Pumpkin patch

I can hardly believe that I get to be Mommy to these fabulous people!!!

(photo from our trip to the pumpkin patch where we snagged 230lbs of pumpkin.)

xxoo

October 13th

Without waxing poetic and in an attempt to explain the title, something occurred to me that I just had not thought about in...Well in a long time. I made it threw yesterday without the great sadness that is usually there and spent the evening in the ER to find out if my shin is broken or just still badly bruised.



Sat waiting, while listening to The Shack on my I-Pod and reading my bible study book, When Wallflowers Dance, so I can make sure I am prepared to lead the small group later today. The study book is pretty good but does not really match where I find myself in life right now.



I am already dancing.



The thing I remembered though, threw answering the study questions...the thing I can hardly believe I filed away and forgot...?



The one and only time I heard an audible voice that I know was God.



Right after Gil died I found myself living alone for the first time in my whole life and it was HARD, really.



Death sounded like a good rest. It was then, during that grief, when God spoke to my heart and said:

"I love you child, you have always been mine."

There in the darkness of a bedroom I shared with a man who could not ever really love me, the real me, I felt peace. The line of encouragement and is tangible proof that He answers the cry of our hearts, not always like we think He should. But He answers.

like a salt

With fragile sheets of wind the giggles envelope me like a favorite sweater, ready to wear again. Even the smell of salt reminds me that these days will be over sooner than any of us want them to be; childhood dances by so quickly. It will not always be so easy for you and I to convince them to dance, to kids songs, in the family room, with us.

Sad.

For now though, they are each happy moving along with the crazy hand motions and the wiggly shuffling about. Singing songs about Jesus being a Soccer Star make them belly laugh.

Listening reminds me of years ago, when it was just us, and how my love for you filled the room with starlight. Who knew that tiny beings could fill the night so fully? When ours eyes meet, the electricity there is real; tangible proof that indeed, prayers are answered. (And I mentally wrestle the guilt that others have lost, so that we may gain...duplicity is mine.)

Love; however, fills our home.

The outfits...see earlier post for more details

Ok...so not the most flattering pose (for me) but this is the whole posse and there is just one empty seat for the ride to the courthouse. Normally our vehicle is stuffed to the brim when we all go somewhere.

Here we are swearing we will love him no matter what, as if they needed to ask.

The newest little Brown in a large Brown Family. Alexis hated that we were going to all "match" but since she got to pick out all the outfits she felt better about it.

This was our Judge and the same Judge we had for other kids too, she smiled so big and said: "Now I know which family this, I am so happy to see this adoption finally getting done."

Charley J. Brown and Charley J. Brown II

Each child adopted in our county gets a Teddy Bear just like this one, our house is now full of them. (Bears and children.)

We have been so very blessed and I have felt the fingerprints of God all over my life. We have a whole lot of kids for a couple who can not have kids, don't ya think?


XXOO





*these photos do not show one of our children because that one is one of the protected ones that I do not really talk about. But the others, the ones in the pictures? Those are our Kids.

Party time

We are in the midst of sudden party planning...not that we did not know it would be coming, just that we did not know it would come so quickly.

I can not tell you yet how excited we are.

How very happy indeed.

And on Friday I WILL post pictures and stories.

Old love

candlelight dances amused across
the ceiling and shears, taunting me

it's glow shattering the silkiness of our room

sweet spice lingers heavy, like our breath
and my thighs laced with sticky sweat

silence

pure silence fills us. easily threatening
to make you laugh or me snort

comfort means knowing where the edges

lies

knowing when to

stop

but even years later, sometimes

it is fun to forget to stop
and to wake up the baby.

Freedom

Awhile back I posted a profile picture of a child in my blog a talked about how much I missed that child..at the time I thought that I broke no major confidentially laws anything since the picture was much less revealing than picture that are posted by State agencies of children in foster care... I also know that I am not the only blogger who blogs about being a foster parent or about adopting kids...goggle it.

