Time with Cousins

 Covid 19 really messed with family time in the spring time.  It was such a debate about whether to see family and whether we should still be getting together.  Every family had to weigh their risks and decide what was best for them.  For my parents and sisters we stayed pretty socially distant for the first few months, but eventually we decided the risk was worth it to us and we started getting everyone together again.  Currently my family's dynamics are pretty crazy.  All 4 of us girls are married and having lots of babies.  There will soon be 18 grandkids all under the age of 9.  It is a busy busy stage of life for all of us and so family activities look fairly chaotic.  It is SO much fun to be having babies with my sisters BUT when we get together things get pretty wild.  We often just do playdates at each others houses and occasionally we go to the park.  We also make sure that we do group date nights or girls nights so that we can bond without the craziness.    

One tradition/ fun thing we like to do is have a summer party in Corinne's backyard.  They have a great hill in their backyard that is perfect for slip-in-sliding.  We pull out the sprinklers and kiddie pool and the kids have a ball running up and down the hill.  It was so fun to have Larissa, Rusty, and their kids join us this year since they now live close by.  What a fun night it was and I am already missing those long summer nights.  

This year we had a major wind storm roll through northern Utah (on top of all the Covid drama and the earthquake earlier this year).  It created such a mess for families all over and many houses and trees were damaged.  Thankfully ours was fine and we didn't even loose power.  A few days later, my sister Larissa had the great idea to all get together and help clean up a park in the area.  It was the worldwide day of service and Cleaning up branches seemed like a great service activity for young kids.  It was actually a lot of fun running around grabbing branches.  Cousins made the work even more exciting and they were all so well behaved.  Thanks Larissa for being our motivation.    

  

Foster Care Update September 2020

 We are now 18 months into our foster care journey.  We started at the beginning of May 2019.  Our very first placement that came to our house the day after we were licensed are still with us today.  It was meant to be.  These kids were meant to be in our family and we are truly are happy that we get to spend our lives together even though it is a crazy/sad/busy ride sometimes.  Here is an update of what has been going on in our foster care world since February 2020.  These are the stories that I haven't told anywhere else, but since this is our family journal I am going to share things here so that we have it written down. 

 In Feb we were still doing weekly visits with Bio Mom.  We had changed from twice a week visits to once a week visits which was SO helpful to me with our busy schedule.  They started doing visits at parks in March to help keep everyone safer since this was at the beginning of Covid.  Many foster families stopped doing visits in person for a while, but our visits never changed and I am glad the kids had the chance to spend that time with their mom.  At the beginning of May we had court scheduled to decide permanency with the kids case.  The question on the table was were they going to keep trying to get the kids back to bio mom or were we going to change the plan to adoption?  That court hearing ended up being postponed due to Covid and rescheduled for June.  June came and that court hearing was postponed again until July. 

 Finally in July we had the court hearing and it was our first virtual hearing.  At that hearing bio mom did not decide to relinquish her parental rights and so DCFS moved to take the case to trial to terminate bio mom's parental rights.  In Utah they give bio parents about a year to finish a list of requirements that they need to do in order to get their children back in their care.  If they don't finish their list or at least try to finish it they move the case to adoption.  Then most commonly the foster parents will adopt the children.  Our bio mom did not really complete anything on her list at the year mark which was in May.  The court was now wanting to move the case to an adoption.  

The next hearing was a pre-trial hearing.  They were getting prepared for the trial and giving bio mom one last chance to relinquish her rights instead of having them terminated at court.  Bio mom decided to take this opportunity to relinquish her rights.  This was an act of love from her and such a devastating moment for her.  She truly loves these kids SO much!  A few weeks after she relinquished her rights the children had their final visit with her.  They met at a splash pad.  They played for a few hours and then I joined them with the caseworker.  Together we fed the kids some yummy food and explained to them that they would no longer be having visits with their mom.  We explained that she loved them so much but just wasn't able to take care of them at this time.  I shared my love for them and how special it was to me that they were going to stay at our house and be a part of our family.  They took things fairly well at the park.  Honestly I feel like by this point they had mourned the loss of leaving their mom many months ago.  They had lived with us for 14 months.  It was normal to them and they are too young to understand the bigger picture of the situation.  But what a moment to have for McKay and I!   I felt so much stress, sadness, and yet peace during these weeks as we started to explain to them about adoption and how they were going to stay with us and not see their mom anymore.  It was definitely an adjustment for all of us.

