Some News!

For the last two weeks, John and I have been doing respite foster care.  We aren't technically licensed to do it, but due to where we work, we are pretty much trained to do so.  We have two boys with us, one is 12 and the other is 10.  The 12 year old both John and I worked with when we were working on the boys side.  And I must say, he has made some AMAZING changes and grown up so much from when we moved over to work on the girls side.  He's like a totally different kid and we are really enjoying having him with us!  The 10 year old has posed some problems only with me ( but many of the boys have "Mom" issues so I'm not overly surprised) but we made a deal with him that if he had two great days, and no issues with me, then we would buy him a pack of Pokemon cards.  That has made all of the difference and he has been amazing too for the last few days! 
Having these two has completely changed things too.  Going from no kids to two of 'em is a bit of an adjustment.  Life has been hectic busy the last two weeks between therapy visits, dropping them off and picking them up from school, phone calls on specific days, and work for John  and I that I feel like a chicken with my head cut off at times.  But it's good experience and the pay is good! So we can't complain.  They should be moving into their permanent foster home within the next week, if all goes well with getting an out of state background check back fairly soon for the new foster Dad.
Other than that, I am going to be moving over to working with the proctor ( kids that are in a form of foster care) kids over the next little while.  I basically will be a mentor for them and because they are out of the program, they are much better behaved, which means a lot less stress besides having to fit them in time wise and dealing with gas.  But all and all, I think it will be a nice change.

Christmas / Post Christmas Update

- John and I had our first Christmas actually together.  This is technically our third Christmas, but I had spent the last two with my family back home.

- We were able to take one of the girls home that we work with.  She was suppose to have come with us for Thanksgiving, but due to her terrible grades, she was not allowed to come with us as a consequence for the bad grades.  She worked really hard to bring her grades up so that she could spend Christmas with us.  It was unexpected that we were going to have her Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day until we went into work.  She was incredibly grateful to be with us, and was wonderful. 

- Christmas Eve we spent at John's Mum's house with us and his brother and of course his Mum.  I made a traditional tortiere ( a French Canadian meat and potato pie that my family has every Christmas) which I brought with us.  We had a yummy meal of ham, potatoes, tortiere, corn, rolls and the works.  It was delightful! After dinner, we read the account in Luke of Christ's birth and then opened one present a piece. 

- Christmas morning we opened presents with John's Mom and brother.  John's brother Jim, went and got his son Landyn around 4 and Landyn got to open his presents from us.  We had to go into work at 5 which wasn't to terrible.  All the girls were in a good mood and things went really well.

- My Christmas Cactus actually bloomed on Christmas! I was really happy to see numerous blooms on it, but only one showed itself on Christmas day.  That made me happy. 

Yup for some reason it's sideways. It isn't on my desktop. Not sure what's going on but you get the point! :)

Post Christmas Update

- After Christmas was really difficult for John and I.  We had to put our little Italian Greyhound, Mickie down.    We had taken him in before Christmas due to his side wound not healing.  The Vet gave him an antibiotic and a painkiller.  When the antibiotic wasn't seeming to work, Mickie's wound wasn't healing at all, and his eyes had turned a weird shade of green, like green cataracts we decided to take him back in.  When the Vet checked his gums for blood flow, they were incredibly white meaning he was severely anemic at that stage.  His body temperature was about 10 degrees lower than it was suppose to be and he was getting cold to the touch.  The Vet said that he had had an auto-immune disorder meaning his body was destroying every red blood cell it was making.  The option was to either put him to sleep or to that day give him a blood transfusion, and then put him on steroids that may or may not improve his health.  It was a fifty fifty chance of getting better.  We chose to have him put to sleep due to the fact that it would have been around $600 for that days treatments and then would have been expensive the months after that if he survived.  His quality of life would have been far less  than it should have been if we had kept him around.  It was an incredibly difficult decision to make and both John and  I were a mess before they came to take him away for good.  It was hard.  But we feel that we did the right thing.  We also feel that were a "doggy hospice" for Mickie the two months that we had him before he died.  He was spoiled with love and affection, which he wouldn't have received had he not been adopted out to us. 

  

- Three days after putting Mickie down, John and I decided to go out to the shelters to "just look".  After going to two shelters and finding one potential, we found this guy: 

Yup.  He ended up coming home with us.

