I didn't realize how long it has been since posting. Things have been BUSY to say the least, but busy in a very, very good way.
As my last post stated...we were going to get to see our girl the week of Thanksgiving for our first "supervised visit" with her. It basically consisted of us meeting at a park for a picnic and we ended up having more people there than we did at her full disclosure meeting. It was nice to have the opportunity to spend time getting to know our kiddo and also talking to some of the people who have been involved in her life. We figured we would have more supervised visits, but to our pleasant surprise, they allowed us to start having unsupervised visits beginning the first week of December! After a few of those, we got to have her come home for a weekend visit and then stay for an entire week over Christmas.
I have to break off from my talk of our visits to say how incredible Christmas was and how natural it has felt to have her home when she's been home. We made many new traditions as a family for the holidays, including but not limited to opening our Christmas gifts at exactly 12:01 Christmas morning (us "old folks" took a nap before this happened), and then went to breakfast at Denny's before passing out in a blissful, Christmas joy-filled sleep.
Our kiddo just seems to fit so well in our family. We've painted her room and allowed her to pick out her own stuff for her bedroom (furniture, decor, etc), because we want her to feel welcome in her own space. She has such a quick wit and we LOVE her humor. I don't know that we've laughed so hard for so long in years! We have truly been blessed and can hardly wait until she comes to live with us forever.
We are still waiting for her workers to let us know about placement, but we are hopeful that she will be coming home soon. For now, we have her every weekend, which means a lot of miles on/in the car (it's 4 hours one way to see her), but it's all TOTALLY worth it. Mama S and I both just adore her and it's so wonderful to be a family. I just hope that we can continue to be the family she hopes for and that we are able to meet her needs (not just the physical ones, but the emotional ones too).
That's all for now. I've got a load of her laundry to finish up (spoken like a true mom, haha) and stuff to do before I can go get her tomorrow. I am SO thankful that one of her workers has been willing to meet us half way for visits, so at least the trip isn't 8 hours. Even if it was, it would still be worth it!