Once bio mom had relinquished her rights we only had one of their fathers left who also needed/needs to relinquish his parental rights.  He had been a distant part throughout the whole case, but still needed to have his moment in court.  As we have moved on to his portion of the court case he decided to not relinquish his parental rights.  So they set a Trial date (just like bio mom), but at the pre-trial he decided that he would like to relinquish his rights.  But he forgot to bring the paperwork that he needed to sign to the court date... so another date had to be set.  The next court date he happened to not be available that day (thanks to Covid restrictions) so we have set the next court date in 2.5 weeks.  Someday right?!  

Someday he will hopefully relinquish his rights and we will be able to move forward with an adoption date.  Our lawyer needs 8-10 weeks to prep the adoption paperwork once the parents have relinquished so we are most likely looking at an adoption date in 2021.  

It has been a long journey, but thankfully a fairly smooth one (even with 8 kids in tow).  We haven't really had any worries in over a year that the kids might leave our house.  We have been planning our future with them for quite some time and it is exciting to be closer to the end of our foster journey.  We never anticipated for things to go the direction that they did, but it seems fairly common with sibling groups to end up being adopted.  It has been wonderful for them to get to stay with us and to not have to have any children leave our home.  We have decided to change their names (atleast their first names) and have started calling them by their new names.  It definitely took a month or 2 for us all to get used to the new names, but they love them and are doing well adjusting.  We decided unofficially change their names early so that they could be using their new names when school started.  It turned out well and everyone has been so supportive of the new names.  We really appreciate that!  We will introduce their new names on here when we adopt them officially.  I am excited and LOVE their names :)         

      

Shaving Cream and Cowabunga Bay

 A fun activity that we did twice this summer was spray shaving cream in our kiddy pool in the backyard.  Then the kids put their hands in it, followed by their feet, and eventually their whole bodies.  This sensory activity has been great for our sensory seeking kids and honestly all of the kids love it.  I love taking pictures of them while they are covered in shaving cream.  Thankfully the cleanup is fairly easy since the shaving cream easily comes off of skin and clothes.  We always plan this activity on bath night so that they are ready to hop in the shower right after.  

On Labor day we had the opportunity to go to Cowabunga Bay in Draper thanks to Utah foster care.  They give foster families free tickets each summer.  This year we took 6 of the 8 kids with us and they all had a great time.  I am so thankful for fun family activities like this.  I sure love any time that we get to bond as a family, especially when it involves happy kids.  Swimming definitely makes these kids happy.  

The Front Porch Project May 2020

 I wanted to do a separate post for these photos.  During the pandemic many photographers started doing the Front Porch Project.  Where they come to your home and at a distance take photos of your family in front of your house.  I loved the idea of taking photos in front of our house and as a way to remember this unique time spent at home together.  I KNOW I will look back at these months at home as a blessing for our family.  It was a time that we didn't see coming that was such a special bonding/growing experience.  These photos were casual and relaxing.  The kids loved piling on top of mom and dad and I am excited to hang these moments up on the walls of our home.  Thank you to Lindzee Merrill Photography for capturing these moments for us!

   

Covid 2020 Recap Part 2

 Find Part 1 Here.  