- His name is Otis and his is a pure bred Pug.  And I have to say he is wonderful! He is like a lab stuck in a small dogs body and makes us laugh everyday.  We are currently working on sitting and staying and getting better at it everyday.  He is amazing with all the girls who adore him ( along with the staff and therapists) so we have a good match!  We absolutely adore the guy, snores and all! :)

Elijah

This picture is of our reception in Provo.  The child that we are holding is probably one of our favorite kids. His name is Elijah.
We are lucky to have amazing friends who also happen to be our landlords, who also happen to live upstairs from us.  We live in a basement apartment below them  that they  re - finished right before we got married.  When we found out that it would be available when we did get married, we jumped on the opportunity to rent from them.  They are old friends of John's and are great people. So it was a no brainer really!
Elijah is the oldest of Jarom and Kaylee's and he just turned three in October.  His favorite past time has to be wandering downstairs to visit us. Since our apartment is the basement of their house, Elijah often comes down and knocks on the door wanting to come in.  Sometimes with Mom's knowing, sometimes without.  Kaylee had to install sliding bolt locks on our bedroom and living room doors to keep Elijah out, he loves us that much!  One morning at around 5:30, I hear his little knocking on the outside of our bedroom door.  When we didn't respond, he kept knocking , slowly getting louder and louder.  And when that didn't work, he let out a very forlorn " Jessica!" When we didn't respond still, he wandered upstairs to cause chaos in his own house.
We walk Elijah to church every Sunday weather permitting and then if it's yucky out, then he usually finds us to sit with us.  Today, we were tracing his hands when he looks at me, sits down on the paper and says "my bum! Trace my bum!" On another Sunday, we were drawing and he wanted me to draw Dora.  Now, I am not what one would call an artist by any stretch of the imagination. So I start drawing a smiley face, add some big hair and let him see it.  Elijah gives it one look and yells " AH! Scary Dora!" John and I had to do everything in our power to not laugh out loud. Although we were laughing as quietly as we could manage. Elijah never fails to make us smile.
Elijah has been great at inadvertently helping John be more accepting of things that children do that he is still learning to accept.  Like moving his alphabetized movies into a not so alphabetized mess.  Or moving his things to other places.  John is definitely learning some patience in that area! 

We love Elijah and love his visits! We are also super glad to live below the kid so that he can come visit whenever he wants! :)

Christmas Party Number One!

Last Friday we had the opportunity to go to our work Christmas party.  This was a first for both John and I and I must say, we had a lot of fun.  The night started with some mingling and some delicious buffet type food from Tucano's.  Tucano's is a Brazilian restaurant here in Utah that is known for it's meat.  At the actual restaurant you have a little bar that has a red side and a green side.  If you have the green side up, the waiter will stop by with a variety of different meats for you to pick from.  If the red side is up, that means you are done! Anyway, at the party we have beef, pork, chicken, salad, macaroni salad, fresh fruit, and lots of yummy desserts.
After we all finished eating, we had a white elephant gift exchange.  We all drew numbers, I got 20 and John got 37.  When it finally became my turn, I went for a bag, which was super heavy when I went to pick it up. And to top it all off, it had Karen's (one of my co-workers) name on it exclaiming that she needed to take it home with her.  I proceeded to open it and found the most hideous collie plaque that I have ever seen. Something similar to the adorable picture to the right.  Although it was much creepier, mis-proportioned and in living color. Something that I would rather NOT be waking up to every morning staring at me. ;) John opted to take two gold fish that one of the proctor families got.  And didn't want. I figured it was better than grabbing another frighteningly ugly dog statue so told him he should grab them.  They were very glad that we took them off their hands and due to a suggestion from our Boss named them Tupac and Biggie. Ha!
Update: Sadly, Tupac died two days after we got them.  Biggie may be to blame but we have no solid evidence.

Thanksgiving

As you are all well aware of, today is Thanksgiving.  I wanted to mention the biggest thing that I am grateful for this year.  As you may know, John and I both work at a group home for girls who have become wards of the state either through their own doing, or through the doing of their parents.  Many of these girls have been subjected to physical, sexual, emotional abuse along with neglect.  Some of them have parents who are (or were) addicted to various drugs that inhibited their abilities to care for their children.  Some of them even introduced their daughters to their drug of choice, causing addiction with their daughter.  All these, along with other reasons, are what you would typically think would put a child into state custody.  

I am extremely grateful for having been raised in a stable home, with stable parents.  I'm not saying that my family is the perfect family by any means, and many of my family members have fought and struggled with addiction for many years.  I'm proud to say, that I also have many family members who have overcome that addiction and have been clean and sober for many years, including my wonderful father.  I'm grateful that I was raised with lots of love and lots of care.  I'm grateful that my parents had a stable, healthy relationship (still do).  That I never had to witness physical violence between them that led to police being called.  I'm grateful that I was never abused by the hands of those that I loved and trusted the most. I'm grateful that I never had to resort to self medication in order manage my relationships. I am grateful for having a loving and supportive family.  I couldn't have asked for better Parents, Grand Parents, Aunts and Uncles.  Thank you all for everything you have done and continue to do for me! I love you all.

