times are a changing
life has been busy as of late. fortunately my job has not been busy lately, but ben just goes and goes for his job. he works so hard, but fortunately with owning your own business also comes flexibility which is nice. factoring in the season tickets has only increased our busyness but we have enjoyed watching the royals play. then of course, there are ben's softball games on friday nights.
on top of this, our thursday nights for the past 8 weeks have been occupied with our most current life changing decision. after much discussion lately that really begin when we were first married, we have decided to go forward with adopting a child. the decision to do this was not difficult, it feels very natural for us-definitely the right step. but the decision to actually take the first step to begin the process was scary! so many questions to be answered.
we have been in our training sessions on thursday nights, learning about the foster care process, which is required for us to get licensed. our last class is next thursday. our next step will be to enroll in a class for adoption training, in which an additional 12 hours of training will be required. once we complete that course and all of the paperwork required we will be licensed. then it will just be a matter of finding our child and being selected to be their forever family.
we are looking within the age range of 2-6, and we have no specific gender or race in mind at this point. for some reason, when i imagine this mystery child, it is a boy, but that is no indication really of who we will get. we will just have to see! we would also be open to a sibling group (could not be any more than 2 at this point) if the situation were to present itself.
i have been overcome with so many feelings during this process. feelings of joy, fear, anticipation, wonder and even inadequacy. are we equipped to handle the special needs of a child who has endured so much trial during their short life? i don't think God would have given us such a strong desire to adopt a child if we were not, but there is so much to learn. some of which we can prepare for, but a lot of which will only be learned through experience, as is the case with natural parenthood.
and of course there is the question of biological children. i still see us trying for biological children at some point in the future. we just made the decision that we would like to adopt a child into our family first, without even having the knowledge of whether or not we will be able to have children biologically. we wanted the decision to adopt to be 100% by choice and not necessarily dictated by our ability to bear children. please, please don't misinterpret this as me saying there is anything wrong with adopting only when a couple is unable to bear children of their own. that is definitely not the case. we just decided to go about things in a different way, and we liked the idea of having this child integrated into our family first.
so needless to say, there is a lot in store for the felder family over the next few months. our 5 years of carefree time for ourselves will soon be over, but there will be so much more to gain!
if there weren't enough excitement in becoming a mom in a few short months, i will also be adding the title of aunt for the first time! danny and megan are expecting a baby in november and i could not be happier for them! my parents are very excited to become grandparents twice in the same year! but that goes without saying, of course!
