Well here we are, August 19th yet again which means not only are we on the verge of escorting summer out and fall in, but today is our anniversary!!:) I can't believe it's been 13 years since she said "I do" and changed my life for good! I could spend this entire post talking about all the good times Kelli and I have had over the years, but instead I'll just be real for a minute. We got up this morning, I should say Van got us up this morning, and we immediately decided pancakes were on the menu for the special day. So I made Van his two silver dollar pancakes as per usual, then I made Kelli a heart pancake. Now this heart had good intentions of being the most perfectly shaped heart pancake ever made, but like many of my intentions it looked much better in my head than it did on the plate:)
This particular pancake heart had some rough edges to it, never one to miss a great opportunity at a living metaphor, I elaborated to Kelli about what this pancake heart signified to me. I explained that when your young and engaged you tell yourself that your marriage is going to be perfect! Your never going to fight, maybe you'll have the occasional disagreement, but never a fight. Your going to enjoy each others company every single second, always agree on decisions around money, and your kids are going to be so much better behaved than every other kid you've ever met! In other words, your pancake hearts are ALWAYS going to look like they were made inside of a cookie cutter.
Then 13 years of life hits you square in the eyes and you suddenly realize that all of those misconceived notions you had about what marriage was supposed to look like are mostly wrong. You understand now that some fights are necessary and good for growth, we all need a little alone time once in a while, you'll hardly ever agree on anything money related, and your kids are just as normal(crazy) as everyone else's!! In other words, your pancakes kind of look like a heart, but could also be slightly resemble the continent of Africa!
What I tried to do this morning, and likely failed, was explain to Kelli that although our pancakes may not look perfect to everyone, they tell our story and I wouldn't change a single bit of it! Our life together has led us through lots of so many of life's most difficult emotions, joy, anger, frustration, patience, satisfaction, bliss, and hope to name just a few. We have gone through deep loss, the kind of loss that lingers for a lifetime, and also been blessed with pure joy, the kind of joy that fills your heart with happiness over and over. Through all of this the one constant has been our love for each other!
I believe that in order for us to keep our heads up and moving forward in the right direction, leading the lives that God has in store for each of us, we HAVE to have a solid foundation. Kelli is that foundation for me! Without her I am nothing in this world, and with her I feel like we can accomplish anything! I know that probably sounds cliche, but it's the truth! I know no matter what this journey may lead us into in the coming years, as long as we go at it together we will get through it and come out the other side with even more rough edges on our pancake heart. The best news is, it tastes just as sweet no matter what it looks like:)
Remember, enjoy the rough edges of life, they're likely the most memorable pieces.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Been too long!
Wow! I can't believe it's been over two years since I've posted on here! I guess that proves two things to be true, time really does fly by the older one gets, and maybe blogs are a thing of the past? Never the less, we're back! So now where do we begin? I think it might be best to summarize the last two years first, so here's a list of all the big events since Vans gotcha day post:
- Van turned 1!
- We were blessed to be able to move from Coeur D Alene back "home" to Missoula!
- Van started walking!
- We bought a house in Florence, just south of Missoula
- Kelli started doing dental hygiene again.
- 4 months later we sold the house( a story for another time)
- We moved into an apartment in Missoula
- We began to wonder if we'd ever buy a house again
- Van turned 2!
- I blew out an artery cheering at a Griz game. (another story for another time;)
- We lucked out and bought a house! (number 6 if your keeping track)
- Grandma and Grandpa sold their house and moved into Missoula!
I would have put dates in there for a timeline of events, but that would have just made us seem crazier than we already are:) A lot can happen in a couple years! I know I certainly missed some key events in there, but that gives you the basic run down. The house we bought is in a great neighborhood, but it's been a rental property it's entire life, so there is no shortage of updating to be done. So far we've opened up some walls to create more of a n open concept, and completely remodeled the kitchen. The list of remodel ideas seems to be longer than our funding will ever allow for, but Kelli keeps reminding me that we don't have to get it all done in the first year.
Our days now have found a continual rhythm of our new normal, which consists primarily of exhaustion! Turns out there's a reason most people have kids in their 20's and early 30's, the amount of energy that comes out of this tiny little human is unbelievable most days! Most mornings he puts on more miles running around the house before noon than I will the entire day! Thankfully there's this miracle liquid that was created by God for the sole purpose of maintaining a level of sanity among parents across the globe, COFFEE!!! After the artery incident mentioned above, I had to take a 6 month hiatus from caffeine, it's nothing short of a miracle that we all survived that time frame!
