Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Dead Shrew


Stop hanging around OUR coop!

Courtesy of the Girls: Grace, Doris, Ann, Nancy, Etta,
Aretha, Gladis, Big Brown Betty, Reba and Pat

New Year, New Starts, and New Family

The fall went by in a blur.  Egg production picked back up (and has since gone back down).  Halloween, birthdays and anniversaries came and went.  In fact, Keith and I celebrated 18 years of marriage.  Wow how time flies.

As to the comings and goings of Windy Acres - I tend to focus on the life of the four-legged and feathered critters and not so much on the two-legged ones.  So this one is about our family. 

Since the day we met, Keith and I had always said that we wanted to adopt kids someday - no matter if we had our own or not.  We also decided that if we were going to adopt, we wanted to adopt from within the state.  We didn't want to adopt a child from a foreign country - we wanted to open our home to a child here in Indiana that needed a home. So, in November of 2010, we decided to move forward and start the process for what is called SNAP - Special Needs Adoption Program.  For Indiana that basically means any child that is 2 years or older.  We attended the Foster/Adoption training classes offered by the Department of Child Services.  We had our home study completed in December 2010, and was formally approved as pre-adoptive parents by the SNAP council on February 28, 2011. 

During this past year, we had a couple of interviews.  Then at the end of October, we were picked to interview for Justin, a 6th grader down in Lawrenceburg, Indiana..  We were very excited and as always, tried not to get our hopes up.  In fact, as interviews go we thought this one had been our worst. Then on Tuesday, November 1st we got the call telling us that we had been picked as Justin's pre-adoptive parents!  November and December were a complete whirlwind - trying to somehow make it through the holidays and getting to know our soon-to-be son at the same time.  There were many trips back and forth to Lawrenceburg.  On Christmas Day 2011, Justin came to live with us permanently.

We feel so blessed and happy to have Justin in our lives.  Are there challenges? Of course, but the reward is so much bigger. We look forward to all that this adventure has to offer and look forward to the beginning of a new family with 3 two-legged critters at Windy Acres.