Mother’s Day is a week from today. For most of us it will not be a good day. For those who don’t have children yet, it’s a reminder of that fact. For those of us with difficult children, it can be an awful day.

This will be my tenth Mother’s Day as Sammy’s mother and my second as Hannah’s mother. I was fortunate enough to have two Mother’s Days with Kory and one with Mackenzie. I have wonderful memories of the first one with Kory. He was so excited to have a mom and worked very hard to make the day great. He and Sammy each had $10 to spend on a... more

As you know, Sunday is Easter. Sammy will not be home for Easter. With his new placement he has a restriction of at least 30 days before he is allowed to leave the grounds of where he is at. We may not even pick him up and go to lunch.

Instead we are traveling to visit him tomorrow after Hannah does an Easter egg hunt. His placement is over 90 minutes away, so it is not a quick or easy trip for a visit.

Sammy has spent a couple of holidays away from home, but they have not really been “major” holidays. There were a couple of Thanksgivings where he... more

This will be my last post until after Christmas, I have so many things going, so I am going to say Merry Christmas to all my readers. I also want to say I am blessed to have a family that I will be willingly spending Christmas with this year.

Not everyone is this blessed. As I was driving to have lunch with a friend today, I heard a song that I forgot about. It’s called “Christmas Carol” and it’s by Skip Ewing. He is a fairly little known country music artist, but his song... more

With less than a week to go to until Christmas, the days are more and more hectic. This will take a toll on you and your children, so how do you make it through with as few meltdowns as possible and your sanity intact?

Schedule down time – Because of strained relationships, to put it mildly, we do not do thing with my family. Over the years this has become an incredible blessing in our lives. Back when this relationship included us, all we did was run, and we never enjoyed the holidays. We went to my parents house Christmas Eve afternoon,... more

All of us have holiday traditions of some sort. Some are quite obvious, and others are very subtle. These traditions can help your foster or adopted child feel like part of your family.

While Hannah and I put up the Christmas decorations we talked about some of the traditions, and we talked about some others with my Mother-in-Law when she was here last weekend.

I’ll explain some of our traditions, and please feel free to tell us about yours.

Ornaments – Each year I buy a new Christmas ornament for each of my kids (yes, even Kory... more

If you are a pre-adoptive parent, you are dreaming of having a child in your home for the holidays. I know the dream; I had it too.

Moving a child is hard on the child no matter when the move happens, but moving at the holidays is twice as hard.

If at all possible, a child should not be moved at the holidays. Sometimes it must be done for the welfare of the child or the parents, but it’s usually a bad idea. I have written several blogs about how anniversaries... more

First of all, I want to wish my dear readers a very blessed holiday season. Whatever holiday you are celebrating, may it be filled with peace, good times, and hopefully no rages. I got the chance to spend some time with my friend, Elaine, and her wonderful family and experience some of the Hanukkah traditions. It was quite beautiful. It was also quite different being with a family of eleven, when we have a small family of three.

On the next note… I normally post 43 blogs a month on this site. That will be down this month. With the insanity of the holidays,... more

When you adopt a child from foster care, you have no idea what that child’s background might be.

The child may have been exposed to many different religions, cultures or traditions. The child may have a decided preference about one of these areas, and you being open to it can be a make it or break it point in your relationship.

Tonight I went to my friend, Elaine’s, house and celebrated Hanukkah with her family. Then we went to their temple and observed a cooking demonstration of some traditional Jewish foods, and we got to sample them. It was beautiful... more

Our family has three very important holidays coming up; Farkle Day, John Deere Day, and Fudgsicle Day.

You will not find these on a regular calendar anywhere, only on our family calendar. This is a tradition started about ten years ago.

I had a wonderful Aunt who had a less than wonderful life in so many different ways. When she was slightly older than me, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy and was cancer free for a while, but it came back. Even after another mastectomy, chemo, radiation and the rest of the wonderful treatments. The... more

Julie has been writing some wonderful blogs about the holidays, not having the “picture perfect” holiday, and changing expectations.

Her blogs got me to thinking about the past few years of holidays in our home. This will be the first year in four years that we have a child in the house for the holidays. That sounds a little strange since Sammy was adopted eight years ago, but this is the time of year that he blows. As I have ... more