Tiny's Birthday

The boys are napping and my husband just left w/ our daughters. They are going to the Health Food Center, and to pick up raw milk from our Dairy Farmer in Blanchard.  In this family, daddy does the grocery shopping and momma catches up on editing while he's gone!  This, by the way, is one of the main reasons he's a Superman to momma. This momma ABHORS grocery shopping!!!  I actually had a panic attack once because I was so overwhelmed with all the groceries, smells & people. Dead serious. I called my mom in the midst of my freak out mode. She said the same thing has happened to her before and so MY DAD does her shopping.
Creative people are weird ya'll. Just weird.

Today has been a very special day in our family. Our "Tiny's" First Birthday is today.  Matt's parents and his brother and his family joined in the celebration. Kimber, just so happens to be one of my dearest friends and we haven't had time to hang out in months, so it was just a blessing in that respect too! Also we rarely get to see Matt's parents out of church so it was a blessing to see them loving on our crew. Family is a blessing. Too often, we take them for granted.

Where was I? Oh yes, Tiny's First Birthday!!!
I am forever going to be indebted to all of our foster and adopted children's biological moms. They chose to give them life. They could have chosen the other alternative and most of America would've been okay w/that too. Tiny's mom chose life. And she chose to give up her rights and requested we become his forever family. And because of that, baby boy #2 is now a part of our family. And because of that, she has been on my mind all day today.  What does a biological mom do on each of her children's birthdays? I know she remembers his birthday. I know she remembers the pangs of her womb as she labored for hours to give him life. I know she remembers. And I hurt for her, because rather than she being the one celebrating with him today, it's the Morrows.

Foster Care and Adoption is a web of beauty and pain, loss and redemption. We're only 3 years into it...my boys haven't started asking the hard questions yet. But when they do, I hope and pray that I can lovingly help them honor their birth parents for the fact that they chose to give them life. Our Sunshine Girl has been through a lot. She rarely mentions her family. But today she has. Because birthdays are meant to be celebrated with family. This is hard ya'll. This new "us" is so confusing at times, even to me and I'm an adult. We just ask that you please pray for us as we navigate the beautiful messiness of adoption.

Tiny's Mom, if you have somehow stumbled upon this blog. Please know that Tiny and I (we were the first ones up!) prayed out loud for you and we thanked Jesus for you this morning. Thank you for giving him the gift of life. You are a super woman to us! And we asked Jesus to draw you close to Him so He could give you such an awesome future, that you can't even imagine right now.  Your son is beautiful and joyful. He took his first steps about 2 weeks ago. He's walking now. He loves to play with Josiah and daddy the most. He loves food. Not picky at all. And he enjoys hearing his own voice. He met his full brother about a month ago. They look EXACTLY alike. I promise to keep him in contact with all his siblings. Thank you for the gift of G.E.H. Love, Mary

Sunshine Girl's Paper on Nomads and Foster Care

Sunshine Girl has been studying Nomads and was assigned a paper. She couldn't think of how to write it so she did a little twist on it and compared it to Foster Care.  She's given me permission to post this. She would love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks!

Living like a Nomad

When I was a foster child I was like a Nomad. I always traveled alone like some Nomads did.  I've always traveled from place to place like Nomads did too. The word nomad means “one who wanders for pasture”. For me wandering for pasture means wandering for a home.

It was never fun moving all the time. It was always like “been there done that” all the time. Nomads look for the perfect place for their herd. Like me I've always have been looking for the perfect place for myself.  

For me and the world it's been like a journey and I think I can speak for Nomads also. Even though when I was in foster care and I was always looking for a place, I never gave up. But a lot of times I felt like giving up. I don't really know if Nomads ever gave up or even felt like giving up but I believe that they did not give up on finding a place. 

Because they always look for that one place for their herd. And that one place to call home. I don't know if you ever felt like this but when you're moving it doesn't just stop, it keeps going on and on. And it always seems like forever is never going to quit. 

Some morning's I would wake up and dream that I was at the place where I always dreamed of in my head, then I would go out of the room and it was a natural disaster. I wander if that's how Nomads ever felt? I've never had some one to say “I love you” to me at night and in the morning or even during the day. And I bet you $10,000 that the Nomads that traveled alone, like me, didn’t have anyone to do that to them also.

In school I always felt like a loner. Never getting any attention, never getting that one teacher to help me properly. I bet the nomads felt like loner's too. Now that I see how much Nomads are like me I guess you can call us “God's special one's”.

I can't believe it but I actually found that one place for me though. I'm sure that at least some Nomads got to find that one place for their herds. If not I just wish that they could have. It would have been wonderful.

