Welcome to the Other White House: 2011

NATALYA!!!

Here we are with the judge who made her official!

(If you just want to see more pictures go to the end of the post. Otherwise here's her story...)

Now we just have to take her to the temple later this month! What an awesome Christmas present, huh?!

This post has definitely been a long time coming... Over the last year as I have been composing the few posts I managed to make, I have accidentally included her picture a few times. If you had checked my blog in the instant the post was uploaded, you would have seen her sweet face. Fortunately, I always review my posts, and so her pictures have always been removed promptly, but now you can get to know her! She has been so much a part of our family that it has been hard not posting things about her. We have had some great times with her this last year.

So perhaps I should tell you how she came to be with us. There is a bit of history that laid the ground work for her arrival last year. Ever since we adopted Olivia, we knew we wanted to adopt again, but we didn't feel quite right about using LDS Family Services again. It wasn't because we didn't like LDSFS, but more because we felt like maybe we were supposed to look elsewhere. Around January of 2010, Robby said to me one day, "I think we should try foster care." Up and to this point, I had always dismissed foster care because I thought, "How will I ever be able to love a child and have to send them back?" I didn't think my heart could take it. The difference this time when Robby suggested it was that I felt a peacefulness about the idea. I know this was the Spirit, calming my heart. I have come to know that when the Lord wants something done, he gives you the strength to do it even if you don't think it's in you.

Fast forward a few months to the 10 weeks of 3 hour classes we had to take to get licensed. We were told by the instructors several times, "Don't think you will get a baby! You will not get a baby. If you are here for a baby, it's not likely." I realized this reality, but I was also hopeful that we would get a baby or at least a very young child. We initially put down on our preference sheet that we would take children up to age 9 and possibly a sibling group for a long term placement. When we got our license in early August, we were excited to get our first placement. Robby and I agreed that when the foster care calls came we would both talk about the situation and decide together about whether the child(ren) was/were a good fit for our family. Since it affected all of us, we wanted to make sure we were both on board. We did get a few calls in the first couple months, but always for sibling groups. We didn't want our first placement to be a sibling group since we wanted to get our feet wet in foster care with a single placement.

Around October, we were asked if we would do respite (watching foster children for 2 to 14 days to give foster parents a break or allow them to travel if need be) for a 5 yr old girl and 7 yr old boy. We had them for a weekend, and boy, was that eye opening! We saw some of the behaviors we had talked about in our foster care classes, and we saw how those behaviors affected our own children. I was so glad that we had only agreed to a weekend because I am not sure how I would have held up long term. The two children were not terrible, but they had many things they were working through, and fortunately for them, their foster family was working to adopt them. After this, we knew we needed to make some changes to our preference sheet. We lowered the age from 9 to 4 yrs old. Perhaps in the future when our own children are older we will take older children, but for now we realized this was not a good fit for us.

Within the next couple weeks, I had one other conversation that laid the way for Natalya to join our family. We had a friend, Connie, around the corner from us who has been a foster mom for several years. In fact, I think there was some divine providence in action the day we first met. A few months earlier when we were working to get licensed as foster parents, her kids lost their kite in one of our trees. As Robby got the ladder to retrieve the kite, Connie and I talked and in the conversation it came out that she was a foster parent. I was so excited to find someone nearby that I could seek advice. So sometime late October or early November, she and I crossed paths, and we shared our recent foster care experiences. In the conversation I learned that there was a better chance of being placed with a baby or very young child if we changed our preferences to accept emergency placements. Connie also told me she would put in a good word for me at the foster care placement office.

And so at 8:30a on November 17th, I was on the phone with the phone company working out a billing issue when the line beeped that another call was coming in. I saw on the caller ID that it was the foster care placement office, and I did my best to conclude the call I was on. The phone guy on the other end was not being very prompt at ending the call, and I listened as each beep indicating the other call came and went. Finally he said good-bye, and I quickly flipped over to the other line. I will tell you that I am certain I was within a second of missing that foster care call. In fact, I thought for certain I had missed it, but lo and behold the placement worker was there on the line with an emergency placement.

