Wow, it's been a year!

My babies
Our new house
Me and Mae
My pretty baby girl, Mae
CJ's almost four now!

I can't believe it's been over a year since the last time I blogged.  So much has changed in the past year.  As I read the last post I put up, I was reminded of the feelings I felt leaving my old house and moving into my new one.  Little did I know that the next year would bring even bigger and scarier changes.  First off, we did finally get into our beautiful new home.  Chuck did such a fantastic job of building the perfect home for us.  We moved in in November and in January Chuck was laid off.  It began one of the scariest times we've had as a young family.  As of right now, we are still not totally stable, but God is good and He is our ultimate resource.  Chuck is working hard to grow his own business and we have had a good amount of work come our way on that front. I am still home with the kids, something I am even more grateful for in the midst of this difficult time, although I have picked up some work that allows me to stay home.  I'm now teaching the 4 year old class at church and am doing contract work for my old adoption agency (teaching pre-adoption trainings and such).  It's actually nice to be back in the adoption world (as if I ever left).  

I appreciate all the comments that were left on my last post. I seemed to have hit a pretty good topic, one that many adoptive parents seem to want to know more about.  As I re-read it, it hit me that one year later I am a little more confident in who I am.  I have maintained a slow and steady relationship with an older birth sister, where I am very careful with boundaries and with my own feelings.  Since she still has a relationship with my birth mother (something I have no desire to do), I am reluctant to allow myself to get too close.  It's sad, really.  She is the one person who I know loved me when I was little.  Her battle scars are much thicker than mine, as she is still a target for our birth mother and as she puts is "you (meaning me, yolie) were lucky, you got another mom...this one's the only  one I got."  I find myself not so angry at my birth mother anymore, just awed by the tragedy that she has created in so many people's lives.  It's just not fair that so many people lost so much because of the choices of one person.  Please, spare me the generational cycle lecture, believe me, I get that.  But, studying that in a college course does not begin to touch the very real damage that a person can do.  Someone has to make a choice to stop it.  There are mothers who have been abused and neglected who choose to not repeat that cycle.  You can't tell a child who's been through hell that her mama couldn't help it.  Sorry, it just doesn't work for me.  Wow, I guess I am still a little angry...

So, I'm not sure who I'm writing this blog for.  I guess it's just the babblings of someone who thinks she's got something to say.  It may or may not be helpful to anyone.  I don't know...

I am going to try to start blogging again.  If you have any questions or suggestions of topics you'd like me to blog about, please let me know.  Not much is too personal, I'm pretty much an open book.  I'd just really like to help people with questions about adoption.  Good to be back...