June: This was a month that I stopped caring about the Corona Virus. 😬  We started leaving the house again.  I signed the kids up for swimming lessons.  We started going to parks and activities.  I didn't really mean to stop worrying about the virus. I was just tired with staying home and wanted a bit of normalcy.  Mr. J and McKay had their Birthdays on June 3rd.  We celebrated their birthdays by going to Sea Quest.  Mr. J is really into turtles and he was excited to see some in person.  We started taking the kids on their "kid dates" again.  Most of them chose to go to Get Air the trampoline park for their dates.  Big Sis and Declin graduated from the Waterford Upstart preschool program (they loved it and I did too).  Addie set up a pretend wedding in the backyard (haha).  We continued doing our weekly cousin play dates with my sisters and their kids.  We celebrated McKay again on Fathers Day (very grateful to have him in our lives). Big Sis lost her first tooth. We finished off the month with our big summer activity... A trip to Lagoon!  It was the best day of our summer and we ALL had a fantastic time.  Such great memories and I loved getting to show my kids some of my favorite rides from my childhood.

July: After spending all of June NOT social distancing we decided to be a bit more careful in July.  We started staying home again, wore our masks out in public, etc.  This Covid pandemic sure has been a roller coaster of emotions.  It was hard to keep up with all the changes, guidelines, and the media was/is all over the place.  Anyways... back to July.  July started with a fun family get together with all the Pace cousins for the 4th of July.  After the party we came home to THE best fireworks show any of us have ever seen.  The whole neighborhood was doing fireworks together and it was amazing to see.  Fireworks were going off all over the place.  July 8th was Rockwell's 2nd birthday.  My baby is 2... where does the time go?!  The rest of the month we stayed home, then we went to the splash pad, then we stayed home, then we went to another splash pad, and then we stayed home... over and over and over again.  It was hot and the splash pad was about the only "social distancing" thing we could handle with 8 little kids.  At the end of the month we went camping to Flaming Gorge with my family.  My youngest sister Mykelti lives near Flaming Gorge and it was fun to go see her neck of the woods and spend time at her house.  The water was perfect and I was amazed at how clear it was.  We left two of our kids at another foster family's house for safety measures (especially since we were around water) and to help us have a little break.  It worked out well and we all had a good time on our vacation. 

August came and we were all ready to go back to school after the longest summer vacation EVER.  The last two weeks before school started were SO long.  On August 13th Big Sis finally got to have her dance recital that had been postponed since May.  She danced to Jail House Rock and I loved watching her up on stage.  Adalyn turned 9 years old on August 10th.  When school finally did reopen it was only part time.  They now get to go to school twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday).  We are hoping they open school back up all the way soon, but for now we are enjoying the extra time together at home.  I get to play teacher a few times a week and if I didn't have toddlers it would be my dream come true.  For some reason those toddlers don't make it very fun (haha).  Adalyn is now in 4th grade with Mr. Joy.  Jensen is in 2nd grade with Mrs. Dettmann (Adalyn had her last year for 3rd grade), Declin is in Kindergarten with Mrs. Strawn.  Big Sis is in Kindergarten with Ms. Leaver.  We are so grateful for wonderful teachers. We found Beau's pond in Ogden and we all love exploring there.  We took several walks there in August.  Nola and Big Sis played for hours and hours with the toy animals, the doll house people, and kinetic sand.  They are such cute friends/sisters.  We finished off August with one last fun trip to Day Break to visit Grandma and Grandpa Cannon.  They sold their house and are moving up to Syracuse to be closer to family.  We are very excited to have them closer to us.

Now we are all caught up.  We have made it to September 2020.  What a busy year we have had, but looking through these pictures I am reminded of the good times that have been mixed in with the crazy.  This year we started a 1000 hours outside challenge.  It has helped remind us to get outside and play.  One thing the corona virus has helped us do is to slow down, relax, and get outside.  We hiked, we swam, we played, and of course we watched a lot of movies this summer.  The summer of 2020 will be one to remember and thankfully it hasn't been all bad.  

One thing that I haven't talked about yet is foster care.  A foster care update will be my next post.  Lots has happened since Feb and needs to be updated.  This blog is really my only form of family journal so I need to catch up!  This has definitely been a journey I don't want to forget.