I'll close out this return post by simply sharing two pictures. They say pictures say a thousand words, well I would agree when trying to show just how quickly time flies by there is no better way than to share a couple photos from a short period of time. 2 years does not seem like that long of a time, but these pictures sure make it seem so! I look forward to hopefully posting on here with a little more frequency than bi-annually, and hopefully there's at least one person who still reads it:)
Our days now have found a continual rhythm of our new normal, which consists primarily of exhaustion! Turns out there's a reason most people have kids in their 20's and early 30's, the amount of energy that comes out of this tiny little human is unbelievable most days! Most mornings he puts on more miles running around the house before noon than I will the entire day! Thankfully there's this miracle liquid that was created by God for the sole purpose of maintaining a level of sanity among parents across the globe, COFFEE!!! After the artery incident mentioned above, I had to take a 6 month hiatus from caffeine, it's nothing short of a miracle that we all survived that time frame!
I'll close out this return post by simply sharing two pictures. They say pictures say a thousand words, well I would agree when trying to show just how quickly time flies by there is no better way than to share a couple photos from a short period of time. 2 years does not seem like that long of a time, but these pictures sure make it seem so! I look forward to hopefully posting on here with a little more frequency than bi-annually, and hopefully there's at least one person who still reads it:)
This is the day before Gotcha day!
And these two are from 2 years later almost to the day!
Remember, don't discount the little moments, they're most likely going to be the things you miss the most!
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Gotcha Day!!
April 28th marked a very big day for our family, Vans gotcha day!!! For those of you who are new to the adoption lingo a gotcha day is what some folks like to call the day that their childs adoption is finalized. Van's was on Friday the 28th and it was everything we'd hoped for and then some!! The ceremony is very brief, it's held in general court in front of the judge who reviews all the documents that have been submitted for accuracy. Once this is done the judge says a bunch of words that didn't make sense to me, and then she announces Van to the courtroom as Van Jameson Gannon!
All told it took about 15 minutes to get to the point of cheers and applause, and I have to be honest, at times throughout this journey we both doubted whether or not we'd ever get to those precious 15 minutes! After the ceremony we came back to our house for a small brunch with a special cake Grandma Donna and I made for the occasion, celebrating the official arrival of Van! We knew that today was a special day already, but when we got home from the ceremony and the new Prana catalog nearly matched the cake perfectly it just got better.
When it was all over and everyone had gone back home we sat down for a minute and took a moment ot catch our breath! Van's gotcha day had felt like our wedding day, one big blur and it's over in a flash! Now that we're officially a family we are settling in to the fact that from here on out we just have to be Van's parents. I know that probably sounds silly to some people, but when the only parenting we knew prior to this was parenting under the watchful eye of the state of Washington, being able to "just parent" Van like a normal parent would is a pretty big deal! It's still a little hard to believe sometimes that we don't have to get anyone's authorization to take family vacations, or if he gets a fever we don't have to document how many doses of tylenol he's had.
So as we embark on this journey of parenthood be prepared for some shameless gloating on this blog about Van's achievements:) And of course plenty of pictures to go along with the gloating!:)
All told it took about 15 minutes to get to the point of cheers and applause, and I have to be honest, at times throughout this journey we both doubted whether or not we'd ever get to those precious 15 minutes! After the ceremony we came back to our house for a small brunch with a special cake Grandma Donna and I made for the occasion, celebrating the official arrival of Van! We knew that today was a special day already, but when we got home from the ceremony and the new Prana catalog nearly matched the cake perfectly it just got better.
So as we embark on this journey of parenthood be prepared for some shameless gloating on this blog about Van's achievements:) And of course plenty of pictures to go along with the gloating!:)
Thursday, March 23, 2017
We're back!!
It has been a little less than one full year since I've last posted on this blog and I think it's about time I brought you all up to speed on what Kelli and I have been up to! Where to begin, well I guess we better start by fast forwarding through the entire summer of 2016. If you remember from my last post we left things off heading into summer on a less than good note. And I think we can all agree that's enough said about that:(
So, towards the end of summer Kelli and I decided to contact a realtor who was referred to us by a friend, to put our house on the market just to "see if it would sell". Well, after being on the market for 6 hours we were under contract with a full price offer! I guess our question was answered! The good news was we sold our house for a very good profit, the bad news was we had no idea where we were going to go!! We considered renting an apartment or house for a while until we figured out at least which town we wanted to go to, but we couldn't find anything with less than a year lease that would take all of our animals. So we decided to start looking for a different type of lodging instead, a camper! That's right, we bought a 24' camper and thanks to an extremely generous sister and brother in law, had our place to stay. We set up camp at the Nagle ranch in the Mallard and began the search for our next house.
