I’m blown away by the sheer number of followers and feel so humbled with the response I have received.  I really figured I would be doing this blog mostly for myself as well as to update out of town family who aren’t on Facebook here and there with the goings on in my crazy house.  My life doesn’t feel interesting enough to read about, but several of you have suggested a write a book…yikes.  I don’t know about that, but I will start by trying to blog my feelings, life and struggles here over the next bit of time anyhow.

So where to start…considering I don’t have nearly as many friends as followers, I’m going to assume some of you don’t know me or my family.  So the next few blogs will be back stories about each of us and where we are at.  I’ll save myself for last since I’m the most complicated and at the moment I’m an emotional wreck  – maybe by the time I work my way through the rest of my lovely clan I’ll be in a better place.  If not, you’ll get raw emotional me….which is good too, I suppose.

So background – anyone who knows us well can just ignore the rest of this blog, it will be boring….

I’m a 40 year old mom of 8 forever kiddos, and a foster baby – we have four biological children and four that we have adopted through the state foster care program.  We are legally at the limit of children we can have in our home, but due to the massive need in our county, we have an exception to care for one additional child.  We were placed with a foster baby last February when she was 2 days old.  She’s nearly 10 months old now.  I can’t post publicly any identifying information about her or any photos, so this will likely be the only post that concerns any details about her until she is no longer in our home.  We have made some hard decisions about her case as well as our future with foster care, but more about that later.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, moved out when I went to college in Wisconsin, where I met my husband, came to know the Lord, got married, and settled here because we found a church family who we love and are joined to.  I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

My husband.

He is amazing – I don’t know where to start.  He loves me far more than I deserve, selflessly serves this family, is on board with all of my crazy ideas and is an adoring and attentive dad to all of the kiddos who have crossed the threshold of our home.  We met as immature baby believers in college and have grown up together over the years.  We will celebrate 19 years of marriage soon – it’s hard to believe I have lived with and loved him for almost half of my life.  I don’t deserve him.  He works hard to support and provide for us – too hard really – and I pray every day that God will make a miraculous way so that he can be home and present with us more.  He’s a public school, high school, math teacher.  His job is a direct answer to a full decade of relentless prayers, many tears, and the driest of desert seasons and we are still in awe and so thankful for it.  He also works a side job as a restaurant server on the weekends just to make ends meet. He took the second job “for a season” but this season has been much, much longer than we had hoped.  We hope that job will not be necessary soon.  He is in the process of transitioning the second job to a tutoring agency, but hopefully more on that soon.

What else can I say about my amazing husband?  He loves Jesus more than anything.  He serves the church, serves this family, and so many in his areas of influence.  He is a friend to so many but really doesn’t have any super close friends who he gets together with often – we hope that will soon change with his time at home and availability potentially being greater.  It’s hard to maintain friendships when you work 7 days a week. He longs to be a more present, hands-on dad.  He feels like he’s missed critical time with our teens – but I know God will bridge that gap in a miraculous way that only God can!  He is silly, makes me laugh all the time and truly, truly is my best friend.  God has done a work of knitting our hearts together and I don’t know what more to say…he is my other half, my sounding board, and the unfortunate object of all my bad attitudes and stress, which he takes with so much grace and way more kindness than I deserve.  I’m so fortunate to have a partner like him to walk through this life crazy life we are living with our “mega-family” with him by my side.

Next up, I’ll do a couple blogs about the kids….maybe one boys and one girls….as soon as I have another five minutes of silence.  Ha! 🙂