11 in a 12 passanger van.

This post has been a long time in the making and truly, I have somewhat been putting off writing it.  However, I do feel that now is probably a good time to give family and friends an update, on what we have been up to.  Some of you that read this may have heard bits and pieces, because it's not like we are trying to keep a secret or anything, so here is more info. for you.  I have to tell ya, before I get in to my story that part of the reason I have been putting off sharing it, is because of the somewhat negative response we have gotten, so I would ask you to try not to be negative as you read, I am pretty good at telling people my opinion but this is just an update, not a debate.........so I will try to keep my opinion to myself, if you do the same.

At the end of January, Jason and I heard a story of 2 little boys that needed an adoptive home.  We were parenting 7 children at the time, our 5, plus Jesse who we were getting close to being able to adopt and a foster baby that was about 4 months old.  The county was looking for a family for the boys, that had other kids, had experience parenting kids from traumatic/abusive backgrounds, had shown that they worked well with birth family and had some medical experience.  Uh...that's us and honestly pretty hard to find.  So, we prayed.  By March, our name was being tossed around at the county, there were 10+ home study's being read, but the team kept coming back to us.  We adopted Jesse and continued to pray, "God, your will be done...."  We were asked to consider being a foster adoptive placement for the boys and we said we would, we wanted to meet and spend sometime with the boys, hear their history and needs and oh yeah, we are only licensed to have 8 kids in our home, we already have 7.  7+2=9.  We began visiting with the boys towards the end of April, we were told our foster baby would probably be going home soon and our agency agreed to ask the state to approve an appeal for us to have 9 kids in our home.  We prayed "God if this is not of you, please shut doors..."  Our appeal to the state was approved.  Our foster baby, now almost 9 months, has not returned home.  We have rearranged furniture (and are busting at the seems).  We have continued to pray.  And our boys, Ethan age 5 and Aiden age 3 will be moving in with us in about 2 weeks.  Is this hard?, sure but God did not promise things would be easy here on earth, that's what heaven is for.  Are we crazy?, yeah we are but God requires a crazy kind of love. Is our house too small?, no, we all fit, even if it's tight.  Can we afford this?, we are making it work.  I am sure there are other questions and Jason and I would be happy to answer them for you, but mostly we just wanted to keep everyone update.  I will continue to try and post here as things progress.  Thanks for being supportive!  ~Richel