As much fun as it was living out at Jill and Ryan's and spending tons of time with the kids, we had to find a place to go before winter really set in. We moved into the camper in early September and wouldn't you know it, Spokane had the rainiest fall on record! Luckily our home on wheels never leaked a drop, just built up enough condensation to take a shower with, and we survived the endless rains. We quickly narrowed down the town we wanted to move to, Coeur D' Alene, and started scouring the market for a house that I couldn't pull with the truck.
In mid October we finally thought we were getting a house, we found one we liked and our offer was accepted, but when I went to do the home inspection there were some major structural concerns that caused us to back out of the deal. We were back on the hunt with the days getting shorter and colder! Less than a week after backing out of the first house, we found another one! This one had just hit the market so we had to act fast, we lucked out and were back under contract again. This time the home inspection went much better and we were all set to close in the middle of November. Now that we had a deadline for when we could move out of the camper we felt much better!
We moved into our new house out in CDA on November 15th! We couldn't have timed it any better as the wettest fall on record turned into the snowiest winter on about November 17th. After we settled into our house for a week or so, we started talking about what our options were for adoption in Idaho. We had wanted to wait a little while after the heartbreak we suffered in June, and after much consideration we decided that private adoption was the route we wanted to go. What that meant was we needed to get a home study done and then just "network" ourselves, basically tell every single person we knew that we were adopting in hopes of finding a birth mother. Well a few days after we contacted the home study folks I got a call from a buddy of mine saying that his Mother in law may have a birth mother she knows of who is looking for a family! We quickly agreed to meet with the mother in law to find out more about this birth mother and she said this one may not be the one as the birth mother had chosen to adopt her baby to a family member. No strangers to getting our hopes crushed, we took this in stride and just went back on our way. A couple weeks later, just before New Years, she called back and said the family member backed out! We immediately scheduled a meeting with the birth mother and she chose us!
We started going to the doctors appointments with her and about two weeks after being chosen, we found out we were having a boy! The next few weeks turned into a flurry as we basically did 9 months worth of nesting in three weeks. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention she was due mid February! Kelli and I were still in a little bit of a state of shock over the whole situation, we just couldn't believe how quickly this was all happening. Our state of joy was humbled very suddenly however when during one of the ultrasounds the doctor noticed that one of the babies heart chambers appeared to be slightly larger than the others. He said it's usually nothing to be alarmed about, but just to be certain he sent us to have a specialist look at it over in Spokane. The specialist was a pediatric cardiologist and she found a coarctation of his aorta. What that meant is his main aorta narrowed as it left his heart which could restrict blood flow and oxygen getting to his extremities. The cardiologist explained that he would be born in Spokane now and immediately get admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit so they could monitor the coarctation. Within the first few days there is a bypass artery that dissolves once the baby is born and as this artery dissolves it typically shrinks the tissue walls of the aorta. So they monitor it to determine whether or not they would need to surgically repair the aorta or not.
Needless to say anytime a doctor starts talking about a possible heart surgery on your unborn baby it's a bit sobering! Kelli and I simply turned to our go to in time's of need, prayer! We spread the word and turned it all over, trusting that God would not put this little guy through anything we all can't handle! A c-section was scheduled for February 17th and we settled in for what we thought was going to be a long two weeks of waiting. Well we were all caught by surprise when on February 7th the birth mother went into labor early! Kelli and I got the call, packed a go bag with everything we thought we would need, understanding that we had no idea just how long our son would be in the NICU. We called Kelli's parents and they too packed a go bag so they could come over to watch our animals while we were in the hospital, they even packed up their cat Olive so they wouldn't have to go back and check on her:) All of us were no doubt in the same state of frenzy any new parents are in when they are moments away from meeting their new baby.
