We Have An Announcement: Part II

Happy Mother's Day! I wanted to post this announcement earlier, but had a really busy day. This year we held Mother's Day at our house and since Kyle was working, Matti-Jo (thanks for the help) and I have been really busy getting everything in order. Anyway, back to the announcement.  We've been waiting since February to share this, but wanted to wait until we were far enough along to say anything and we wanted to make sure we had shared with some of our family. 

 We are very excited to tell you that the Hewitt family will be expanding! We aren't having a baby of our own yet, but would soon like to think of this child as our own. Before we got married, we had discussed doing foster care and adoption, one day down the road after having kids of our own. A few months ago, there was a very eye opening situation that made us realize there is a need for not only for foster parents, but for children to be adopted around us. We knew this meant God was ready for us to open our home and hearts to someone else. We know this will not be easy, there will be ups and downs, laughter and tears, but we also know this will be one of the most rewarding  journeys we will ever take. We hope to eventually adopt one of the children that comes through our home, but we also know it may not be the first one we get. We just pray that wherever this journey takes us, the children that enter our home feel what it is like to  be  loved, to be safe, to have fun, and know the love of God. We hope that you will embark on this journey with us and enjoy these moments with us.  

There will be a large need for emotional support and prayers as we continue through this. The plan is to use this blog to keep everyone updated as much as possible. I guess I should also admit that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to "blogging", but with family here and in SC, what better way to keep everyone updated. We encourage you to use the comments section for any questions you have for us and words of encouragement.  When it comes to the foster care system, there are plenty of messed up foster parents out there, but there are also some awesome ones, so before drawing conclusions or making assumptions, please feel free to ask us any questions you may have. There are also a lot of rules, so there may be times we don't post stuff, or may post very little. 

To let you know where we are now in this journey: we have completed all of the PATH Classes, turned in our paperwork, and had our first "home study", sort of.  We now have to have another home study this coming Thursday we will have the more official one to see what we need to do with our house and then go from there. We don't know what age or gender we are getting yet and may not find out right away, it may be a random 2 am phone call for a child needing placement. We have to be open to take any age up to 18 years old, but we also fill out a sheet with our case worker stating what ages we are more capable of taking. The ages we "picked" and rated higher were the younger ages, like infant-toddler and school age.  We didn't ask for a baby/toddler because they are cute, we know we are better equipped and prepared for that age and felt that if any kid comes through our house they deserve 150% from us, not just us trying to tolerate them while in our home.  

I think that covers everything, like I said, please feel free to ask us questions. Oh, and lastly, back in April we met up with the fabulous Britney Carroll that photographed our wedding and had some pictures made. In one of our PATH classes we were told that our case worker would ask for pictures of us as a family to show a child before they met us, so they wouldn't be as nervous. I thought why not make them feel like we are actually waiting for them to join our family and to let others know what we are doing. At the end are a few of the photos from the shoot. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and we hope you decide to keep up with our journey as we go along.

Love,

Kyle & Shanoah