Here is a few I found:
Foster Care
The journey to my child
Lauren Christianson
Adoption by Grace
Foster care Log !this one is written by a grown man who was himself a foster child.~~~
Lisa's Website ~~another site by a former foster child, now a grown woman
Janet


Even being involved in Royal Family Kid's Camp has taught me that pictures of children and even their full names are scared things that are to be protected with the fierceness of a lioness protecting her cubs. (The above picture is an example of a picture we CAN publish on our RFKC website of a child from camp, one that protects the child's identity but still shows a child being a child at camp. It shows more of the face than the picture I posted which showed only the underside of a chin.) When we are at camp we create memory books for our campers and we go to great lengths to ensure that no campers receives pictures of others campers but yet still appears to have been at camp with lots of other kids. That means there are profile shots and scrap booking things going on with the pictures to make sure you can not really tell who a person is UNLESS you are completely intimate with them.

Back to the picture thing, it caused me to loose the ability to write and I almost lost my blog in full because someone complained about the picture to my agency. (That is what I have meant by the blog police.) Anyway, threw process of elimination, I pretty much know who it was and now, because my adoptions are done, I am now free to write again. YEAH!!!!

That means I can blog again without constant fear of my words being used against me, even though I have not ever truly done anything wrong. Pettiness is a bitter root and I have been working hard at not being petty about this whole situation but I have been oh so bitter.

Bitter that some of my best writing and stories have been left unshared. Bitter that I have lost touch with my online friends and lost an outlet that I have cherished over the last four years of my life; a public blog. Bitter that another person's actions can in fact impact my freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I have always tried very hard to honor and respect any family member that I write about because I want to be able to look them in the eye and never, ever be ashamed of myself. Whenever I share things in my blog I am very sensitive about the nature of my life, the nature of my illness and the overall public life I live in a VERY small town. It is, in fact the main reason I have more than one site tracking system on my blog...so that I can tell who is looking. So that I can be wary of people who may be out there, lurking, seeking what they may use against me.


I digress, a little.

So I will write again with more regularity and less fearfulness. I will still not write about the children that are not mine is a way that would ever reveal their true gender, age or name but I can hardly hide the fact that I am a parent or even that I am a foster/ adoptive parent. I was told that for a short while I should not even mention the fact that I am a parent...all because I mentioned that I loved and missed a child that had been in my care and posted a picture of a baby chin and tummy. I use to talk often of Alexis, my teenage daughter who is not a foster child, but had to stop even that because my agency was not sure if how I parented her would be used against me. An example? One day she missed the school bus and I joked that I was going to make her walk, seems that state workers may not find that funny. Or blog police. First of all she has chosen to walk from school on her own several times before and second of all I was joking. I DID pick her up from school that day and every other day she chooses to miss the bus. (Do not bother looking for the entry because they told me to delete it.)


Over the last few days though I have been able to share my joy and show pictures of my life, without putting my children at risk or revealing confidential information that I would not ever share in such a public forum. I looked in the mirror today and Stupid was not on my forehead.

I love my kids, the ones we have adopted, the ones we will not adopt and the ones we are keeping until they can be reunited with their families of origin. It is those children I end up missing the most and grieving for the most...the ones that are returned home. When you consider that my husband and I are long term, adoptive foster parents that means we get the "lost cause" cases that the state feels there is little hope for. The kids who have been asked to have new placements found for...we adopted the first three "placements" we got and they had been in multiple homes in a short time before getting to us.

Here is the God part of the story: He had His hand in it all and led us to the right agency for He had the right children for us. When we were READY neither He or they were READY so he had to sabotage it the only it could happen.

Life is good, if you let it be.

All children deserve to be cherished and loved without having to earn the love. Thankfully we have had our greatest dream fulfilled despite all the things the enemy threw at us.

A happy New year to you...this one trumped watching Hanana Montana all night only because this year I knew that there would not be a kindly social worker showing up and moving the kids to a new home. And they knew it too so they were completely relaxed and fully at home.

xxoo

2007 Rewind

Yesterday (Sunday for those wondering) our church did a sermon titled Rewind, which is a tradition of sorts. What is is loosely based on is a review of the year for our community, our church and a small selection of individuals from our church who have had the unmistakable fingerprints of God in their lives.

Our church started hosting ShareFest in our small three city community in 2005, so that is always a highlight and this year The United Way listed it as an asset in our area. In 2005 our church also started Royal Family Kids Camp for Foster Kids between the ages of 7 to 11 years old, which introduced my husband and I to the whole concept of foster children for the first time as a couple.