We arrived at the hospital at 1:15 and went straight into the NICU room that our new baby boy had been moved to just 10 minutes before. When we walked in to his room there was three nurses and a doctor getting him all hooked up to the monitors and IV, as well as giving him the once over. In a matter of minutes we were flooded with information! A list as long as my arm was laid out of all the tests and checks that would be performed on our boy in the first few days of his life. So much was going on that Kelli and I completely spaced the fact that we would need to give him a name, until one of the nurses asked us nearly three hours after he'd been born! We took two names to the hospital with us and picked the one that fit this little guy the best. At 4 in the afternoon we sent out massive group texts announcing that Van Jameson Gannon had arrived:)
So, towards the end of summer Kelli and I decided to contact a realtor who was referred to us by a friend, to put our house on the market just to "see if it would sell". Well, after being on the market for 6 hours we were under contract with a full price offer! I guess our question was answered! The good news was we sold our house for a very good profit, the bad news was we had no idea where we were going to go!! We considered renting an apartment or house for a while until we figured out at least which town we wanted to go to, but we couldn't find anything with less than a year lease that would take all of our animals. So we decided to start looking for a different type of lodging instead, a camper! That's right, we bought a 24' camper and thanks to an extremely generous sister and brother in law, had our place to stay. We set up camp at the Nagle ranch in the Mallard and began the search for our next house.
In mid October we finally thought we were getting a house, we found one we liked and our offer was accepted, but when I went to do the home inspection there were some major structural concerns that caused us to back out of the deal. We were back on the hunt with the days getting shorter and colder! Less than a week after backing out of the first house, we found another one! This one had just hit the market so we had to act fast, we lucked out and were back under contract again. This time the home inspection went much better and we were all set to close in the middle of November. Now that we had a deadline for when we could move out of the camper we felt much better!
We moved into our new house out in CDA on November 15th! We couldn't have timed it any better as the wettest fall on record turned into the snowiest winter on about November 17th. After we settled into our house for a week or so, we started talking about what our options were for adoption in Idaho. We had wanted to wait a little while after the heartbreak we suffered in June, and after much consideration we decided that private adoption was the route we wanted to go. What that meant was we needed to get a home study done and then just "network" ourselves, basically tell every single person we knew that we were adopting in hopes of finding a birth mother. Well a few days after we contacted the home study folks I got a call from a buddy of mine saying that his Mother in law may have a birth mother she knows of who is looking for a family! We quickly agreed to meet with the mother in law to find out more about this birth mother and she said this one may not be the one as the birth mother had chosen to adopt her baby to a family member. No strangers to getting our hopes crushed, we took this in stride and just went back on our way. A couple weeks later, just before New Years, she called back and said the family member backed out! We immediately scheduled a meeting with the birth mother and she chose us!
We started going to the doctors appointments with her and about two weeks after being chosen, we found out we were having a boy! The next few weeks turned into a flurry as we basically did 9 months worth of nesting in three weeks. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention she was due mid February! Kelli and I were still in a little bit of a state of shock over the whole situation, we just couldn't believe how quickly this was all happening. Our state of joy was humbled very suddenly however when during one of the ultrasounds the doctor noticed that one of the babies heart chambers appeared to be slightly larger than the others. He said it's usually nothing to be alarmed about, but just to be certain he sent us to have a specialist look at it over in Spokane. The specialist was a pediatric cardiologist and she found a coarctation of his aorta. What that meant is his main aorta narrowed as it left his heart which could restrict blood flow and oxygen getting to his extremities. The cardiologist explained that he would be born in Spokane now and immediately get admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit so they could monitor the coarctation. Within the first few days there is a bypass artery that dissolves once the baby is born and as this artery dissolves it typically shrinks the tissue walls of the aorta. So they monitor it to determine whether or not they would need to surgically repair the aorta or not.
Needless to say anytime a doctor starts talking about a possible heart surgery on your unborn baby it's a bit sobering! Kelli and I simply turned to our go to in time's of need, prayer! We spread the word and turned it all over, trusting that God would not put this little guy through anything we all can't handle! A c-section was scheduled for February 17th and we settled in for what we thought was going to be a long two weeks of waiting. Well we were all caught by surprise when on February 7th the birth mother went into labor early! Kelli and I got the call, packed a go bag with everything we thought we would need, understanding that we had no idea just how long our son would be in the NICU. We called Kelli's parents and they too packed a go bag so they could come over to watch our animals while we were in the hospital, they even packed up their cat Olive so they wouldn't have to go back and check on her:) All of us were no doubt in the same state of frenzy any new parents are in when they are moments away from meeting their new baby.
