A Weekend with Amber and Chase

Chase and his Mama

Robert enjoying the scenery

Three Creeks Lake

Kai and Sadie playing in the water

Amber and Me

Uncle Bob, Chase, and all the doggies

Chase, pre-lemon face

Chase, post-lemon face

Our dear friend Amber discovered a gorgeous lake just West of Sisters and invited us to spend the day there with her and baby Chase. Amber brought her adorable little pit bull, Sadie, and she was also babysitting Cassy (a very sweet Golden Retreiver), and with Kai we had a car-full of wet, stinky dogs! After our trip to Three Creeks Lake Amber came over to hang out and watch movies. She spent the night and we got to hang out all day Sunday as well. Here are some pictures from our fun-filled weekend, and even thought it looks like we were torturing Chase with lemons, he actually LOVES them and kept sucking on the slice until it was just peel!

Waiting for them...

The left side of the "kid's room"

The right side of the "kid's room"

Robert and I have made the decision to be foster parents with the intention to eventually adopt. What this means is rather than applying to adopt children who have already been in foster homes and who are now "legally free" for adoption, we are going to be a foster home for children who may (or may not) end up available to be adopted. There are several reasons we have chosen to go this route. The first reason is that we thought we could do both (foster parent and be on the list to adopt as a general applicant), but were informed that we could only do one or the other. The second reason is since the children we will be adopting are usually not infants and have special emotional needs, they prefer to adopt children out to parents with experience with these types of children - most of which can be gained from caring for other children with special needs by foster parenting. The third reason for foster parenting is that should we have a child in our home for 6 months, and should that child come up for adoption, we would be given the first chance to adopt that child (given no other biological family members show up to adopt them). And our final reason for choosing foster parenting is we want to help as many children as we can whether we have them for one week, one month, one year, or forever! I spoke with our caseworker last week, and she is hoping to do our home study by the end of this week - although they are currently short a person and way overloaded so please pray they will find time to fit us in! Once our homestudy has been completed, they could place a child (or children) with us at any time! Since we don't know if we will be receiving a baby or a school-aged child, we have tried to prepare a room that will be ready for any age! We already had some baby stuff that had been given to us from friends, and this weekend we bought bunkbeds! Now we just have to be patient while we wait for God to bring us some little ones...

The "Damsons"

Uncle Robert and the boys

Garrett doesn't look too sure about this.

One of three attempts to ride sans training wheels:)

Bowling is way better!

Uncle Robert showing Donovan his moves

Donovan and Garrett (my step-brother Mike's boys) were able to come visit grandma and grandpa for a whole month this summer and we enjoyed getting to spend some time with them too! We tried to teach Garrett how to ride his bike without training wheels, but he said it was "boring" and that he just wanted to go to our house and play with our cats:) So after playing with all the animals, we went bowling and spent a few hours in a used bookstore - smart kids:) They are very sweet boys and we enjoyed our time with them.