Home Alone..

Tonight Caleb and I are home alone without kids for the first time in two years. I always talk about just wanting moments of peace and silence but it's feels weird. Caleb and I love time just together but tonight feels different. I started to write this whole blog but I am just not sure I can right now. We dropped the girls off with their mom tonight. We both felt a level of peace knowing that this is how it has to be for now. We pray. We wait. We hope. We don't pray that the girls come back to live at our house. We pray that they can be healthy and thrive with their mom who loves them. We pray that we can continue to love them in a different way now that we are not serving in the role of their parents. Oh how precious are these girls to us! Thank you for your encouraging words, and text messages, and phone calls, and facebook comments! We can't tell you how much we appreciate them all. We are Indiana bound tomorrow!

The end?

It was exactly one year ago today that I got a call saying that Anniiyah, Makayla, and their brothers and sisters were taken into the states custody. We began calling social workers trying to figure out how we could have Anniiyah and Makayla come live with us for "a while." We didn't know what "a while" meant and at the time it seemed indefinite. Over the past year, we have had many ups and downs in dealing with the state and what our role is for this family and what the future would look like. We have had countless meetings to figure out what the best thing would be for all the children involved. We picked up the girls and about 15 garbage bags of their stuff 10 months ago today. Life changed a TON that day. We became parents of three kids instantly. I have said several times over this past year "I am really young and really inexperienced and I just don't know if I have the ability to do ALL this." God has been so faithful to us in equipping us to do what we needed to do. By His strength, we were able to be a family of 5 who actually made it to school and work on time, had a semi-clean house (it's all about perspective), and were able to get most necessary things accomplished. It also helps that we have had an incredible community of people to do life with!

Yesterday, I got a call saying that the state was granting custody back to the girls mom as of December 18th. I knew this was more than likely going to happen, but it instantly brought a flood of emotions. I am glad that reunification is happening. The girls love their mom and she loves them. I pray that this will be a healthy transition for the entire family. My heart hurts though over the family that I am losing. I know it's selfish but I love my family of 5. I love hearing "mommy, I missed you so much when I was at school today" every day from Makayla. I love Anniiyah's clumsiness as she flings herself all over the house. I love that Ava tries to do everything that Makayla does and follows her around like her shadow. We have only had them for a little less than a year but our family feels complete with them. I know that in some ways, life will get a lot easier. I realized that I spend countless hours of the week dealing with fits, and getting Makayla to eat, and doing hair, and redoing hair, doing homework, all those other things that come with having a 7 and 5 year old. Yesterday though when I was driving home, I couldn't think of any of those things. I could only think of all the incredible things that these girls bring to our lives that we are going to miss. I kept thinking...is this really the end? Are they really not going to live with us anymore? Yes, they are going home and will not be here everyday but I know that this is in no way the "end" of anything. We have loved their entire family for four years and we will continue to love their family...and their family loves us! I needed my time to cry yesterday but today I feel more peace. We said a year ago that we would do whatever we needed to do, for as long as we needed to do it. We will continue to love Anniiyah and Makayla and their mom and all their brothers and sisters... The next couple weeks will be full of emotion as we prepare to take the girls back home but I am praying that we will all feel the presence of our Savior. We were shopping last night and looking at Christmas stuff and Anniiyah said "Mom, don't forget the most important thing about Christmas...Jesus!" So true! What a great time of year to be constantly focused on the birth of Christ and on His life...I know I am going to need that over these next couple weeks! Thank you for all our support and encouragement!

Video's for Christmas

Here are a few video's from the past week or so. The first video is after we broke a snowman when puting up the Christmas decorations. Ava put her hand on her head and said "oh no, Christmas is broken!" It was super cute and I tried to get her to do it agin. The next video is of Makayla performing her favorite song.... I would post more video's but it takes SOOO long to get them to load.