Hoops To Jump Through

Of course I haven't updated about our adoption process. I have been extremely busy. Remember there are jobs to go to everyday, critters to be fed, stalls to be cleaned, laundry, cooking, dishes and so on and so on...

Our last weekend visit was a challenging one. All parents know just what I mean. LOL The weather would just not cooperate with us for the boys to have very much outside time.

For some reason their manners just didn't get packed. They had a hard time sitting still. They would forget that we require them to say "yes sir" and so on. They wanted to play outside games inside, such as wrestling. I also think that we (the adults) may have been irritated from jumping through hoops.

Hoops
There seems to be a battle with one of the foster parents and a mentor. The 11 year old is in a separate home. He is in a therapeutic home. I use that term extremely lightly! Every time we pick him up from the foster home, the foster mom only has negative things to tell us about him. And she says it right in front of him.

On Thursday our case worker called to tell us that there was a problem with him coming for his visit. That the foster mom said that he had gotten in trouble at school and on the bus and that she just didn't think that she was going to let him come for his weekend stayover. Oh yeah - you might want to sit down for the rest of this. It is mind boggling!
Bless our case worker! She deals with all of this with the foster parent, the mentor and her supervisor. With a lot of emails and phone calls she arranges for us to pick him up on Friday and tells me that if there is any problems when we pick him up to please call her and she will come to the foster home and assist us. Picking him up was not a problem (thank goodness). But the foster parent would not let him take any of his toys, because he was not allowed to play - blah, blah, blah...

Fast forward to Thursday the 9th. Because of our work schedules we have not been able to call the boys during the calling hours. So finally tonight around 5:30 we are able to call. We decided to call the middle one first. I called the foster home and I was informed that he was not allowed to talk to me because he refused to do his homework or his spelling words. Can you believe this? Well neither could I. I was told by the foster parent that I would have to speak to his mentor. At this point I called our case worker and she gave me the mentors phone number. I called and left a message for him to call me back. He did - after about 20 minutes. I was so upset that I could not talk to him. My husband did talk to him and he refused to give permission for us to talk to him. We explained our work schedules and he still refused.

Will someone please tell me or explain to me how in the world this child or this sibling group will ever be adopted if this is continued to be allowed to happen?!
Our case worker is not happy about this activity and she is completely on our side and the children's side. I give her a 10 out of 10 for doing the best that she can. She is wonderful! She is addressing all of these issues and trying to move the process along.

Our weekend
We picked them up on Friday, Feb 2nd and brought them straight to our house. We made dinner together and had a sit down dinner where we all talked and laughed. After dinner we all settled down for a movie. Off to bed and ready for Saturday morning.

Saturday - we went to my Father in Laws house, where my husband worked on our new vehicle. He had to order an exhaust system and he installed it on Saturday. My husband has a really neat workshop with some really awesome tools. It was certainly a hilarious site when I walked into the shop to check on everyone and I saw 4 sets of legs (from the knees down) sticking out from under the truck. I could hear them all talking and my husband giving directions on which way to turn the bolts. "Righty tighty, Lefty loosie", he was saying. I just had to giggle to myself.
The 2 youngest boys would have to take a break and run outside to play. The temperature was around 50 degrees and I caught them playing without jackets and somehow they had managed to run out of their shoes. I would have been freezing. I finally had them put their shoes and jackets on to play, explaining to them that I didn't want them to get sick.
They would run back into the shop to check things out and then back out to play again.

On the drive home, we playing thinking games and I had them begging for more. It was fun and they loved it. Before we got home they fell asleep. They youngest one went right to bed once we got inside and the the other 2 waited for supper and then they were off to bed. They were exhausted.

Sunday - up for breakfast of pancakes. We stayed inside most of the morning because it was just too cold outside. We had to return them to their foster homes Sunday afternoon. It is more difficult to take the boys to their foster homes each time. It is difficult for me to hold back the tears. But I hang on to the idea and knowing that this is not forever.