A little sun and spring flowers...

Yesterday was a sunshiny, warmish (almost 40*!) day, so Greyson and I met a friend at Como park. We had a great time checking out the animals and then the conservatory. The sun and the azaleas, geraniums, and other beautiful flowers were perfect for lightening my dark, wintery mood!

Important Note: my friend, Tracy, is much better at picture taking than I am. The first three pics here are hers. Notice Greyson's smile and that he's actually looking at the camera in her shots! I don't think we have another shot of Greyson like the third one in this post. I'm so impressed. If you are too, you should go look at more of her great pictures on her blog.

And the washer has TOO MUCH water....

On Monday, we discovered that our washer wasn't working.... after having the dryer out of commission for a couple of weeks in Dec/Jan, I have discovered that I would much rather have the dryer broken than the washer. At least we could have clean clothes! We have a front-loading washer and it was filling up more than halfway with water and then shutting down. Ugh. It took a couple of days for Ben to get to looking at the washer and he was a little nervous about digging into it too. He said, "I don't know, washers are much more complicated than dryers." But I had confidence that he could fix it for us! Tonight, after pulling some parts out and some online research, he figured out what the problem is. YEA!! Now, we can pick up the part (a hose and a cheap one at that!) tomorrow and get it changed out. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow I can have a couple of the 5 loads of laundry that need to be done. Whew... another disaster averted.

Family Valentine

For the first 10 years of Ben's and my marriage, Valentine's Day was quite a sticky day. Both of us had different ideas of how it should be recognized. I thought homemade candle-lit dinners and whispered sweet nuthin's. Ben thought "hallmark holiday I'm not celebrating". To be fair, I do agree with Ben that we should spend more effort loving everyone, all year. In honoring the day, though, we tried something different this year and think that it might be a new Rhodes tradition. We celebrated Valentine's Day (actually the day before) preparing Buckets of Hope to be sent to Haiti. Haiti has been been heavy on my heart lately (I'm sure I'll be writing more on that later) and this seemed like something we could do to "love on" the Haitian people and learn (or learn again) how to love those in need.

Our day started by talking to the kids about what we were going to do and why. Filling buckets with food for people that don't have enough food in Haiti because we love them. Ben and I had already talked to Madelyn a little about the earthquake in Haiti. Although I'm sure Madelyn doesn't understand the magnitude of what Haiti is like right now, she is understanding it a little bit - enough that she is praying for the Haitian people at every prayer time now (that in itself makes me tear up a little). Greyson is more oblivious to the details but knows that we are filling the buckets to help other people and that he gets to be the "strong boy" while putting all the stuff in the shopping cart and filling the buckets. That's enough for now. :)

Putting the buckets together is SO simple! We hit Walmart first for the buckets and contents (except the peanut butter, which I already picked up at Sam's). We found everything but the 2-gallon ziploks, the black beans, and they didn't have enough rice to fill our buckets. So we headed over to Cub to round out the shopping list. (FYI - the rice was TWICE the cost at Cub! WOW!) Madelyn and Greyson were excited to help and really got into it. When we got everything home, we spread it all out and filled them up very quickly. Since our church is collecting these buckets, we prayed over them as a family and took them to church on Sunday (Valentine's Day). And our tradition of loving others on Valentine's Day has begun.... We love you, Haiti, and pray for your recovery as a people and a nation.

Bunches

When Ben puts Greyson to bed, he tells him just before he closes the door (the first time), "I love you bunches." Greyson always laughs and says, "Bunches", like he thinks Ben has nicknamed him that (as in "I love you, Bunches."). So cute.

Foster Care Preparations

I looked back and realized that this is the first time that I am mentioning Ben's and my potential venture into foster care on my blog.  Man, how did that happen?  Well, maybe I should start at the beginning then. 

Ben and I have had this yearning in our spirits to reach out to children that are in need, especially those that have been taken from their homes due to abuse or neglect.  That is where God started us on this journey about three years ago....

