Fundraiser #2

These amazing soaps are made by a friend of mine! They are completely natural and most are made with goats milk. Just place your order at http://hyenacart.com/countrysoapsbymarlene/ and enter the code "Prather Adoption" when you're checking out and she'll do the rest! Be sure to check out her gift giving ideas for some great Christmas gifts!

Fundraiser

Our first fundraiser has started! From now until December 5th order candles at www.CandlesAreLove.com and enter the code "2010" at checkout. I'll also be taking orders directly for the scents listed below. If you want to be sure that your order will be here by Christmas I recommend ordering online since I'll be gone the weeks immediately prior to Christmas. Thank you for considering supporting us!

Mia Bella Gourmet Products

We want to thank you for supporting the Prather Family and Their Adoption Journey!

Mia Bella Candles are proud to be made in the USA

Natural Gourmet Scented Candles - $20 each

Our 16 oz jar candles are clean burning with no black mess.

The scents are infused throughout entire candle and will not fade.

Choose from our top selling scents and enjoy in your home or to give as a gift.

Mia Bella Scent Description

1. Apple Cinnamon – ripe apples sprinkled with cinnamon
2. Baby Powder – “new baby” smell so pure and innocent.
3. Christmas Pine – the wonderful Christmas tree aroma of the holiday season
4. Crème Brulee – a rich sweet butterscotch fragrance
5. Cucumber Melon – fresh and cool smelling like a breath of fresh air
6. Eucalyptus – refreshing, invigorating but also calming and comforting
7. French Vanilla – a creamy confection with a strong vanilla scent
8. Fresh Linen – clean clothes fresh from the dryer describes this scent
9. Heart of the Ocean – fresh clean smell like an ocean breeze
10. Home For Christmas – hints of cinnamon and cloves to spice up your holiday season
11. Hot Apple Pie – so much like the real thing your family will think you’re baking
12. Lavender – aromatic, relaxing fragrance of crisp English lavender
13. Mulberry Spice – strong scent of spice and dark red mulberry fruit
14. Pumpkin Cheesecake – rich creamy blend of cheesecake and pumpkin
15. Rain – just like after a rainstorm
16. Sweet Orange & Chili Pepper – our most popular fragrance – a zingy, zesty orange-eee smell you will never forget. Perfect for any season
17. Victorian Rose – light perfume smell of roses

Fundraisers

We finished our homestudy!!! Now we just have to wait for them to finish the paperwork so we can be licensed. We found out that to be licensed as foster care we could only have 1 additional child. Since we went into this thinking a sibling group we were rather disappointed, so we decided to keep with our original plan and go with matched adoption. This means it may take longer to find our children, but once they come in the door we'll know that the are ours.

We are beginning to consider doing a little bit of fundraising for some of our expenses. One kind of fundraiser that I'm considering is asking business to donate items to us, then selling the items on my blog. My blog doesn't get much traffic so I would need my friends to help advertise on FB for me!

So for now I've emailed 3 friends that make things to sell and asked if they are interested in the idea. Does anyone know of some other people that may be interested?

Homestudy

We had our first meeting for our homestudy on Thursday. I think it went well, but you never know what other people think about you. The first meeting was an interview with both of us, then the next thing will be separate interviews. They will also talk to the kids.

We had them do a walk-through to give us some things to fix before we do the health inspection. Some of the things are things that should have been done anyway (lid on the dog food container) but some of the stuff if just silly (contact solution has to be locked up). In any case, we fixed some of the things this weekend and tomorrow we will try and get the health and fire inspections scheduled.

Now....who wants to help me clean????

Update

Not a whole lot to update, but I thought I would post something so you all know that I'm still here!

The paperwork part of the application is nearly done! It's close enough that the agency has decided to go ahead and assign us to a case manager and start our homestudy process. While I know that many people have their homestudy done in one day, our case manager told us that the first meeting will only consist of the interviews that Ryan and I will do together and we will do our separate ones on a different day. She also mentioned something about interviewing the kids, so I'm not really sure what to expect with that.

I have been watching like a hawk checking the public data base frequently. On one hand I am encouraged for the children because there used to be 3 pages that showed up in my search range but now there is only one. On that one page none of the sibling groups match what we are looking for (everyone younger than Tyler). I have to keep reminding myself that most adoption matches are not done through this website but through our case manager. Most children never make it to the website.

So that's about it! Homestudy soon, then fire and health inspections! Anyone want to come help me clean?

Legal Risk

I realized that I used the term "Legal Risk" in my last post but didn't give a definition. So here it is to the best of my understanding.

When a child is removed from a home the state of Texas gives the parents and extended family 18 months to clean up their act and do what is needed to get their children back. Some cities move faster than 18 months. Some probably move slower. But here the judge has to make the decision in 18 months. During that time the children are in foster care. Many people in foster care are hoping to adopt the children in their homes but you really have no idea what the chances of that will be. People that go this route are considered Foster-to-Adopt.

The other end of that spectrum is matched adoption. These are children whose parents have had their parental rights terminated. When Texas terminates parental rights it terminates on the whole family. This means that after termination Aunt Mary from Missouri can't come back and claim a niece or nephew. So these children are living in a foster home who don't intend to adopt them. A family will find out about these children and start taking the steps to adopting them. After they are placed in your home they stay there for about 6 months until you go to court and they are 100% yours. (read: the state quits coming into your house every month!)

The middle ground is called "Legal Risk". Technically there is no license for legal risk. It's just in the mind of your caseworker. An example of legal risk would be an abandoned infant. If a parent abandons their infant then they have 3 months to come back and claim them. During that time the baby is in a home that is licensed for foster care. If the mother does not reclaim her child then parental rights are terminated on and the child can be adopted. In the time that our city has had the "Baby Moses" law in effect only one child has been reclaimed. Another example would be if our caseworker knew of some children who had been in foster care for 12 months and the parents were not trying to get their children back. It looks pretty good that there will be termination in 6 months but they can't guarantee that. Another good example would be if a mother had had more than one termination in the past with previous children and now she has another baby in foster care. The chances are pretty good that she won't get this baby back either.

So there you have it. Clear as mud, right?

Next Step

We finished the PRIDE class and have submitted all of the paperwork. The next thing we will be waiting for is the referral forms to come back, the background checks from Colorado and Maryland to come back, and the appointments next week to get the TB tests done. In the meantime we might fill our time with some chicken pox. You never know...

After all of the above things have cleared then we'll have the homestudy, fire & health inspections, and the FBI fingerprinting and then we'll be licensed! As of right now we have decided to go ahead and do the dual licensing for foster care and adoption. While we plan on doing a matched adoption we found out that there are times that a legal risk may make sense. We have to be licensed for foster care in order to do a legal risk adoption.

Try as I might, I can't seem to stay off of the TARE website! I was a little sad today when I discovered that a sibling group that I had been planning to ask about is no longer listed. They were there last week, but they are gone now. I am sad for me, but I am happy that this means that they have a forever family :-)

In other news we found out that we can't post pictures of the kids until they are 100% legally ours. I was completely disappointed about that since I would have wanted to put pictures up here as soon as I found out who the kids are! But if you know me personally then I can email the pictures to you. I just can't post them here or on FB. Politics....