We arrived at the hospital at 1:15 and went straight into the NICU room that our new baby boy had been moved to just 10 minutes before. When we walked in to his room there was three nurses and a doctor getting him all hooked up to the monitors and IV, as well as giving him the once over. In a matter of minutes we were flooded with information! A list as long as my arm was laid out of all the tests and checks that would be performed on our boy in the first few days of his life. So much was going on that Kelli and I completely spaced the fact that we would need to give him a name, until one of the nurses asked us nearly three hours after he'd been born! We took two names to the hospital with us and picked the one that fit this little guy the best. At 4 in the afternoon we sent out massive group texts announcing that Van Jameson Gannon had arrived:)
Getting our first echo gram minutes after birth
The cardiologist wasted no time in ordering the echo to check the coarc and after reading the results she said the narrowing looked about the same that it had on the ultrasound so she would order a follow up echo the next day to keep checking. Day two rolled around and after the cardiologist read the echo she came in to tell us the results. I will never forget the look on her face of complete confusion. She had analyzed the echo and physically checked Van out and somehow the Coarctation had went away!! This was nothing short of an answered prayer!! We had turned the coarc over to God and the care of our prayer warriors from the moment we found out about it and all of those prayers were answered! We were so ecstatic we could hardly contain ourselves!
The rest of our time in the NICU was spent learning how to feed Van and getting him to the point he was ready to go home. The folks at Sacred Heart were fantastic and such a blessing! We got released and brought him home on his original due date, February 17th, and to say the past few weeks have been a blur would be an understatement! Our days and nights revolve around eating, pooping and sleeping now and just like every other baby each day is capable of being different than the last:) We are slowly finding a semblance of routine though and Van just continues to grow. He was 7 pounds 9 ounces at birth and he's already 10 pounds!
First day home!
Dad's jealous of my hair:)
We could not put into words how blessed we are to have been chosen to be the ones who get to raise this child of God. We also cannot thank our family and friends enough, you all have stuck with us our entire journey, through all the ups and downs. You're prayers have not gone unnoticed and we will forever hold each and every one of you in our hearts! Van's finalization hearing is coming up in the next month or so and when we think about the fact that someday this little miracle will share our name and be loved by so many, it warms our heart and reminds us that our God has EVERYTHING under control! He has better timing than any of us could ever imagine and the handsome baby boy who's made us the big 3 is a glowing testimony to what patience in His timing can do:)
Remember, don't be afraid to walk through painful situations. Trust that the Lord has got a plan for all of us and if we take on the pain put in front of us He is always waiting to bless us on the other side!
Friday, June 10, 2016
Kiah
For the past 15 months I have written about our foster-to-adopt daughter on here, but I have yet to put any photos of her on here. If you follow me on Instagram you'll notice there's an ample supply of photos, just none of her face. This is because the state highly discourages doing that as the birth parents could potentially find out where the child is then. Well it is with great sadness that today that all changes.
Little Simba's real name, as most of you who read this already know, is Kiah. And this morning the social worker for Kiah's case came and picked her up to go live with her birth mom. Lord knows Kelli and I have gone over every single detail of this situation, and we've certainly been left with quite a few unanswered questions as well as enough frustration to keep our heads spinning for months. But today I'm not going to talk about any of that because frankly, none of it matters. In the 15 months that we were lucky enough to have Kiah in our home we have experienced so many great joys, a few trials of course, but the joyful times far outweigh the tough times and I think today's post should echo that. Only God knows what is in store for all three of our futures, and we have come to understand that He's the only one who should know what they hold! Over and over again throughout this journey we have continued to fall back on our faith, family, and friends to get us over hurdles. We have really been the lucky ones, not only did we get the great privilege of caring for one of God's most precious creations, we got to share her with others! Each and every person that Kiah comes in contact with has experienced the joy in her little heart, her piercing blue eyes and glowing smile leave people wanting what she has! Sometimes I would look into her eyes and swear that I could see God, her gaze would immediately wash away the chaos of any situation. And as long as I live I will hear the joyous sounds of her laughter, showing us with each breath what the important things in life truly are. Throughout the past month I have repeatedly turned to a country song for encouragement, cliche I know, but Randy Houser's "In God's Time" is perfect for moments like this. His last verse talks about waking up with wings, learning to fly, and seeing our loved ones on the other side. We continue to take comfort in those words and that truth, we truly will see Kiah again!! It may not be until we are all in eternity, but no matter what we WILL be reunited! We genuinely believe and trust that the foundation we have given her will be with her for the rest of her life. I'm simply going to end this post with a couple pictures of the greatest thing that's ever happened to Kelli and I. We will continue to pray fer her every single day that we are alive, trusting that God has glorious plans for her, and thanking Him every day for choosing Kelli and I to be a small part of that plan! We truly are honored!