Yesterday our church highlighted two individual stories from 2007 to rewind and our story, out of a church body of 1500 was one of the the two stories told. Our little family of seven told its' story from the alter in a three minute seq way at the 9 am and 11 am services.


Here is the long version:

Those who have "known" me for more than awhile realize that multiple sclerosis is not my only obstacle in life, I have been blessed with others, like a brain tumor in 1997 and infertility issues which makes typical adoption process not likely. Nowadays, when couples want to adopt a child they have to do a little marketing blitz that sells themselves to to a young pregnant girl like a product and says; see what a lovely, stable home we will provide. This marketing campaign does not usually highlight a brain tumor, a chronic illness and other less attractive things like being "older." Young and pregnant chicks can be somewhat shallow and often pick the young, healthy, wealthy doctors and lawyers to parent their unwanted babies.

When we heard about this camp God tugged at our hearts individually to go...GO! So we both did go to camp, as counselors and discovered God's plan for our lives. He knew it all along and was just waiting for us to catch up. Not only were we to become foster parents (WE thought that we were just going to foster little kids, like ages zero to five years old) but we were to open our homes up to kids from ages zero to seventeen years old. My husband's 2005 Valentines day gift to me had been the paperwork to foster with the state....and our original plan had been to find BABIES to adopt. Can I get an AMEN?

Man, God has a sense of humor.

After camp we both knew we had to listen to the small still voice in our separate hearts saying we could parent older children, that we both had love to offer any child. So we set about doing it and quickly as possible having never been involved in government offices before. Innocently, we told the truth on the seemingly five hundred pages of paperwork they have you fill out, to make sure you are fit to parent the kids that have been removed from the most horrible of circumstances one can imagine. Even talented and creative writers fail to imagine the stuff of the lives of the children, trust me, I have heard stories from kids at camp that made me physically ill.

One question, on the forms is, have you ever been sexually abused?

And I told the truth on the form, which brought us so close to children, but then those children were denied by the state. The great state was not sure that I had been healed of the evil that had been done to TO ME and after teasing me with a glimpse of kids I might have and filling my dreams with their giggles in the room across the house, the state yanked away the dream. We were close enough to see pictures of the children we so wanted; but yet, those children were not the ones hand picked for us by God.

November 2005 entries reveal such pain and yet such hope in my blog.

My heart still remembers the pain of that storm and the warmth of those tears shed may always linger on my cheeks as a reminder that IF those little tow headed boys had come into our home we would not have had the full blessings that we know today. When the storm rages around us it is so easy to forget what a sunny day feels like...and to trust that the sun is still out there, somewhere.

In November 2005 the children my husband and I now have were not even in the foster care system and God knew that...now, some people may just chalk it up to mere circumstance.

Not me. Not my husband. Not our house.

For I know the plans I have for you, declare the Lord, plans not for disaster and for a hope and a future. Jer 29:11

It took us until March 2006 to become licensed Foster Parents, though a faith based organization, that actually recognizes the healing power of counseling and the Great Counselor. One that allows both of us to mention the name of our Lord, fancy that.

I am not a Polly-Anna type of woman but I am a glass is half full kind of gal. And my glass has God's finger prints all over it, the kind of prints that are etched into the glass from frequent use...

We became a long term, foster adopt home, which means we wanted placements that were potentially going to be available to adopt. On November 30, 2007 we were able to preserve our testimony for three children but we were awaiting our notorious fingerprints from the good old FBI because oh my gosh, they were rejected twice this time too. (I hinted but no one guessed..)

And the reason we were on our church alter telling our story, picked out of hundreds of GREAT stories? The only other story is one that trumps our because a woman in our church is getting a kidney from another woman to save her life and they are not realtives.

TODAY, December 31, 2007 the Commissioner of the State of Washington signed off on our adoption of three of our children!!!!!!!!!

Our first three children placed in our home, not by the state but by God's hands to be sure, became forever ours.

Did you know that when you adopt children that you get a birth certificate saying that they were born to you?

We did not...until November.

Meet Our children and now also know that the great dark ban of my words is done, at least on these children. I will write now more like I use to, more like I want too....And I know at least two out of town grandparents who will be happy. They use to come here to read about their grandkids.

Zachary, David and Tamara

May God hold you and yours in the palm of His hand in 2008 and know that you are loved for God gave.

Now that I am truly a mom I know that He gave more than I am capable of giving.

