someday,’ but thinking of all the kids out there like our friend’s family member, made us actually ponder if ‘someday’ is now. We talked about it, and prayed about it, and decided that we would let God decide how our family would start. This meant, we would take classes and become a licensed foster/adoptive family, while also going off birth control. We know that God has a perfect child for us and wanted to give Him the opportunity to bring us that child, whether biological, foster/adopt, or both. Yes, I know that this sounds crazy, but if the biological child came first, we can always put our foster license on hold for a year or so, if needed. And if a foster child came first, we could pray about God’s plan for us and re-evaluate the ‘trying to conceive’ plan.

So in summary, our lives are a little crazy right now. We are licensed foster parents, one of whom is on the fire department, who are also taking classes to become financially responsible, while still working hard at our day jobs and trying to start a family and volunteering at our church youth group. So, of course I thought why not start a blog!? I hope to blog three to four times a month at first, until I get the hang of it, and then hopefully more often. Some of the topics I want to cover are finances, homemaking, biblical inspiration, and foster parenting, with maybe a book review thrown in here and there. I named my blog “All In” because I feel like that’s where we are right now. I feel like as we are starting our lives, we put ourselves “All In” to what God has planned for us and are just waiting to see how our life unfolds. Hopefully you will join me as I blog our adventures along with some helpful thoughts. Thanks for joining me on this crazy adventure! Feel free to leave any comments you may have.