Little Simba's real name, as most of you who read this already know, is Kiah. And this morning the social worker for Kiah's case came and picked her up to go live with her birth mom. Lord knows Kelli and I have gone over every single detail of this situation, and we've certainly been left with quite a few unanswered questions as well as enough frustration to keep our heads spinning for months. But today I'm not going to talk about any of that because frankly, none of it matters. In the 15 months that we were lucky enough to have Kiah in our home we have experienced so many great joys, a few trials of course, but the joyful times far outweigh the tough times and I think today's post should echo that. Only God knows what is in store for all three of our futures, and we have come to understand that He's the only one who should know what they hold! Over and over again throughout this journey we have continued to fall back on our faith, family, and friends to get us over hurdles. We have really been the lucky ones, not only did we get the great privilege of caring for one of God's most precious creations, we got to share her with others! Each and every person that Kiah comes in contact with has experienced the joy in her little heart, her piercing blue eyes and glowing smile leave people wanting what she has! Sometimes I would look into her eyes and swear that I could see God, her gaze would immediately wash away the chaos of any situation. And as long as I live I will hear the joyous sounds of her laughter, showing us with each breath what the important things in life truly are. Throughout the past month I have repeatedly turned to a country song for encouragement, cliche I know, but Randy Houser's "In God's Time" is perfect for moments like this. His last verse talks about waking up with wings, learning to fly, and seeing our loved ones on the other side. We continue to take comfort in those words and that truth, we truly will see Kiah again!! It may not be until we are all in eternity, but no matter what we WILL be reunited! We genuinely believe and trust that the foundation we have given her will be with her for the rest of her life. I'm simply going to end this post with a couple pictures of the greatest thing that's ever happened to Kelli and I. We will continue to pray fer her every single day that we are alive, trusting that God has glorious plans for her, and thanking Him every day for choosing Kelli and I to be a small part of that plan! We truly are honored!
Remember, sometimes it can be the hardest thing to do in the world, but unconditional love is the greatest gift any of us could ever give to another person!
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Stop trying to figure it out!
Over 13 years ago now I was in the apex of my alcohol addiction and it seemed like I spent most of my time trying to figure out how I could get myself out of my own way. I was convinced that I was smart enough to figure a way out of the mess I had created. Turns out all I really had to do was stop trying to figure it out and give full control of things over to God! It was when I finally did this that His miracle was worked on me and everything suddenly made so much more sense!
Today, so many years and life experiences having passed by, I find myself in a very similar situation. As most of you know Kelli and I took in our first foster placement exactly 14 months ago today. She has been an answered prayer and miracle for us in so many ways, and yet there is so much more going on around her that she is oblivious to yet dictates her entire future. Any one who has gone through the foster-to-adopt process will most likely refer to the journey as a roller coaster of emotions, or maybe a pendulum that continues to go back and forth. No matter the analogy they would use the purpose is the same in every case, to remind you that these situations often times go back and forth for quite some time before the child involved ever has any permanency.
We've affectionately been referring to our daughter as Simba, because we can't use her real name as long as she's in foster care, and since the day we've had Simba this particular roller coaster has been in constant motion! To give you an idea of what I mean this is literally how the state's decisions have gone since March 10th of last year, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, wait for it...transition back. I think you get the idea. Naturally this process has more or less turned what few brain cells I had left in my head after a solid career of drinking into a gelatinous slurry that can barely remember what day it is! My thoughts once again seem to be constantly consumed with trying to figure it all out! I feel like both Kelli and I have gone through every single phase of anger and frustration with each time they talk about a transition back home.
The reason for this frustration is simple, when the state talks about transitioning back home they're not talking about sending Simba back to a nice little 3 bed 2 bath in a cute little sub division within walking distance of a great school, they're talking about sending her back to first a transitional housing program, second a long term in patient treatment center, and last but not least the most recent one a half way house!! We have been told by the state that they do not consider homelessness as an endangerment to the child! That makes about as much sense as saying swimming with sharks is not considered an endangerment to my having functional appendages!
So today when the judge went completely against what the state wanted to do and granted a transition back home, yes to the half way house home, my first reaction was how the heck can I figure this out and get Simba out of this situation. After thinking about it for the last 7 hours what I have come up with is the same thing I came up with thirteen and a half years ago, STOP! I have nothing more I can do about this situation but to stop trying to figure it all out and literally enjoy every single second I have with this little girl! She has grown so much since we've had her and she learns more in one day than I ever have in a month! If I spend my free time stewing over how to get the system to work the way I think it should then I'm taking precious time away from Simba.