And He would have gave for only YOU.

Happy New Year!


(PS: the sermon link actually has us talking in it...at the end which is why I included it...you get to hear both my husband & I talk. If you ever wondered what I sound like.....)

The wind

our boat is in the waves
full cream sails are just beginning
to bloom with wind

the thrusting is delightful, powerful
deep fears are not realized

while salt and seagulls perch, at the ready
and water whips at seven taunt backs

praying with diligence that ne'er do wells
and swelling pride do not capsize us
the newly formed and painted bow

declares our sailboat freshly christened

The Browns

Fantastic news

We will be having another party soon....for the same reason that we had on November 30th!!!

(This time just one though.)

When we do it, we really do it.

Yippee skippee...


One of these days I will get to tell ya what I am alluding to too.

xxooxxooxxoo

Novembers Artsy Essay

My well loved friend Judi Heartsong host an Artsy Essay contest each month with themes and this month's theme goes well with the holiday of Thanksgiving:

Sharing the Gift of Thanks

If you could thank one person (someone you know or someone you have never met, living or dead) for one extraordinary thing that has mattered tremendously in your life, who would it be and what would you thank them for?

It would simply be impossible for me to not do an essay on this topic, impossible. Irresponsible. So I will do it against my better judgment and I will time the posting for the exact time that it shall make the deadline of the contest and posting that shan't interfere with tomorrow (November 30th)...and try to be creative enough to not break any boundaries either. Perhaps it won't be my best piece of writing but it will be my heart. Blog police be damned!


That said, here is my entry:


What does it mean to be thankful? To have a heart overflowing with gratitude that can not be contained with the flimsy walls of the soul? One must begin with a solid definition of thanks first:

thankful

One entry found.

thankful

Main Entry:

thank·ful

Pronunciation:

\ˈthaŋk-fəl\

Function:

adjective

Date:

before 12th century

1 : conscious of benefit received -for what we are about to receive make us truly thankful
2 : expressive of thanks -thankful service
3 : well pleased : glad was thankful that it didn't rain

— thank·ful·ness noun

Webster is good at breaking it down to the basic elements of the heart, to the starkness of it all.

For what we are about to receive makes us truly thankful.

We are well pleased.

We are expressive of thanks.

Man we are glad.


To be thankful then is to be happy in the core of one's very soul, to be filled up beyond filling.


If I could thank one person for something who would it be and why would I thank them?

Ah.

I am not only the glass the half full kind of woman but also a gee-aren't-ya-glad-they-didn't-get-out-the-Ritz-kinda-gal so when it comes to this November, and the dates that I normally mark in the fall, I can not begin to even fathom the swelling in my heart. The 25th of November marked ten years that my brain tumor has not reoccurred, that I have been granted life by my God. I celebrated by teaching Sunday School to first graders where I listened to a six year old girl tell me that God sings her to sleep at night, actually He sings her different songs each night so that she can get to know Him better. Honestly, I am the only one who remembered that the 25th was such a remarkable date and it was okay.

But I am not most thankful to that talented suregon, although he is a good man, there is another person to whom I am indebted. A woman.

Someone that I do not know and yet I know stories of and have seen pictures of, have probably heard the lilt of her voice though her children's laughter.

I have felt the graciousness of her unselfishness and will forever have the privilege of sharing something she loved more than herself. In October 2003 I almost died but instead of dying I became unable to have children of my own.

My husband and I know her story, we know bits and pieces of her pain and I am forever thankful that she is giving us pieces of her soul to raise for her today, officially.

mailed

They hit the mail on Monday....

those who received one know....

those who read the private blog know too...

those who REALLY want to know who to find can e-mail me...

What a shame that I can not tell you here...

I am living a watercolored life in a brilliantly colored oil painting.

My life has the fingerprints of God all over it but I can only tell you that God has been here at my house today, for fear that the small minded blog police may tattle-tell.

The sad part is that it is like eating a banana split and telling someone who has never tasted ice cream what that is like.


But oh my GOSH I can not WAIT UNTIL FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I will cry, I will dance in the streets, I will party with my babies.

I will catch bubbles and run circles to feel the earth spin.

I will laugh too loud.

And one day I will tell you why FRIDAY is the very best day of Charley & I's life to date.

