Oh, Ryan

Today Ryan came out of her room after bedtime saying she had been thinking a scary thought. She was crying and said Cameron had told her a really mean thing. I asked what. "He told me I am going to go in the garbage!" I busted up laughing but she did not think it was funny, she was worried she would die in the trash. We had a long talk about how she would be fine. I sidetracked her and got her talking about what she wanted for Christmas.
(BTW there is no way Cam thought of telling Ryan she was going in the garbage, I am sure she had a hand in him coming up with that idea)
Oh the things they think of to stay awake at night.
The other day I told Ryan to come away from the road because she was by herself, she yelled from the end of the driveway that she was fine, "It's ok mom, I know karate!" I asked her later where she learned karate and she told me she didn't know all of it, she just taught herself the kicking and punching stuff.

W is for when

Bev did not want to wait for Ryan to finish, ah well, at least I got to be there

J is for Jones

Ryan's Thanksgiving program at school. She did awesome! She worked really hard and memorized her lines, so proud!

Cam loves trains

Cameron will play this all day long. The boy is obsessed.
While we are at it, here is a little more about Cam.
He loves his daddy and gets so excited when he gets home from work. He says "wet's westle" (lets wrestle) and if he does not get his wrestle time, we have a rough night.
Cameron is always asking What dat? or where daddy (or who-ever) go? He loves fire trucks and ambulances (pronounced why-yuck an ambince). Every time we pass the fire station he asks me repeatedly where they went if they are not in the station. We have a trip to the station planned for next week, that will only make the questions worse, but thats ok.
He loves his Puggy (aka plug, aka pacifier). We have lost the one that does not have a hole in it and he still religiously hangs on to the two with big holes in them. One day we will get rid of them. Ryan started crying the other day when I was telling Cam that he would be saying goodbye to his puggy soon.
We are nowhere near potty training. He is simply not interested and I don't want to push it.
Cameron has lots of teeth, and loves to brush them. The downside is that when he is using his finger to shove every bit of food he can fit into his mouth, he accidentally bites his finger. This is a daily occurance. You would think he would learn.
Cam loves his sisters and is learning to be a tease. But they just think he is so cute, they can't stay mad at him.
I am madly in love with this sweet boy! I am so glad our father in Heaven let him come to our family!

Report card

I have been graded and apparently I am doing better than I thought!

Thank you Ryan, you made my week!

Bev Update

2 weeks ago Beverly came home with us and has turned our world upside down. She is so sweet and happy. She laughes like a little chipmunk when she is being silly. She always has a smile for us, even if she was screaming a few seconds before. She is a good little eater and always cleans her plate. her eating schedule is wake up have a huge breakfast (oatmeal, eggs, a banana and lactose free milk) then 2 hours later she NEEDS a snack, and then a couple hours later it is lunch time. After nap she NEEDS another snack and then by 5 pm she is just STARVING. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking. When I am in there she will wander in and hug the back of my legs as hard as she can. I squeeze her back with my legs and she just giggles and does it again.
Bev loves to play outside and pushes a little walker toy all over. She can only push it in a straight line, then will yell at me and point to the toy because she wants me to turn it around. She rides her bike down the hill on the driveway with the boys and thinks she is so cool.

Bev sleeps in her own bed all night. She loves to have daddy put her to bed. She waves goodbye to everyone and says na-na as she is on the way to bed.

We love Beverly! She really brightens everything up

Meet Beverly

Short version...................................

A girl walks into the hospital, says she can't care for her 1 year old, and the ER nurse there says, I'll take her. After 2 months and a lot of drama the baby is now living in the ER nurse's house and will hopefully be adopted in the next 6 months or so.

If you have a minute read the long version, it really is a great story and if you look real close you will see the Hand of God all over the place in this story.

So it all started with Kelly's near death experience. You can read that post if you don't know that story. A couple of weeks later I found out I was pregnant, and by "found out" I mean I got very nauseated. So we went to our first visit and the baby was not big enough to see yet and we scheduled an appointment for 2 weeks later. 2 pukey weeks later I went in and the baby had not changed in size and there was no heartbeat. That sucked. We scheduled the D&C the next day. I woke up from that no longer sick, but an emotional wreck. Kelly and Amber took good care of me and I got better. This does pertain to Beverly I swear.