We quite literally have no choice but to turn it all over to God, ironically much like I did with my drinking, and trust that He has a bigger plan that was never intended for me to figure out! Even if that plan results in Simba not being a part of our life any more, as hard as that is to wrap my head around, I have to trust that He's got something bigger planned for all three of us and have faith in His plan. "No matter where you go, no matter what you do, we're gonna love you through and through" These are the lyrics of the last verse of a song Nana GG wrote for Simba and they carry so much more weight than I think GG ever intended them to in this moment! Stop trying to figure it out, and trust in God's plan!!
Remember, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
Today, so many years and life experiences having passed by, I find myself in a very similar situation. As most of you know Kelli and I took in our first foster placement exactly 14 months ago today. She has been an answered prayer and miracle for us in so many ways, and yet there is so much more going on around her that she is oblivious to yet dictates her entire future. Any one who has gone through the foster-to-adopt process will most likely refer to the journey as a roller coaster of emotions, or maybe a pendulum that continues to go back and forth. No matter the analogy they would use the purpose is the same in every case, to remind you that these situations often times go back and forth for quite some time before the child involved ever has any permanency.
We've affectionately been referring to our daughter as Simba, because we can't use her real name as long as she's in foster care, and since the day we've had Simba this particular roller coaster has been in constant motion! To give you an idea of what I mean this is literally how the state's decisions have gone since March 10th of last year, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, transition back, adoption, wait for it...transition back. I think you get the idea. Naturally this process has more or less turned what few brain cells I had left in my head after a solid career of drinking into a gelatinous slurry that can barely remember what day it is! My thoughts once again seem to be constantly consumed with trying to figure it all out! I feel like both Kelli and I have gone through every single phase of anger and frustration with each time they talk about a transition back home.
The reason for this frustration is simple, when the state talks about transitioning back home they're not talking about sending Simba back to a nice little 3 bed 2 bath in a cute little sub division within walking distance of a great school, they're talking about sending her back to first a transitional housing program, second a long term in patient treatment center, and last but not least the most recent one a half way house!! We have been told by the state that they do not consider homelessness as an endangerment to the child! That makes about as much sense as saying swimming with sharks is not considered an endangerment to my having functional appendages!
So today when the judge went completely against what the state wanted to do and granted a transition back home, yes to the half way house home, my first reaction was how the heck can I figure this out and get Simba out of this situation. After thinking about it for the last 7 hours what I have come up with is the same thing I came up with thirteen and a half years ago, STOP! I have nothing more I can do about this situation but to stop trying to figure it all out and literally enjoy every single second I have with this little girl! She has grown so much since we've had her and she learns more in one day than I ever have in a month! If I spend my free time stewing over how to get the system to work the way I think it should then I'm taking precious time away from Simba.
We quite literally have no choice but to turn it all over to God, ironically much like I did with my drinking, and trust that He has a bigger plan that was never intended for me to figure out! Even if that plan results in Simba not being a part of our life any more, as hard as that is to wrap my head around, I have to trust that He's got something bigger planned for all three of us and have faith in His plan. "No matter where you go, no matter what you do, we're gonna love you through and through" These are the lyrics of the last verse of a song Nana GG wrote for Simba and they carry so much more weight than I think GG ever intended them to in this moment! Stop trying to figure it out, and trust in God's plan!!
Remember, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Wild ride!
What a wild ride the past few weeks have been!! I know many of you can probably relate to the organized chaos that is the holiday season. Our holiday season got kicked off to a bit of an unexpected start as the week before Thanksgiving the Spokane area saw 70+ mph winds! Now I know if your in Eastern Montana reading this your thinking to yourself, that's just a little breezy, however when your area is filled with 100 foot tall 2000 pound top heavy toothpicks(also known as Ponderosas) I can assure you that little breeze can carry with it quite the punch! The winds blew at that speed for about four hours and in that time countless numbers of trees were either uprooted or snapped off, causing what appeared to be every single power line in the city to be lying on the ground. By the time it was finished, over 200,000 people were without power, roughly 75% of the power companies customers!
