When we were stationed in GA back in the late 80’s we went through the adoption process. All the classes, home visits, etc,… We were looking at a set of twins at the time. By the time we were approved as an adoptive family the twins were no longer available. Shortly after that I got orders to Alaska. That put an end to any possibility of adopting in GA. The process was completely different in AK so we didn’t start over. In GA they had a book, yes a book as this was before the Internet, anyway this book had pictures of the available children and a brief biography along with a statement from the child. There was this one young lady in there that pulled at our heart. To this day I can’t tell you what race she was or anything about her other than she was about 17 years old and getting close to leaving the Foster Care system. The one thing that I remember because it was burned into my heart and mind is what she said. “All I want is some place to go home to for Christmas” That one statement has almost haunted me over the years. From time to time I have checked the state adoption sights. Lisa and I have discussed adoption again several times but one or the other wasn’t sure we wanted to jump back in and start over.
That changed a little over a month ago. The misfortune of a little girl out of state and the possibility of a private adoption rekindled our desire to adopt. The little girl that gave life back to our desire for more children ended up in foster care before we could act. So, we have started going through the process of in state adoptions. Our first of 10 classes was last night. It went very well. We are looking for hard to place kids, older with multiple siblings. There is one set of siblings that we have really connected with even though all we have is website pictures and short videos. Lord willing everything will work out and we will be able to bring them into our home but we have several months to go before approval as adoptive parents. Anything can happen. They could very easily get adopted by someone else or there could be something that we don’t know about yet that would make us a poor match. Time will tell. The one thing I know is there are a lot of kids on the website that need a home and we will be able to help someone once we get through the process.
In the mean time we turned our open loft into a third bedroom and two small offices. Here are the pictures.
Original loft space.
Here is some of the construction.
And here is the finished space.
This is the first computer area at the top of the stairs between the bedrooms.
This is looking into the new bedroom.
The other side of the new room.
Looking down the walk to Lisa’s home office. More like a cubbyhole but she just wanted a desk, phone, internet connection and the window.
The remodel turned out pretty good I think. It may take a while for my sinuses to get over all the sheet rock dust but that’s a small price to pay. I can’t thank a good friend Toby enough for his help and guidance. We now have two extra bedrooms waiting for someone to fill them. Our oldest son and grandsons will use the space for a while while they get resettled as they move from Alaska.
If all goes as planned we will have some permanent additions to the family by summer if not sooner. If this all blows up and for any reason things don’t work out we have a nice spare guest room. Can you tell I’m trying not to get my hopes up?
On a less than positive note. I think I managed to kill all the tilapia in the aquaponics tank. When the remnants of hurricane Nate came through the GFI tripped killing the power to the pump. No water circulation equals no oxygen. I found 12 floaters this morning and I suspect there are more that didn’t make it. I know I saw one come to the surface and then swim back down. Didn’t look real healthy but it might make it. The worst part is I knew the power was off. When I did my morning rounds feeding all the critters I noticed the problem and corrected it with the intent of resetting the GFI when I made my way back to the house. Well….something obviously distracted me and the GFI didn’t cross my mind until I walked outside this morning. First thing I thought of was the aquaponics tank and I knew what I would find. I hate that sick feeling of knowing I could have prevented this loss. Then again that is why I keep two fishtanks running in the basement. Insurance. When I move the system I am planning to put in a battery backup and an air pump so that when I loose power the fish will still have that much to keep them going.