It was wonderful for me to find out that I have a family interested in me. And that they wanted me to be part of their family. In conclusion, Nomads and foster care children will always have at least one thing in common with each other - not having a home to settle down in, or anything.

You will never been alone because God always has a plan for you. 

Wordless Wednesday | Personal

A Morrow Update | Life

It took me a few days to write this little post because life is busy and needs are many. I'd love for you to take a break and sit down with me. Go ahead. I give you permission to grab a coffee or a tea and sit down with me!  *pats seat next to self*  There's much to catch up on and we don't have much time before the kids start hollering that they're hungry!

Life has been surprisingly calm the last few weeks. It has been such a blessing. 

We started school 4 weeks ago, the first week was a shell shock to me, the mother hen and teacher of this coop!  I knew school would take more time, but I hadn't anticipated the length of time nor the mental exhaustion I would be hit with every day.  The second week was a little smoother, by the third week, I realized that this was just the new season I was in. School is going to take longer. Period. I can either choose to be frustrated that I have even less free time than I did before, or I can embrace the fact that school just takes longer and deal w/ it rather than being a whiney mommy!

We planted a garden this Summer. It was a late garden because we were waiting to borrow a tiller from my in-laws.  The squash was doing terrific until squash bugs came and ate one of the plants completely before I even realized what was going on! I was able to salvage the other plant but it didn't produce much more squash.  I don't even know what happened to the kale, but it died w/out any critters attacking it.  We were able to harvest 2 kales out of the batch. The watermelon plant was doing phenomenal and we were able to harvest 3 sweet watermelons until the dumb squash bugs attacked it as well... and then the 2 baby watermelons that sprung up out of nowhere were gleefully picked by Josiah before they poor things had a chance to grow bigger than a golf ball! Our tomato plants have been the biggest blessing. They are going haywire even though some bugs tried attacking them!  We also have 6 corn plants that have survived all the chaos, but I think they still have another month of growing before they are ready to be picked.  All in all, it's been an exhaustingly great experience for us. Next year our plan is to double the garden size and to have a separate strawberry patch because our strawberries didn't do well in the garden w/ all the bugs and other stuff competing for nutrition.  Can I just say that having a garden is hard work, but it wasn't as hard as I had anticipated. Josiah helped me w/ the watering and we gave up pulling weeds about one month into gardening. LOL!!!  A special thank you to Rhonda's friend who texted me gardening tips just about every other day when a new bug would start feasting on our crops!

Can I share a secret with you?  Come close. Are you ready for this? *takes a deep breath as she prepares to share a dream with you*  I would really like land...then I can have an entire acre of garden goods to share w/ friends and then I can learn to "can"!  :)  And we found out this Summer through asking on FB that 3 of my girls are highly allergic to something they put in the water to make it safe for consumption...so really, we need Well Water in order for them to be rid of this allergy.  And chickens would be sooo wonderful!  We go through 4-5 dozen grassfed chicken eggs every single week. Having our own chickens would save us a pretty penny!  And a few cows, those would be nice. Grassfed beef for Josiah's grain intolerance is super expensive.  So yeah, we need to live in the country and we need land. :) *happy sigh, thank you for letting me dream with you!*

I can't remember if I shared with ya'll, but this late Spring we had the wonderful opportunity of speaking at New Life Church in Blanchard about Foster Care. There were about 15 people there. This church chose to adopt our family for 6 months. They have been such a source of encouragement to our family in more ways than I can even explain.  Foster Care has been such a life changing experience for our family. It has also been a pretty lonely one. As we have chosen to put these kids before our own needs and poured ourselves into them in order to bring healing to their lives, we have fallen out of touch w/ our local community of friends and pretty much our previous life.  Being adopted by this small body of believers was the Lord's way of whispering to us "I see you. You matter. You are changing lives. You are NOT alone." They may be a small church, but they made a HUGE impact on our family and our kids' lives. We believe that one of the reasons many foster homes shut down so quickly after they open is due to a lack of support. New Life Church in Blanchard has been that support for us the last 5 months and we are so thankful to them. They walked alongside us as we dealt w/ some pretty tough stuff with one of our kids. Thank you New Life!

If your church would like to hear us speak, you can get in contact with us by emailing my husband, Matt, at togodalonetheglory at yahoo dot com.  He's the speaker. I'm the child wrangler :).  

Last week we received some fabulous news... Tiny's adoption is getting VERY close!  We have our Disclosure in 2 days and then the Court Date is set for September 22nd.  Sunshine girl's adoption is going to try to be finalized the first week of November.  The Lord has been good to us!

Thanks for sitting awhile with me. If you have any questions about foster care or adoption feel free to email me, my address is tomorrows_memories at sbcglobal dot net.