I'm terrible at maintaining a blog. Someday I hope to get better at this, but then again the whole point has been to keep our friends and family update on our comings and goings. With that said there hasn't been much to report on until now.
John finished his last academic semester. People, this is a huge milestone for us. One we couldn't be happier about. He did well and survived.
Things have been moving right along at work for me.
And the foster situation has stalled yet again.
Recently it has been determined John and I will be making our 3rd move in 4 years at the end of July. Let me just say for someone who hates moving I do it a lot. And quite frankly I still stink at it. John was placed in Bulverde for his internship year. Bulverde sits right at the north outskirts of San Antonio, which has pretty much been our home. We are excited about that. However this is a difficult move for many reasons.
1. We decided to down size from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom apartment. There are several reasons for this.
2. It means I have to transfer and build a caseload from the ground up again.
3. We are moving away from friends.
4. We are leaving a church family we adore and has been incredible. Irreplaceable!
5. This is the hardest reason; our foster situation will be put on hold.
After much prayer, many many conversations, and lots of thought John and I decided it was for the best. Again the 1 bedroom apartment makes child raising challenging and in foster care impossible. We could have gotten a 2 bedroom, but it would not be in the area we will be in, meaning it would have been far from John's new church. I need to work more this upcoming year, and would not have been able to dedicate as much time to children. John needs to focus on his internship and will not able to pick up my slack in parenting. Honestly if we already had children in our home we would have figured out a way to manage, but since we don't currently have children in our home, it made more sense for us to just put it on hold for 10 months.
That is the plan, only put it on hold for 10 months. Our file will be transferred from Dallas MCH agency office to the San Antonio MCH agency office. We will maintain our license, continue our trainings, keeping our file up to date. Once John is finished in June 2016, we will once again set our sights on fostering.
Our tentative plan is to aggressively pursue adoption and foster at the same time once John is completely finished and graduated next June. Meaning if it is possible, and we want to find an agency willing to let us keep one spot available for foster placement and actively pursue adoption at the same time. That may or may not mean looking at the children on the waiting list for home. We want to continue to foster as long as possible. In our short inexperienced time we have learned fostering is a pain in the ass. There I said. I laid all the cards on the table. It really and truly is. The doctors appointments, records, social workers in and out, licensing, following state standards, etc. It is EXHAUSTING and time consuming. But I cannot think of a single thing more worth my time, energy, and love, which is why we are putting it on hold for 10 months. I don't want to kinda foster. I want to do my best. I want to give these children all I can, and we had to be honest with ourselves. Due to various circumstances we will not be able to give it our best for 10 months. Our hearts haven't changed. In fact this has been the hardest part of our transition. I can't express the amount of consideration (and tears) we gave this choice. Fostering has been such a special and beautiful experience. We wouldn't take back our brief time we have had with the children we have fostered so far. It has brought us more heartbreak than we could have imagined, but it has brought more joy and love that we ever thought possible. So much so it made all the heartbreak worth it. Can I say we made a life altering influence on the children, no. But they did on us.
Even though we are having to make this transition we are looking forward to the doors and chapters it will lead to. We coming close to rather big chapter in our lives ending; the "John and Ashley finally finish school for-hopefully-ever" chapter. You see, one of us has always, and by always, I mean ALWAYS been in school. Most people finish school by 22-24. Nope, not John and Ashley. We have built our lives around the academic calendar and couldn't be happier about putting those days behind us. While we have enjoyed learning, we are ready for both partners to be free of the restraints graduate school puts on a person.
This summer brings about a lot of change. We are slowly trying to prepare ourselves. Starting the packing 36 hours before movers come is a terrible way of moving. I know because we did that for one move. It was not pretty. Nothing was pretty about that! So let's just say I am planning, prepping, and packing now with the hopes things will be smoother later.
