It's been awhile.

I think my last few posts have probably been titled the same thing since I tend to take a long hiatus from blogging and then come back, only to leave again.

My dad encouraged me to start my blog up again so even if I've just got one reader that's enough. It's nice to journal life and I enjoy reading back to see what was going on in our lives at different times.

I am nearly half way through nursing school and some days it feels like I'll never make it. It's stretched me, that's for sure! I'm learning a lot and I have no doubt that I'll love nursing so I just need to take it one day at a time. Much easier said than done of course. Jake will graduate in December with his business management degree and we'll see where that takes him. I'll be glad to have him done with school because while we always wait until the kids are in bed to do homework it definitely gives us less to no time to spend together.

The kids are doing well in school. Kylie is in 4th grade and has a lot of friends, enjoys school, and recently started basketball. She is struggling a lot with her vision and has an MRI and some other testing coming up next month to determine why she has developed double vision in the past year. Kaydence is in 2nd grade and also loves school! She has been much less anxious this year and has matured a lot since 1st grade. She recently started taking piano lessons and is catching on very quickly! Emeric repeated kindergarten and has the same full time para and classroom teacher which has been very nice. He is learning a lot and progressing in his own time! He tried t-ball this summer but didn't love it. I think he just didn't really understand the game which tends to make him upset and anxious. I'm not sure that we'll try any other sports anytime soon.

Since I last posted we had some significant things happen in our family. In March we took in two boys through foster care with the intent of adopting them. Sadly, they were only a part of our family for 3 months. I'm not going to go into details about why they left but ultimately it just wasn't a good fit and we knew that so we made the very, very difficult decision to let them go. I still miss them. However, we still feel very much called to adopt a child from foster care and are beginning the process of fostering another child sometime. We're nervous but know that we have learned a lot of great lessons and are trusting God that we'll have wisdom in any decisions we make in the future!

There are many, many children living in the foster care system that need a home. I feel as Christians that we are all called to take care of orphans and whether that means being a foster parent yourself, financially supporting someone doing foster care or adoption, or finding other ways to help, these are all important. November is National Adoption Month and many people are very unfamiliar with domestic adoption through foster care. If anyone has any questions you can leave a comment or email me and I'd love to talk about it with you!