Long time reader's may even be able to guess and may be wise enough to piece together the story...the people I have addresses for got invites to the much waited for, much prayed for, much life altering event!

I am dancing on the stars and the cow is jumping the moon.

I tell you a mother of five (opps did I say that?) with MS really can dance. ~~~Yeah, I still have that old MS too. ~~~~ I even run people.

(The astute are counting on their fingers and going when did she get five again?)

Pretty fast too, the running that is.

Fast enough to chase after a loose German Shepard if I have to.

Anyways we are having a HUGE party Friday and Saturday.....but I can not tell you why.

My first amendment rights and all will be reclaimed since that day I was told I can not talk about that super secret thing I do, but one day, one day I will be able to. One day I will no longer be living under the RULE of the blog police and will be free to be a regular mother, a regular writer of my old blog and I can tell my story like I use to.

In color.

with breathing words.....and love.

and humor. and more clarity...less alluding...

and sometimes saddness...but always with what I had hoped was dignity.

xxoo

mistakes

The other day I was traipsing into my favorite box store (Wally World) to purchase a few of the things a family of seven needs.

And we NEED a whole lot of things, let me just put that out there right now. I digress.

So you know the place, they usually have elderly greeters at the door to Google over your kids and to tell you have fun spending your moola. Not this morning, this fine morning there was a thirty-ish man of Hispanic distant manning the door. He smiled at me and the newest addition to our home, who was appropriately decked out all in baby blue from head to toe. This nice youngish man then proceeded to inquire just how old my granddaughter was.



I considered slapping him.


Then I remember that I am nice woman and simply smiled sweetly and said:

"My SON is two months old."





The nerve of some people.

Does the above face really look like a grandma?



And if it does bite your proverbial tongue and keep it to your damn self.

Mother's Day

Thank you God
for entrusting with me
with fragile little ones
raising up adults that
who will take over this
world and hopefully
not write on the walls





Happy Mother's Day!!

2007

what shall I dance on?
the edge of reason?

tip toeing on sneaky feet
children steal my heart
like butter it slips from
my wounded chest

singing to me about
bumble bees and twinle stars
constantly asking
"Mommy, what is that noisy?"

And Christmas leads to
New Years with a subtle
flavor of joy washing over

the Legos and Lincoln Logs
scattered in my soul

and on the floor

Friday, August 20, 2004
my celebration.....
Tomorrow is Alexis' birthday....and I am awaiting this mirror by Nadine!!



Last week Charley mentioned that tomorrow we have two reason to celebrate August 21st and I immediately and uncharacteristically burst into tears. Crying is not something I do well or often so it surprised us both. See tomorrow is not only Alexis' birthday but it is also the anniversary of my emergency total hysterectomy. For a moment I thought he was celebrating my inability to bear children and my sudden sense of loss was completely overwhelming. I did the hipup-sob-sniffle thingy and got an instant headache.

Imagine my comfort at discovering that THAT hadn't even crossed his mind; what he was joyous for was that one year ago tomorrow he did not become a widow at the age of 30. That he did not loose the love of his life and that God gave me back to him.

Wow, I felt like a smuck. He felt like a smuck for not saying it better the first time. We both felt lucky to have found true love.

And I also quit smoking one year ago today because I was too sick the day before the surgery to even get out of bed to puke much less smoke.

Yeah for life!

Yeah for love!

Just plain yeah!





{The mirror got here but I haven't seen it yet....we are keeping it wrapped for her}



ckays1967 at 7:02:00 AM PDT Link to this entry

This entry has 5 comments: (Add your own)
Happy birthday Alexis.

kathy
Comment from onestrangecat - 8/21/04 2:19 PM



Happy birthday Alexis........
~jerseygirl
Comment from cneinhorn - 8/21/04 6:21 AM



HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEXIS! HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR PERSONALIZED GIFT! I LOVED MAKING SOMETHING SO "FUNKY!" ;o) ENJOY YOUR DAY! (and the mirror!)

Nadine

http://hometown.aol.com/fyrecracker1/MyCreations.html
Comment from fyrecracker1 - 8/20/04 10:28 PM



Happy Birthday, Alexis!
See you at the Ball, Chris.
V
Comment from deabvt - 8/20/04 2:29 PM



Beautiful mirror and Happy Birthday Alexis! : )
Comment from readmereadyou - 8/20/04 2:22 PM