Almost two years ago, my mom's group had two "speakers" (foster moms) talk to us about their passion for children that need safe, loving homes and what that looks like.  They visited from a group they had formed called Propel Ministries.  This ministry is dedicated to being a support to those that are foster and adoptive parents.  I was inspired and motivated to action!  My spirit was so excited about the desire God has given us to be foster parents!  We quickly starting going to Propel Meetings

Within a couple of months, we went to a foster care orientation and ended up being the ONLY couple from our county to be there.  So, the woman there representing our county, Pam, took us aside and did our first interview in the licensing process.  We didn't jump into the necessary (and seemingly endless) paperwork right away.  We finished our summer and fall with house projects and playing in the sun before the winter started.  When we contacted Pam again, now our social worker, she set up an in-home appointment with us and we started talking about next steps in the process.  She told us the next step would be getting our house inspected by a fire marshal for approval to have foster children stay with us (it is the same code that a day care would have to pass).  Even though Pam didn't want to discourage us, I think she knew at that point that major work on the house might be necessary to get it up to code, so she scheduled that inspection right away.... Granted, our house was built in the late '50's, but when the city came out to inspect in Jan 2009, we were surprised by the laundry list of changes that needed to be made to meet the code.  It really stop us in our tracks and made it hard to want to continue.  Although, we did continue to attend Propel meetings and try to support other foster/adoptive parents in their mission of caring for children in need - making meals, babysitting, cleaning.

Although we were mulling around different ideas all along, it took us about 10 months to get motivated again towards being foster/adoptive parents.  In that time, we became aware of 3 different children that could have come to our home if we were licensed.  It was heartbreaking for me each time to know that we had so much work (and money) to put in before we could reach the reality of taking children in that need a stable, loving home.  Somewhere along the way I was reading up on requirements for being adoptive parents and it seemed that we could have an pre-adoptee in our home for up to 2 years without meeting the fire code that we failed so miserably (although I'm not 100% sure on this point).  We were intrigued by a program called Minnesota Waiting Children that tries to place children that have been removed from their parents' homes are waiting to be adopted (this in itself broke my heart).  Sometime in October 2009, I was on the phone with someone from our county office when she revealed that even though the state requires that you be foster care licensed to have an adoption home study performed, but private agencies do not.  So, then we started looking into private agencies for getting an adoption home study done.  We choose three to look into further, received their initial forms to fill out, and then God must have spoken to Ben and I.  We knew that even if we did adopt one or two children, that it wouldn't be enough for what we feel God is calling us to.  He wants us to be more available than that.  We decided to firm up our list of house modifications needed and then have a contractor come out to help us get them all done in a timely fashion.  We didn't have a great list from the city inspection to work from.... so, because we didn't want to go back and forth with city officials multiple times with re-inspections, I called in early December to see if we could firm up the house modifications list.  And here's what they said - "We don't do foster care fire code inspections anymore."  What!??!  I then asked, "What about the inspection we had done earlier this year?"  Their answer was very vague and non-committal.  I ended up calling Pam and asking what the next steps would be.  She contacted the state fire marshal and they agreed, hesitantly, to do another initial inspection.  And a year and a week after the first inspection that stopped us in our tracks, I am very happy to say that the house modification list is now *very doable*!!!  This inspection went *much* more smoothly and the woman that did them was seemingly much more knowledgeable of the code.  God is GOOD! 

We got the official report and the biggest item is extending the sheetrock up to the roof decking in the garage and installing a solid or metal self-closing door between the garage and the house.  All the other items could be done in about 15 minutes total - install a fire detector, install a larger fire extinguisher, install covers on open electrical boxes (that were open in our guest room due to our current remodeling).  Sweet!  We will wait until it gets a little warmer before we do the work in the garage, but we have already contacted Pam about getting our initial home study paperwork done in the meantime.  Hopefully, we won't run into any major problems there....  the journey continues.