I started to freak out about how many hospital bills we had, so I went back to work full force and worked 9 shifts in 10 days. I NEVER work that much. I rarely work nine shifts a month. Luckily, I was there on a night when an amazing 19 year old young woman brought her baby in. She said that she could not care for her child like she knew she should. She had no place to stay, and wanted to start her life over without a baby. I know a lot of you are saying "how could you leave your child?" but this girl was doing what she knew was best. She said that she had intended on giving the baby up for adoption when she was born, but her mom had talked her out of it. This sweet girl was so loving with her daughter, but kept saying that she had been thinking about it for a while and knew this was right.

Before I even saw the baby, I had this giant burning ball start in my chest, like when you know you should bear your testimony, but you are too nervous. We had to wait for the child services to get there and after about an hour I went to another nurse and said, "I really feel like that baby needs to come home with me." She was very supportive and so I called Kelly and told him the story. I love that man! He said sure, after the shortest of pauses and then asked if he needed to come right up. How awesome is he!

So, I went to the room and told the mom I would be more than happy to take her baby home. I told her all about my family and she thought it would be a great idea. The bad news is that Child Services (DCFS) had made it there and said I could not take the baby because I was not family. The girl was very firm that her family was awful, and that she did not want her child raised by them. DCFS said she needed to find help from her family and that she could not leave the baby at the hospital or she could be charged with abandonment. The poor girl was so scared she called her 33 year old mother (33-19=13!), the mom came and we worked out a plan that I would pick the baby up the next day. I texted the baby's mom a few times that night and finished my shift.

The next day I called the grandma and she said I could pick the baby up around 2. I asked for the address and she "couldn't remember" and would call me back. I did not hear back at all. BUMMER!

I texted both mom and grandma the next day and still never heard back. About 7 I got a text from grandma that said, thanks for your concern, but we have this taken care of. Well, BUMMER!

Fast forward to General Conference. Kelly and I were listening to elder Neil L. Anderson speak on how great kids were and I told Kelly I had really thought we were supposed to get Beverly (the baby). We started to talk about foster care but left it at that. Two days later I was out on a date with Jac on out way to see Wicked when I got a call from Kelly saying the hospital called with a message for me. I called the hospital and the secretary said some lady had called looking for me about an adoption. I WAS SHOCKED! I got the lady's number and called. She didn't answer so I left a message and waited for a call back. It came 10 minutes later and a friend who Beverly's mom was living with told me : Beverly's mom had taken Beverly to New Jersey because she was told by them she had to. She did not want Beverly there, and she wanted our family to have Beverly. The big problem was that the family would not give Beverly back to her mom.

I said that we would be more than happy to take her, but that we would have to talk the next day. Jac and I went to Wicked (it was wicked!) and then I came home and started with my first of many sleepless nights.

I called the next day and the friend told me that Beverly's mom did not have a phone, and she asked if I could head over to the house and talk to Bev's mom. So off I went.

We made a plan for the next day to file for temporary guardianship for Kelly and I ( we had to go to Atlanta and get birth certificates then head to Fayetteville to get the court papers filed.) We let the DCFS in New Jersey know what we were doing and she told us that would be fine we could come get Beverly whenever. Bev's mom and I headed for NJ on Friday and got in that night. The aunt (who had Beverly) told us that if we came to the house we should come with a gun.(Because she wasn't letting us take Bev.) So we stopped at the police department near the Aunt's house. (Bev's mom told me to be sure to park where we could see the car, so we could see if someone tried to break in. Great.) The police said that without a court order they would not help us, to come back when we had the order for guardianship. Their body language said, silly fools, get out and don't come back! We called the DCFS lady while we were there and she was shocked that we could get no help, but said that Beverly was not a NJ resident so she couldn't help us either. All the while Bev's mom was getting calls from her family telling her what a bad person she was, asking why she would do this, telling her she was selling her baby. We just turned off the phone, got her some dinner and I took her to the hotel while I slept at the Lorenzana's house. Our plan was to go back to the house the next day and just have Bev's mom say she would be keeping Bev, but she wanted her in Georgia. When I got to Lorenzana's, Erick was able to give me a blessing and I got some much needed rest. In the morning Bev's mom and I talked and we both felt like it was a horrible idea to go to the house for Bev. So, we headed back home dejected and sad.

In the 3 weeks that it took to get the temporary guardianship papers, I got very discouraged. Kelly and I did not think they would be enough. We thought Bev's mom had lost interest and we felt like we were just stuck. In that time Bev's mom found out she had never lost custody, the DCFS told her that she could go get Beverly at any time. We tried to file a "writ of habeus" which says "She has my stuff make her give it back." But you can't do it without a lawyer, and lawyers are expensive!

