My blog mission statement of sorts

So you notice the Ole blog got another new name (hoping this one sticks). Yes I am aware of the cheese factor of it but I am cheesy(and tired of trying to think of names) so it works. After looking at my stats and realizing how many people from all over the world view this thing I got a little nervous using my last name and saying we live in TX. There are a lot of weirdos out there, not saying that you are of course!

This blog is like my little journal of sorts. I am not a scrapbooker and never plan to be. I am horrible at printing out pictures! I have a million on my computer and a huge photo album that's pretty much empty. If it wasn't for my wedding portraits being on the wall you could walk in my house and not even know who lives there. Its a little said and I hope to change that once we move. Ok, back to the point I was making. I plan to write about whatever is going on and not care about what people think of it so that someday I can print it all out or have a book made of it all. Then why is this blog public? Because I like to see how people live in other parts of the world and i am assuming that they like to do the same. Also I want to share information about fostering to people who are interested or just curious. Most importantly I want to share the God I have in following my Lord. I want people to be able to see the awesome things that He has done for me in my life and I want to be very real about my struggles and my walk with God.

Our Story (The longest post EVER!)

Its been a long journey to this point and I know we have a LONG road ahead of us. As I mentioned in a previous post we have decided to become foster parents. How did we decide this you may ask. Well to make a long story...well long. God has been working on my heart for a really long time. My whole life He has been growing me and shaping me for something but I never knew for what. At a young age I knew of people who had adopted from other countries and always thought that maybe one day I would. On the other had I knew people first hand who had adopted domestically and thought that I would never be open to that. I thought the kids here are all crack babies and I didn't want that (horrible and untrue I know but honest). As time went on I noticed my love for children. Not just family members or friends children but ALL children. I could not and still cannot see a baby/young child in the grocery store and not smile and wave maybe even play peek a boo. Then I met David. I noticed his love for babies/children too. (He has the same problem as me in the grocery store). We had never talked about adoption let alone fostering. In our pre-marriage counseling our preacher asked us something that we had never considered before."What if you cant have children of your own?" David replied without missing a beat. "Then we'll adopt as many kids as we have to until we feel like we have enough." Ha! That made me smile. We got married and started living out life with no plans for children anytime soon. As the years went by God continued to prepare me. I had a chance to work with troubled children at the YMCA. There I saw that no matter how tough a child may try to look or act and no matter how much they act out they are all just children who need love. I continued to work with kids at church and found that I have such a deep love for children that I almost felt as if they were my own. Time continued to pass and David and I decided to try for children. We tried for a year on our own then a year and a half on fertility medicine. Finally we conceived and thought that this was it. We were going to be just like all the other couples our age and be content will our own little bio family. That didn't happen. At 8 weeks we were told that something didn't look right and that we needed to come back in a week. A week later I went back for another sono to find out that out little one had quit growing. I was sent home to wait on a miscarriage. A week later with still nothing happening and a snow storm on its way I was sent into to surgery to have a DNC and that was it. After that I wanted to take a break from all the meds and the stress of trying and even though the baby wasn't much it was my baby that I had pictured in my head and dreamed about. I had thought about whose nose it would have and what she or he was going to be when they grew up. just like that it was gone. I wanted some time to mourn. I was told by my doctor that right after a miscarriage its prime time to conceive so no break for me it was right back on the meds. After 6 more months of feeling horrible with every pregnancy symptom and no baby I decided to stop meds and doctor appointments completely. By trying to take my fertility in my own hands I felt like I was telling God that I didn't trust His plan or that it wasn't good enough for me. In the middle of all this we would go to Cicis pizza about once a month to eat with Davids mom after church and every time we would go there would be foster families there. I would catch myself just watching them thinking for the first time 'I could do that'. I began to pray for God to reveal His will to me. As I said before I felt so strongly that I was meant to be a mom and I couldn't understand why I wasn't already. As time went on and I prayed more things started happening around me. I would see a video about foster care and feel a little twinge. Our preacher would preach a message and I would be thinking about fostering the whole time. I even dreamed about having foster kids. I finally brought it up to David, and he completely shut me down. I was so upset. I felt like God had finally revealed a part of his will to me and now my husband was going to keep me from it. Then I found The Foster Parent Podcast. I listened to ever single one in a week. By listening to them I realized that this journey was going to take Davids full support and the only thing that I could do is turn it over to God and pray about it. So I did. God started working on him. I would talk to him briefly about the reason why I felt called to foster but tried not to push him. He would come home with stories about how guys he worked with were foster parents and he never even knew. Then he started telling me about how he told people that he was going to be a foster parent and their reaction to it. This was surprising to me since just a few weeks earlier he was completely against the idea. Then one night he was in the shower and I was brushing my teeth and he said "Babe, I have a feeling that we aren't going to have much support from our families." Surprised I asked what he was referring to. He continued, "When we become foster parents I know that its going to be really hard and we will get our hearts broken but I know that the good times will far outweigh the bad". I wanted to cry. He finally felt the way I felt. God had done the job. In a couple of weeks is the next orientation meeting and I was nervous that he wouldn't be able to take off for it but God has proven to me again that this is his will. The closing on our house was pushed back another week and he will already have to ask off in order to move. God is so funny sometimes. Keep us in your prayers as we start this journey. We are very excited and a little nervous but we know that Gods got this.

