We're BAAAACK!!

I know its been forever! But, I really just wanted to take the summer off & really enjoy it. We had SOOO much fun & as sad as we are to see it end. I will start on the adoption front. We changed agencies & have been SO happy. Currently we are ONLY waiting on homestudy, yes again. With a new agency you have to get a NEW homestudy, so here we are again. Hopefully we get that knocked out soon & move along. We also just took a fabulous vacation! I am happy to have all 3 kiddos in school!! WHAT! Yes, Tucker started 3rd Grade, Everly started Pre-K & Delilah now goes to a private Preschool 2 days a week. I will share a bunch of photos from the Summer over the next few blogs! Meanwhile we are getting into a new "normal" and so far it is going SO well. All 3 kids are doing well in school & really like. I would also be lying if I didn't say I love it too! Even though they go in a 2 separate times & all 3 get out at different times I do have 2 hour blocks with no kids, or just one of the girls depending on the day of the week. Not only does it give me a much needed break from ALL 3 at once, it gives the kiddos one on one time that they love! Here are a couple of photos from this summer!

What the..........

So, I have said many, many times how humbling this experience is. We went to homestudy committee with our agency a couple of weeks ago. The next day we got a call basically saying "yea sorry not right now". We had to pry & pry to get ANY type of explanation. We were finally given a generic answer that our girls were too young & they felt they weren't far enough into their placement. The girls placement is 2.5 years old. After everything they didn't even feel like we deserved an explanation past 2 sentences. Like we weren't real people with real kids & a real family. I honestly believe it had NOTHING to do with "US" (they told us repeatedly our family was perfect & we couldn't change anything) and had everything to do with my tendencies to voice my disgust with their unprofessional nature as a whole. Our last experience with them was a train wreck, mainly due to their inexperienced & untrained staff. They tossed me, my husband & our girls to the wolves. We had to educate their employees on what their own policies were according to their manual. We debated even licensing through them this time, against our better judgement we did it anyway. We felt that there was still an established relationship there & maybe things had changed since we were there last. After taking a few weeks to think everything through we decided to move forward with a different agency. We met with them last night & felt really good about it. We took them copies of everything we had done with our old agency, as well as a new application etc. At this point they are reviewing our application & requesting copies of all of our documents from our old agency. After that they will assess things & let us know what they think. We have a great optimistic feeling about this agency & how personal their whole process is. The people who approve your homestudy are people who have been working with you the ENTIRE process, not people who have NEVER met you & look at you as nothing but a file folder. I will update a little when we know a little more & whether we ultimately decide to move forward with them!

Homestudy, check!

This past Sunday we finished our homestudy!! Yay! I feel like things are taking FOREVER, but we really only turned in our application in the middle of March. We are now waiting on our homestudy worker to type everything from our interviews up & present us to the licensing committee. The licensing committee only meets every Tuesday, so it may be a couple of weeks! I'll keep you updated.

Fun in the Sun...

Summer is here!! Yay!! We are so excited to swim & enjoy the outdoors! Our local waterpark opened up this past weekend! We took the kids & of course they loved every minute of it. We can't wait to take them all the time. I'm coming up on the slow season for my business so we are gearing up to take time as a family. As far as the adoption goes we are still waiting for homestudy. Apparently things are moving slow in the homestudy department.

Easter and....

What a beautiful time of year! We spent this weekend at my parent house to celebrate Easter. The kids played until they fell asleep! They had lots of fun on the trampoline, the boat & the water slide we got. We really took advantage of this amazing Spring weather. We also completed our adoption file & were moved to home study! Yay!! We are now waiting on the homestudy worker to contact us to schedule her visit. At that point she will come out & do an update (everything that has happened since the girl's placement). She will then write up the report & then present us to the homestudy committee! I will keep you guys updated!

Bring on Summer...

Can I just say the Summer can NOT come fast enough! It's been a long, cold, did I say long, winter in South Texas. We had more freezes & snow then I can remember, EVER. We all (mainly me & the girls) spent most of it bundle up & hunkered down in the house with chili & hot chocolate & movies & a fire! The days are getting warm enough to open the windows & let the Spring in. The kids are loving every minute of it but counting down the days until our waterpark opens (less than 4 weeks). As far as our new round of licensing goes, we are waiting for our frequent visitor's background checks to come back as well as a couple of our last reference checks. Once those things are completed we will move to home study!

EEG & Spring!

A few weeks age Delilah had a seizure. It was very short but unexplained. Her pediatrician wanted her to have an EEG done to check for epilepsy etc. Thank God everything came back normal & they still have no real explanation for the seizure. We are also completely done with training!! Yay! We have turned in everything for our new application. Our recruiter is currently working through our application & documents to see what all she needs before we can move on to home study! She should have everything wrapped up hopefully in the next couple of weeks! After that we need to go back to have our home study updated, a fire inspection, TB tests then we will go to the commitee to get approved. I will keep you guys updated!