And the Story Continues.....

As I said yesterday, Matt and I both said that we would never do foster care as a way of adopting. But 3 years ago in November I started to watch the Dave Thomas (the Wendy's guy) Adoption special called "Home for the Holidays" It has celebrities who have been adopted or who have adopted their children on it and they also showcase older kids in the system who need a home and share people's adoption stories. I LOVE this show and I watch it every year!

3 years ago I got to thinking about America. You never hear about orphanages so where are all these kids at? I googled it and I found out that they were all in foster care. I got on a website and saw the most beautiful boy. His name was Everett. He was 4 at the time and I went into the living room to talk to Matt. I said, "OK. You are going to think I am crazy but I want us to start to pray about considering fost adopt (foster care that turns into adoption.)" Then I said..." AND there is a cute 4 year old named Everett and I want to ask about him." He was like.."KELLI!" I said," Just pray about it." Well...a couple of days later he came back to me and said that he was open to learning more.

That started our baby steps. We started by choosing an agency and then going to an informational night. What harm would that do? Then we drove to Thousand Oaks to the informational meeting because we didn't want to wait for the meeting in our town the next month. That's where we met "Sugar" . We called her "Sugs". If you have ever seen the TV show "Friends", remember Estelle, Joey's agent? That was "Sugs". She always had a TON of jewelry on and she loved to write out all of her credentials on the board. Matt and I liked her. She told us all about foster care, fost adopt, getting certified...all of it. Matt and I talked on the way home and decided that we would proceed with getting certified. Another baby step. What harm would that do? It was free and we felt like we were DOING something to help the process along. But we weren't getting ourselves into something that we couldn't get out of.

I got a phone call back about Everett. It turns out that they were wrong and he had to be adopted with his sister. And they had to have visitation with his older brother, who had ALOT of things going on that I would not want my kids around. Because of that, we closed that door. I believe that God used cute, beautiful Everett to capture a piece of my heart to set me on this path from Him. Next was to get certified!