A little bit of courtesy...

This entry is a vent session for.  And since John is still at school, I haven't had the opportunity to say anything.. besides to myself.
Utah is a state full people who follow the LDS religion.  One of the major components of this religion is charity and kindness towards others.  There are days here that I feel that no one actually lives it.  Chances are they are LDS, but they are aren't living this basic ideology.  I will give you two examples from today that happened within a half an hour of each other.  I had dropped John off at school after helping him go pick up some paper to make prints on for his photography class.  I got on the interstate, heading south, and got off at my exit.  They are doing massive amounts of construction on the interstate right now so lanes are little mixed up and not clearly marked when getting off at the Provo Center Street exit.  I got into the lane which I thought was the right one, only to find out that it was the turning lane to get onto the interstate.  I put my blinker on to move over into the straight lane, only to have at least 10 cars zoom right past me.  Sure it was my mistake, however, had I been in the straight lane and someone else was signaling to move over I would have stopped and let them in.  Is it really that hard to show a little kindness?  The second I was backing out of my driveway and a car came around the corner while I was doing so.  Instead of stopping and letting me finishing backing out, this other car zooms around me.  Mind you, at this point I am pretty much in the middle of the road.  Zooming around me meant going into the oncoming traffic side of the road.  Would it have killed the person in the other car to wait 10 seconds for me to get my car into gear? No probably not. 
 I have such a hard time with the impatience and unkindness of the drivers here.  I rarely see anyone do something nice for anyone else when driving and an opportunity arises.  I'm not saying that Maine drivers are perfect either, but it seems that they are far more charitable and far more willing to do something nice for another driver. Utah needs to take a page out of their book!

It's about time!

A few months ago, John suggested that I should start a blog ( he probably has no recollection of this, but he did, I swear!) and considering everyone and their mother has one, I thought it would be a good idea. 
The latest news for us, being a week old, is that we got a dog! We had talked about it briefly a few weeks back, but I am not the type to jump into getting an animal without properly researching what the best would be for us.  One of the girls that we work with is HUGE into dogs and has innumerable dog books.  When we mentioned that we were thinking about getting one, she pulled them all out and then started talking dogs with us.  Since we live in an apartment, it only made sense to get a small dog.  However, this went against everything that both John and I stood for.  Small dogs bark to much, which is a huge turn off.  But after a little digging, we came up with a few breeds that were small and not yappy.  This group included Boston Terriers, Corgis, Italian Greyhounds and a few rarer breeds that you don't hear about a lot.  The next issue we ran into was that all of these dogs when full blooded are EXPENSIVE! I really took a liking to the Italian Greyhound, but since the lowest asking price that I could find for these guys started at $400, I was put off.  After all, we aren't made of money by any means! 
Fast forward a few weeks.  I was sitting at work and decided to check out pets on KSL.  I found a listing posted by one of the local shelters and thought that I would check it out a little further. They had all the dogs that were ready for adoption listed and to my surprise and excitement, they had an Italian Greyhound! I texted John to let him know and we decided that we would go give him a look when I got home from work.  It took us a while to actually find the shelter but once we did we found him quite easily.  The poor guy had a "cone of shame" around his neck to prevent him from licking a pretty bad wound he had on his side. john was apprehensive at first, but as soon as we took him out of the cage and into the observation room, he changed his mind pretty quickly.  I was ready to take him home, but a little worried about the price.  Come to find out, he came to the shelter neutered, microchipped and vaccinated already, dropping his cost down to $40!  This was an $800 dog and we were getting him for only $40.  How could I say no to that? Needless to say, he came home with us. 

We've had him for about a week and he is a wonderful pet.  He's four years old, but greyhounds live between 10 and 15 years so he still has a lot of life left in him. :)  He's barked twice, funny enough both times were at work.  I'm guessing he was just getting a bad vibe from one of the boys that I used to work with who said hi.  And then at a scarecrow also at work.  He spends his days wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, or snuggling with you.  We take  him out three times a day to do his business and then come back inside ASAP.  Since he is a greyhound, he has NO fat on his body and gets cold within five minutes of being outside.  He is super picky about where he walks too, he hates anything besides pavement and will purposefully walk around grass to get to sidewalk or pavement again.  He isn't a fan of leaves either, it's actually quite funny!  He is affectionate beyond reason and will follow John around like a shadow.  He isn't a fan of sleeping in his own bed, but that is one rule that we won't bend on! 
Both John and I are grateful that we could save a shelter dog and provide him with a better life than what he was experiencing in the shelter.  We are even more grateful that he is such a good dog! We both have become huge advocates of adopting shelter animals. So if you are looking for a pet, check out the shelter.