So I thought Bev's mom was done and one Thursday I went to pick her up to make her call all these lawyers and stuff to help solve our problems. When I picked her up, she had already called the police station to find out exactly what we needed. When we go to my house she did a bunch of research and called 25 lawyers in GA and NJ. By the end she had spoken to someone in family court, they told her she could come for Beverly whenever but just in case, we were supposed to bring the court order for the guardianship. He also said to go to him if we needed help when we got there.

She was so awesome, and she really did care what was going on!

So now we waited for the legal guardian court order to come through and made a plan to go get Beverly.

The second of November the order came in the mail and Kelly, Bev's mom and I left for NJ the next day.

The plan was that we would take the court order to the police department and have them come with us to get Beverly. When we got there we had to explain everything to the officer, he looked at our order and then dispatched someone to the house, we were supposed to meet him there. Wahoo!

When we got to the house where Beverly was supposed to be that day, it looked like Sesame Street gone ghetto. The apartment looked like Gordon's apartment, but really shabby and instead of Elmo on Big Bird outside it was a bunch of guys with nothing better to do than sit outside on the front steps smoking. Kelly and I were the only white people and in our bright blue shiny car parked in front of these guys, we kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. We waited about 15 minutes and then we got a call from an officer saying that the police could not help us, we would have to go to the sheriff.

Dang it! but ok, we went to the Sheriff's office. A very nice officer there listened to our story, took our paperwork and went and talked to his boss. We waited, then he came out and told us he would be happy to come if we had a NJ court order. CRAP. He told us to go to the court house and talk to a judge. We went to the court house floor 10 and gave a lady our papers and story. Then we waited an hour and a half. The lady came back and said we had to go to the eighth floor. So we went there and an intern there got our story again, took our papers and talked to a judge for us. We waited 20 minutes and she came back to tell us that she was sorry but the child was not under NJ jurisdiction and the judge said there was nothing he could do. She gave us the name of the bar association and legal aid. FREAKIN A!

We left totally dejected. We did not have money for a lawyer in NJ. We had done everything everyone had said and nothing was working! Bev's mom said she wanted to go to the babysitter's house to get Bev, and she would just take her. She said she would fight her way out if she had to.

We went back to "sesame street" and she went in, no one was home so we waited for someone to come home. ( we saw a drug deal and a prostitute walk off with a guy) As we waited we got a call from the DCFS worker. She was calling randomly to find out how Beverly was. We told her we couldn't get the aunt to give her up and the lady was shocked. She kept saying, "but she is yours." She could not figure out why no one would help us. The call ended with her telling us that this could possibly be considered kidnapping on the aunt's part, she said good luck and that was it.

At this point Bev's mom said she we should go to the aunt's house. She would just go get Beverly and if she needed back up she would call us to come in. We also planned that if the aunt hit her we would call 911. We pulled up to the house and Bev's mom went in and my phone rang. It was the DCFS lady telling me that she had called the aunt (without us asking) and told her she had no choice but to give Beverly to us. Bev's mom came back out while we were on the phone and said that the aunt said Bev was not going anywhere until the DCFS got there. I told the DCFS lady that and she yelled "I am not coming, I told her that! I am calling that lady. I can't give you advice on what to do legally, but I told you before that this could be considered kidnapping." I asked her to let the aunt know about the kidnapping part, she said she would and Bev's mom went back in. 15 minutes later she came back out with clothes and 30 minutes after that she came out with Beverly! She took a 45 minute tongue lashing about what a horrible person she was and was still kind enough to say thank you and leave with her head held high.

We raced to airport to make our flight. Beverly was happy to be back with her mom, but she also warmed right up to Kelly. That guy can charm any kid.

We told Bev's mom that she did not have to give us Beverly if she had changed her mind or that Bev could go home with her that night or Bev's mom could come home with us. She thought about it for a minute and said that She wanted us to meet her best friend and then to take her home. She wanted Beverly to come with us so that she could know that we were her mom and dad.

So we got home at 1130pm Thursday and started our new life with 4 kids.

Beverly is adjusting really well. She looks for Kelly or me when she gets scared or nervous. She thinks the girls are wonderful and she is learning that Cameron is not going to steal everything from her.