Update!

So clearly I suck at blogging these days, but here's an update on how life is going.

It's been a bit crazy at our house as usual. The kids are non-stop balls of energy especially since Sahara is "cruising" around the house and almost ready to walk. She's also starting to show a little seperation anxiety when I block her out of the kitchen while I'm cleaning or cooking. Ariyana is talking better, but crying is still her go-to method of communicating especially when she's tired. Noah and Colby are partners in crime now more than ever, but at least we got them to understand that they can't go raid the refridgerator whenever the whim hits :-) I'm pretty sad that in a couple of months everyone will start transitioning back to their birth-mom. I feel pretty attached to them and don't want any harm to come to them (not that it would, but they'll be leaving my safe home for the unknown). I got a little teary-eyed the other day just thinking about it. But maybe God does know best - I'm to lose the kids I've been caring for and have become attached to, but I'll be getting my own bundle of joy to care for :-) The last month or so of foster care has been stressful for us. It seems like all of our hard work has largely been ignored by a few key players and we're just being criticized for stupid stuff (which I won't blog about because it would be rude). Brandon and I have discussed taking a break from foster care for a while after this...it's been a bit much, but definately a learning experience.

I'm starting to feel pretty tired due to my pregnancy and I'm also starting to feel my nesting instict kick in. I want things to be clean and organized but I don't have the energy sometimes. Brandon has been a big help lately with the cleaning aspect of our lives, but sometimes it feels like a never-ending battle with the kids running around and being mini tornados. And yes I do make them clean up their stuff, but it still seems like dishes pile up, clothes pile up and I never seem to make a dent in any of the mess I make because I'm busy making sure they don't destroy the house.

Last weekend was a really awesome weekend. We sent Colby to spend the weekend with Brandon's parents, the Rose kids were sent to respite for the weekend and Brandon and I went to stay the weekend at Hotel Roanoke to go to a marriage conference called A Weekend to Remember. We had some pretty decent speakers talk about marriage and Brandon and I got to spend a lot of quality time together that we've been missing out on. We got a small collection of books to read including a couples devotion book while we were there. We got to go out on a date to a local Mexican restaurant - we had pineapple fajitas! Yum! On Sunday I was sad to see the weekend end, but as it turns out, it snowed and I got an extended weekend when school was closed on Monday!

Snow days are good, but you know what isn't good? Everyone being sick! We all have colds. I've taken Noah to the doctor already and tomorrow I will take Sahara. Try explaining to a four year old that they can't go play in the snow because they are sick - logic is not really going to work unfortunately. But hopefully this time next week everyone will be healthy again. At least I've crossed my fingers and prayed really hard that, that would be the case!

Good Saturday

Today has been a pretty blissful Saturay right up until nap-time. Nobody woke up until 8 a.m., which doesn't usually happen. Usually everyone is up at like 6 or 6:30, 7 at the latest. Everyone played well together for the most part between episodes of X-men. The boys are addicted to X-men these days and ask to watch it constantly. This is fine with me because I get to clean or read while they are watching. Today I worked really hard on the kitchen. It's still not perfect, but it's much better than it was. Maybe this evening I'll take a stab at the living room.

Nap-time was another story. Since everyone slept in, the boys didn't want to take a nap. I threatened, I had them sleep on the living room floor and eventually they did take a nap. They HAD to nap today so that I could take a shower since Brandon worked so late last night that he just stayed in Roanoke. That's me with the kidos for at least 36 hours by myself. If I didn't take a shower during that time...well, I don't want to contemplate that. However, I am pretty excited that Monday I'm off, but daycare isn't closed and my awesome mother-in-law wants to keep the boys with her on Monday and take them to Chucky Cheese's! Fun times!

Mixed Feelings

I knew this day would come, but I didn't really want it to - our social workers are talking about sending our foster kids back to their mom. Being a foster parent has been frustrating and tiring at times, but we've developed a real bond with these kids and we love them like our own kids. It's been a real delight to see Sahara thrive and learn to crawl, to see Ariyana learn new words and discover running, to see Noah learn his colors and develop manners. It's going to be difficult to see them go, espcially when I'm not completely sure that it's the right decision to send them back. I don't know - maybe I'm trying to exert control over an out of my control situation by thinking that they'd be better with us. I just need to trust that the right thing will happen for everyone involved. I need to remind myself that even if they don't get to stay with us, we've taught them some valuable skills and given Sahara a decent start in life. At any rate, I don't know why I'm so worked up about it now...it will be months before Noah goes back and even more months before the girls go back. I think I'm just mourning ahead of time and I probably just need to snap out of it.