She told me there was a 4 month healthy baby girl available for placement. Usually, we are supposed to use this time on the phone to ask questions and find out more about the situation (reason for placement, length of placement, and such) but I just blurted out, "We'll take her!" I was so excited to get a sweet little babe that I didn't care about the details. As I hung up the phone, it dawned on me that I didn't talk to Robby first. He was still home, so I went to our room where he was getting dressed and told him we were getting a 4 month baby girl, "Sorry I didn't talk to you first!" Ooops! I knew he would be okay with it.

About 15 minutes later, I got a call from the DHS worker, and she asked me if I could be ready to pick Natalya up in about 2 hours! Of course, I said yes, but in my mind I was thinking, "This is insane!" I was blessed by the fact that that Wednesday morning was playgroup, so childcare for Olivia was easy. I did have to frantically dig out my baby car seat and throw together a few essentials, but I was on time to pick up that sweet babe.

When I walked in the room I was first struck by Natalya's fair complexion and her BIG blue eyes. I thought to myself, "She has big eyes like me!" I was smitten even from first sight of her. I also marveled how we had always wanted to give one of our children a Russian name since Robby went on a Russian-speaking mission, and her name was Natalya. The worker initially told me she would be with us for a week to one month, but I will admit that even from the beginning there was a part of me that secretly hoped it would be forever. I did have a small part of me that felt like this was meant to be, as did Robby.

Throughout this past year there have been ups and downs with this situation. Times when we felt certain things would go one way or another, and times when all we could do was pray and hope for the best. Seriously, her arrival in our family has been a complete miracle. One of the biggest blessings is that her birth mother came to see that Natalya was in a good place, and although she didn't want it this way, she feels at peace with her becoming part of our family. My heart aches for her. I didn't want this for her, but in the end this was the best out come for Natalya, whom we all love.

Looking at these pics makes we miss the heat of summer. As the temps cool down up here and the trees become bare I am reminded that a white and long winter is before us. I am certain now that I am a warm weather woman! I would much prefer to do with out the heavy coats, mittens, hats, and other winter paraphernalia. So I guess I and look back and be warmed by my memories.

At the very end of July we began our journey to Texas with a stop in Missouri at Liberty Jail. We planned to do this stop one other time a few years back, but the temps were what we would call "b's cold," so we decided to skip it that time. I'm glad we were finally able to squeeze it in.

The next adventure of our trip was an unexpected stop in Kansas on the side of the freeway in extreme heat. I can't remember what the temps were that day, but I remember the kids and I retreated up a hill by the road through very tall dead grass that was filled with grasshoppers to get to a few trees so we could wait in the shade. Robby and Li'l Robby tried valiantly to get the lug nuts off the back tire of the van, but to no avail. Rather they did succeed, but the last lug nut came off just as our roadside rescue arrived and hour later. At which point Robby gladly turned the work over to the guy with the power tools. Thank goodness for roadside assistance. Three hours later we had a new tire and were back on the road. The lame part was that we lost the hub cap that I had just replaced a few weeks prior!

While at Grandma and Grandpa W's house we had a Texas theme each day. If I remember correctly the first day's theme was "Texas has family," for which we made no-bake cookies with Grandma (too hot to bake).

We also got to take a visit to Grandpa's classroom.

O is for Olivia!

Should a threeyear-old really be able to easily reach the water fountain at a high school?!

The second day was "Texas is hot!" Amazingly Robby and Grandma braved the heat to take the girls to the park very early that morning.

Later we met Wendy in Fort Worth to see the Longhorn Cattle Drive. When we arrived we found this fun little petting zoo that we took the kids to.

We also found a free museum (with air conditioning!)

I can't remember the theme this day, but we tried our best to get to the Dallas Arboretum early in the morning to beat the heat. Well first off, we weren't as early as we had hoped, and secondly, there was no beating that Texas heat! The Arboretum give a very large discount in August to it's patrons (because nobody in their right mind would spend a full day out in that heat!)

Can we say HOT?!

Ah, a sprinkler!

We were excited because the weekend brought a visit by Andra and the kids. Much fun was had by the cousins playing games, building forts, and goofing off!