Hello world!

Welcome to my blog! Let me start by telling you about myself. I am married to my high school sweetheart of almost 19 years! We have 5 children; 3 biological and 2 adopted. They range in age from 4 (almost 5) to 17. We live in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas in the house my husband grew up in. We do our best to juggle our full-time jobs while raising our children. In 2020, we adopted our two littles and to say it’s been a roller coaster of messiness would be an understatement! There is never a dull moment around these parts of the woods. Sit back and enjoy the ride! Hopefully, I can offer some quality entertainment and maybe some encouragement to anyone out there in the world navigating life after adoption.

All about me: I love Jesus. I love my husband. I love my kids. I love to create…build things…fix things…etc. I love the outdoors; there’s just something about nature that makes me feel so good. Seeing God’s expansive masterpiece is nothing short of amazing and I’m in awe. I love looking at the night sky and almost wreck my car regularly when driving at night…Just kidding, but in all seriousness, the infinite darkness scattered with bright glimmers of light is just mesmerizing and I can’t help myself. I love my weenie dog like he’s one of my children. COFFEE…I couldn’t do life without coffee!!!

My husband is probably one of the hardest working people I know. He kills himself to make sure we don’t go without. He is an amazing father to our children (even my weenie) and I honestly couldn’t do life without him beside me. He loves him some football…those Razorbacks keep him pretty stressed out; not just football, but also Basketball and Baseball. I really think he could be one of those sports announcers or maybe even a coach…I mean, he always seems to know exactly what the coach should have done in order to win the game. lol.

Adoption isn’t something we ever talked about, thought about, or even dreamed about; It just kind of happened. I found a long lost family member in 2019 and shortly after, I found out she had all of these kids in the foster system. Five of them to be exact. So we reached out to DHS and began the process of getting them out of foster care and placed with family. The two youngest were placed with my family. Two little girls were placed with my mom and the older brother was placed with my uncle. We, of course, had to under-go all of the adoption/parenting classes in order to be eligible for placement. My husband and I sat through these classes with the smuggest of looks on our face because we thought we were professional parents. We had raised 3 super awesome, well-behaved, well-rounded kids and we knew exactly how to handle any situation. <enter face-palm emoji here> If I could go back and slap myself really hard, I would. We had no idea what we were signing up for. We had no idea how to raise kids who had experienced and lived through trauma. Who knew that living inside of a womb of an unfit mother could do so much damage? The amount of neglect and abuse these kids lived through in their short little lives is sickening, to say the least. Reading through their history of going in and out of DHS care and the details of all they went through literally make me sick to my stomach. The damage done in such a short time blows my mind.

We plummeted into this journey without a second thought, determined to save these kiddos. It’s been hard. It’s been messy. It’s been life altering….but there are those moments when those sweet little arms wrap around your neck and that innocent little voice says “I love you”, and in those moments…that’s when you know it’s worth all the hard, all the messy, all the life altering…it’s worth it. Romans 8:28 says: “and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” I know God placed these children in our lives for a purpose. I know He has a plan and He is the author of our story. No matter how hard, no matter how ugly, no matter how hopeless it feels, He is right here with us.

I hope you stick around for a glimpse of our crazy life we’ve built together. I promise to make you laugh, probably roll your eyes, and maybe even cry. See you soon.