Melson Family Heritage

I went to go visit my parents last weekend. It was nice because I'm not sure if we've been to visit since the summer. Of course I've seen my parents here and there because they care enough about us to come visit occasionally. But I really enjoyed getting to see my grandparents. I don't know if many of my readers know this, but I am highly interested in my family's heritage and love to know where my family came from. I had traced a part of the family (not the Melson's) back to Germany and had been unable to get past the early 1800's with my family. Well, while I was home visiting, my grandfather showed me the work he'd been doing using Ancestry.com and a lot of their census information. He had worked the family back all the way to England to the mid-1500's! It turns out that the Melson's came to the "colonies" back in the late 1600's practically on the heels of Jamestown. It's really neat to see how things worked and how I came into being all these generations later. I hope one day I'll get everything together in one location and maybe even make a book to contain it all.

Christmas Update

So Christmas came and went and now it's New Year's Eve. Let me tell you that Christmas with four kids is pure craziness especailly when there are so many presents. When I set out presents on Christmas Eve, each child had a large pile - and that was just from Montgomery County DSS, us and Santa. I looked around while the house was blissfully quiet and felt sort of overwhelmed by the amount of presents. So when the kids woke up in the morning they were very excited by what Santa had brought. They proceeded to play with toys, rip the paper off of their packages to see exactly what they got. There were lots of toys and clothes and such. Colby got his firetrucks, Noah got his Cinderella doll (more on that some other time), and Ariyana got a TON of dolls (one of which I found disturbing enough to ban).

After breakfast we did round two. Brandon got the presents out of the truck that my parents had brought at my graduation. We Skyped my parents and let the kids open the presents while everyone in Hampton watched. That was fun! When we were done with that round of opening presents, the house was a hot mess. There was wrapping paper, tissue paper and toy packaging everywhere. I wish I'd taken a picture of the huge pile of trash that made it out to the curb on trash day...it was ridiculous. Of course Brandon didn't help much because he decided to throw wrapping paper snowballs at everyone, which then encouraged the boys to throw snowballs too. They had fun though! The rest of the morning was spent playing with toys, opening toys and generally having some fun.

After lunch and nap we went to Brandon's parents' house. We ate dinner and opened presents until very late. We had to leave the presents there to pick up the next day because there was so much! I washed all the kids' new clothes over the next couple days - a load and a half of just new clothes! I love new clothes myself and everyone has great taste in clothes so that was exciting! Now the dilemma is finding a place to put all these great clothes.

I decide that Sahara did not need all the presents that DSS sent over, so I put four of them in her closet to give to her for her birthday. I guess I just thought ten new toys for a eight month old was a little overkill. All in all, it was a great Christmas. We may need to make a trip to goodwill with some older toys or store some up in the attic, so there may be some more work involved, but I wouldn't trade everyone's happy faces.

Oh and I enjoyed playing my wii :-)

Work Yet Done

I'm off from work for two weeks. So far it's been really good. I've taken the Rose kids to daycare for most of the days and I've gotten to hang out with Colby. I think he's really enjoyed that and I know I really have. I would like to say that with most of the kids at daycare for most of the week, that I got a lot done, but that would be false. I've just felt so tired. I bought supplies to make red pepper jelly several days ago, but finally got around to doing it today. I've needed to put away a TON of laundry and I started today. I still need to wrap some presents, but I think it can wait until tomorrow. I mean why do it today if I can do it tomorrow right? :-)

A while ago I bought some movies off of Amazon with the intention of giving them to the kids for Christmas, but when I discovered the sheer quantity of gifts that Montgomery County DSS brought over for the kids I also discovered that the movies were nice but unnecessary gifts. So we're watching them over the next couple of days - Toy Story 2 today, Finding Nemo tomorrow and Cars 2 on Christmas.

Update

Whew...I've been quite terrible about blogging lately, but I guess I have a pretty good excuse :-) So, the the land of the Gill's things have had their ups and downs lately. Truth be told my marriage with Brandon has never been tested as much as it has been lately. The last six months have been rewarding but we've had to grow in patience, love, and we've had to learn how to talk about differences of opinion in thoughtful and productive ways (which I'm still working on because I always cry when there is confrontation). All in all things are going well. Sometimes we wonder what the heck we were thinking by taking in three children, but we're too stubborn to give up. Plus we love those kids :-)

This week is Christmas vacation. Since the school is closed Colby is hanging out with us at home while the kids go to daycare. I had some plans that involved going to see a movie with Colby and Noah, but then I got the crud that's been going around so I had to scrap that plan. Instead Colby watched a bajillion episodes of X-men while I slept. Ariyana got an unplanned haircut the other day (Noah found a pair of baby safety scissors and decided to play hairdresser), but other than that she's doing well. Sahara has been on verge of crawling for several weeks and today she moved over that edge. Because she started crawling, I moved the coffee table so she wouldn't hit her head on it. Plus the boys like the open space, though I think it makes them much more rowdy.

Well, that's all for now. Laundry is calling. I'll try to post again tomorrow, but no promises :-)