8 little updates on life

Here a little update on life lately:

1. Weather here in Texas has been awesome the last few days the temps have drop dramatically. I have actually been cold in the mornings and David has finally gotten to wear his much loved much anticipated new under armor hoodie. He has been looking for a hoodie like this for years and finally found one this summer. He hasn't quit smiling.

2. On the down side it has been EXTREMELY dry here. We have had tons of fires in our area. One of which was just a few miles from our house that burned over 3,000 acres. Ironically it was just down the road from the house we tried to buy earlier this year that didn't work out. Maybe God was saving us from that.

This map shows all the fires in Texas over the last week....so crazy! Please continue to pray for the people affected by these fires and all of the firefighters that continue to work hard to keep them under control. Thankfully all of the fires in our county are now contained. Oh yeah and pray that we get some rain soon!

3. I took Maxi (our weenie dog) to the vet last week and found out she has a hernia. The vet suggested that we get her fixed and the hernia repaired. So no more hopes of little maxis in the future. I scheduled her surgery for the end of this month.

4. I permanently got rid of my Facebook. I hadn't been getting on it much on account of it made me feel yucky being so nosy plus David hates Facebook and (jokingly) says its from the devil. In hindsight I'm glad that I did it. Its nice seeing people in town and them actually not knowing every detail of my life. It also is nice not knowing every detail of theirs.

5. We will hopefully be closing on our house on the 19th of this month which is pretty exciting! Were praying that everything goes smoothly. I will even give you a little sneak peek. Just keep in mind we have several things that we plan on doing to it (like cleaning flower beds etc.)

Its cute and simple which is the way we like things. Its also in in the school district where David went to school so hes pretty happy with that.

6. Fall is fast approaching and that means craft show season and a very busy few months ahead. I have been crocheting my little fingers to the bone and look forward to seeing some old faces and buying cool things and hopefully making a little Christmas money selling some stuff.

7. I really suck at coming up with blog names! I have no clue what to name this one but I don't want to use my last name anymore so hopefully I will come up with something soon. Also I'm thinking about moving over to WordPress. It seems a little less complicated and I heard that Google was making churches pay for there email addresses now which I don't like so we will see.

8. Big news! Ive been praying that God would re-veil His will for my life for a long time and He finally did. Or a portion of it anyway. Ive always felt like God wanted me to be a momma and raise my kids to live for the Lord wholeheartedly but I could never figure out why I wasn't being blessed with kids. Well He really been working on my heart for sometime now and Ive argued up and down with Him the whole way. God has put it on my heart to become a foster parent. Sounds crazy huh? Well at least to me it did a first. Ive talked to David about it and we have both prayed like crazy about it. We don't know for sure when God wants this to happen. Right now we are just running it past our family and friends and I have been researching agencies in our area. I will update you further and plan to devote a whole post to it soon. Ill leave you with this video. It gave me chills. Make sure you pause the music player at the bottom of the page before you play it.