In the Swing of Things!

This past Friday my husband and I went to meet with the gentleman that will be making Alana's Marker for her grave.  It is going to be beautiful.  My husband will be designing an etching of Alana's face to be placed in the center of the marker. He is an artist and wanted to do something special for her.  There will also be an angel on the corner of the marker.  Her full name, dates and the words, "God Precious Gift", will be engraved on the marker.  The color of the granite has a beautiful pink hue to it, which was Alana's favorite color.  The marker will be placed on her grave in the spring.

In the next few months I will be going back to foster care.  My husband and I have been filling out the paperwork necessary to renewing our Foster and Adoption license.  For me, I need to get back to doing what I love to do, and that is taking care of children in need.  I will start off by doing what is called the hotline.  We can get a call at anytime of the day for a child in need.  They will stay in our house for 24 - 48 hours, then the child will be placed in a long-term foster home.  I am not quite ready to day long-term care as of yet, but the desire to help is great.

What I would love to do is to have an infant from Haiti.  It has been on my mind everyday since the earthquake.  There are so many infants and children in need in that country.  I would love to help somehow in someway.  A friend of mine has taken in interest in going to the country for 2 weeks of voluntary work and asked if I would like to do that.  Who knows, I would definitely have to pray about it.

I am pretty much back in the swing of things.  Teaching has been going quite well.   I am in a co-op home school group.  I teach my 7 year old and another little boy that is 7.  The boys are doing well.  My four year old is in pre-school home school group.  She has been doing wonderful.  She absolutely loves school.

The extra time that I have had is starting to fill up, which I like.  My mornings are filled with teaching.  The afternoons are filled with picking up my daughter from high school, Antonio's piano lessons, basketball practice and homework.  I now have Aubree in gymnastics, so that is another afternoon activity.  By the way, she is a natural.  She was completely at home on the gymnastics floor.  Aubree was fearless!!  Aubree said to me a couple of days ago, "Mommy, please may I go somewhere?"  My reply to her was, "What do you mean, go somewhere?"  Her response, "I want to go to that place where I can jump and do flips."  That told me how much she enjoyed going to gymnastics.

I am going to end this post with a special little poem that my uncle's girlfriend wrote.  She sent it to our family in a card.  It reads:

It seems there's very little
Anyone can say or do
To ease the loss of Alana
Who meant so much to you.

But I know you're finding comfort
In the sorrow that you bear,
Just knowing she's at peace with Jesus
And that you'll see her again over there.....

GOD IS GOOD!!!