The area of Spokane we chose to live in, the South Hill, has so many of these trees it feels almost forest like, the morning after the storm however it felt more apocalyptic! We embraced the outage like we have many others in the past, with a sense of adventure and comments like "this is bad, we could be out of power all day". As I lit a fire the following morning to break the chill, outside temps had dropped to the low 20's at a not so convenient time, we still talked about how this could be kind of fun. Sort of like camping for a few days but a little better cause we had running water. As day one turned into day two, our optimism began to fade some as we had not seen any activity going on in our area, other than the neighbors cutting trees off their houses! Never the less we carried on, little Simba keeping our spirits up with her never ending zest for adventure. As the next couple of days went by we kept watching the core temperature of our house drop along with the temps outside, our fireplace doing less and less each day, eventually we made it to the weekend.
Saturday morning, day four with no power, we started the day with our new routine, fired up the camp stove to boil water for coffee and sat Simba as close to the fireplace as we could for some cheerios and a 42 degree banana. Shortly after finishing her breakfast, Simba started limping, so we took her to urgent care and long story made short returned home four hours later and packed our things to head to the Nagle ranch in search of power and heat! Turns out each of us has our breaking point and ours came that Saturday afternoon:) So we finished out the weekend at Jill and Ryan's, giving Tatum and Simba the best sleepover they could ever imagine! Then on Tuesday morning when Jill and T headed to the airport to fly to Glendive for Thanksgiving, we stayed at their house as day 7 without power passed. We headed to Billings for Thanksgiving ourselves on Wednesday morning, still with no power, and told the kitties to sleep close to each other to conserve heat! Finally Friday morning we got power back to the house and a friend of ours checked on the house to make sure the heat came back on!
This was the longest power outage either one of us has ever gone through and although it was not all fun and games, we were very thankful to have places to go to get out of the cold weather and have a hot shower, some of the finer things in life! We learned quite a bit about ourselves through it all, like cooking by headlamp is far more glamorous when it's not in your own backyard, and that running water doesn't do you much good if the toilet seat is roughly cold enough to make a penguin shiver! As much as we appreciate learning these valuable life lessons, we are even happier to have power and heat at our disposal again! We definitely look at power in a whole new light now.....see what I did there:)
Remember, don't take comfort for advantage, you never know when you'll have to make adjustments to it!
The area of Spokane we chose to live in, the South Hill, has so many of these trees it feels almost forest like, the morning after the storm however it felt more apocalyptic! We embraced the outage like we have many others in the past, with a sense of adventure and comments like "this is bad, we could be out of power all day". As I lit a fire the following morning to break the chill, outside temps had dropped to the low 20's at a not so convenient time, we still talked about how this could be kind of fun. Sort of like camping for a few days but a little better cause we had running water. As day one turned into day two, our optimism began to fade some as we had not seen any activity going on in our area, other than the neighbors cutting trees off their houses! Never the less we carried on, little Simba keeping our spirits up with her never ending zest for adventure. As the next couple of days went by we kept watching the core temperature of our house drop along with the temps outside, our fireplace doing less and less each day, eventually we made it to the weekend.
Saturday morning, day four with no power, we started the day with our new routine, fired up the camp stove to boil water for coffee and sat Simba as close to the fireplace as we could for some cheerios and a 42 degree banana. Shortly after finishing her breakfast, Simba started limping, so we took her to urgent care and long story made short returned home four hours later and packed our things to head to the Nagle ranch in search of power and heat! Turns out each of us has our breaking point and ours came that Saturday afternoon:) So we finished out the weekend at Jill and Ryan's, giving Tatum and Simba the best sleepover they could ever imagine! Then on Tuesday morning when Jill and T headed to the airport to fly to Glendive for Thanksgiving, we stayed at their house as day 7 without power passed. We headed to Billings for Thanksgiving ourselves on Wednesday morning, still with no power, and told the kitties to sleep close to each other to conserve heat! Finally Friday morning we got power back to the house and a friend of ours checked on the house to make sure the heat came back on!
This was the longest power outage either one of us has ever gone through and although it was not all fun and games, we were very thankful to have places to go to get out of the cold weather and have a hot shower, some of the finer things in life! We learned quite a bit about ourselves through it all, like cooking by headlamp is far more glamorous when it's not in your own backyard, and that running water doesn't do you much good if the toilet seat is roughly cold enough to make a penguin shiver! As much as we appreciate learning these valuable life lessons, we are even happier to have power and heat at our disposal again! We definitely look at power in a whole new light now.....see what I did there:)
Remember, don't take comfort for advantage, you never know when you'll have to make adjustments to it!
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