So. You've Probably Guessed by Now

Yes, we are adding two children to our family! We have known for sure since June 20th, but we've been waiting to tell you all about it becuase of two things: 1) We needed to have our homestudy updated and background checks cleared and we were waiting for that to happen and 2) We needed to tell the children, and I was waiting for Salinda to be in a good mood.

So, last night we had our last homestudy visit and it is getting close to being approved. And yesterday, Salinda was in a good mood, so we told her and she actually had nothing negative to say. Whew. I've been dreading telling her because she's been so negative about everything all summer long.

We often have a hard time telling folks about adding because of many people's perceptions about large families that Bart blogged about today. But we are very excited.

Here's how it all shook down... can you imagine how hard it has been for me to keep this a secret?

Back in January I heard about the boys and thought they were just perfect. But at that time Mike was living at home and causing innumerable problems and we couldn't fathom adding at that time. And we had also decided long ago that we wanted to add teens.

Back in March when we had made a final decision that we just could not allow Mike to return, we started to talk to the kids about adopting again and we started the process to get our background checks done. Because of the negative stuff that had happened with the CHIPS petitions in our former county we were not sure they would come back clean.

When we started talking about adding we were thinking of adding boys who were older -- maybe 15 and 17 or 14 and 16-- since nobody is willing to adopt kids like this. But when Salinda and her friends started talking about how cool it would be if he could drive and started looking at photolistings for cute boys for her friends to date, we decided that maybe we should wait until the girls were quite a bit older to add older boys to the home....

So, on the last day of school this June, our background checks came back clear. On that very morning, I was going through old situations for my job and asked the worker why these boys were not matched. She said that every time they got families they liked for the boys selected and tried to reach them, they had just been matched with someone else.

I met Bart for lunch with my laptop and suggested to him that maybe, just maybe, these boys were still available not because they were very difficult, but because they were supposed to be hours. By the time we had finished our gourmet pizza, I was on the phone, and by June 20th we had been selected as the family for the boys.

Then we had to start our paperwork in earnest, and we are almost done. ICPC will be submitted and we are hoping the boys will be home by October at the latest.

Bart wants to be part of the fun in telling you about them, so you'll have to check out his blog for more details.