God Mother & Fairy God Mother

Sweetie is going to be one spoiled girl. We have decided instead of having a God Mother and a God Father to have 2 God Mothers. Or I should say a God Mother and a Fairy God Mother. 

I am a very fortunate girl to be blessed with many people in in my life that love us and are super supportive during good times and bad. In this world we are lucky if we can find one friend who truly gets you...I mean all of you. Not just the person that people see on the outside. These friends know the us at our worst. They are the ones that can tell you are having a crappy day within 2 seconds of talking to you on the phone. 

They are honest with you even when it is something you may not want to hear. In essence they are your sister, just not by birth. I have been blessed with not just one of these people, but two. In some ways my 2 best friends are  as completely opposite as you can get, but the one thing they both have in common is enormous hearts and the fact that we instantly clicked. As if they are my soul sisters and we were always meant to be in each others lives. They have been there to have fun with and go on vacation with. But more importantly, they have been there in the darkest of days. I can not even begin to imagine my life without them in it. They are as important to me as my husband, family and dogs. Sweetie is going to be so blessed to have these 2 amazing women in her life to have for support when she can't come to me because I am "Mom". That gives me such a sense of peace to know that Sweetie is going to have a family here in Charlotte to rely on. What more can a mom ask for from anyone? 

We are 2 weeks out from our trip to go down and bring Sweetie to Disney and then bring her up here. 

Her Fairy God Mother has been working in overdrive making plans to make this trip as magical as possible. With all kinds of surprises. Surely ones that will make me cry. This will be Sweetie's first trip to Disney. I can only imagine her excitement. 

I can not wait for her to come to Charlotte and meet her God Mother and the other important people in our lives. It is going to be an amazing week!!!

Next Visit Scheduled

I spoke with Sweetie's therapist today and he is very happy about our weekend with Sweetie. He got permission for us to be able to skip our next visit and go straight to having her visit us! YAY!!!!

So my dear friend Kim and her daughter are going to drive down with me Saturday, June 9th, pick up Sweetie and go to Disney!!! We are going to stay at the Port Orleans in one of the Princess Rooms...

We are going to go Saturday-Sunday and will drive back to North Carolina on Monday with Sweetie!!! 

She will stay with us until Saturday! I can't wait to tell her tomorrow when we have a midweek call! 

I am so excited and can not wait to bring her to Disney for the first time! 

We Meet Sweetie For The First Time

Wow, what a trip! We could not have asked for things to go any better! 

The drive down went smoothly, but boy did my nerves get to me. By the time we hit Jacksonville, I was ready to get sick (but I didn't) I kept thinking what if she runs the other way. I know crazy thinking, but the thought was there. We met up with Sweetie's adoption worker first and she gave me a huge binder with lots of documentation from birth records to school records. And also all of the records from social services on her case. After an hour there we proceeded down to Palm Coast where we checked into our hotel. I had booked a 2 room suite, in case Sweetie had decided she wanted to sleep over. Which had been discussed and approved before hand. The room was beautiful and had a nice little surprise of a Jacuzzi tub :) Which I never got to use, but Sweetie did!

6:30 came, it was time for Sweetie, her foster mom and her therapist to come meet us at the hotel. 

The therapist got there first and I met him in the lobby. While we were talking I could see her walking in front of the hotel for the door and I just cut the therapist off mid-sentence and said " Is that my daughter?"

Just then she walks in the front door and she sees me and runs up instantly and gives me the biggest hug! 

We were both so excited, I just picked her up in a bear hug!  The first thing she said to me is "Oh gosh, you are so cute". in this squeaky little voice. She might be 12, but her size is that of an eight or nine year old and her voice sounds even younger. We walked upstairs to our room hand in hand and then she met Cris.

The first thing she said to him was "Wow you are Buff" while grabbing his biceps. She then wanted to give me some presents, which included my mothers day poem, a pair of earrings, a reed diffuser and some pictures she drew for me. As well as some graded test she has recently taken.

From there we went to dinner with everyone, followed by going to the pool. She loves to be in the water as much as I do. After that Cris painted her nails and put heart decals on them. Sweetie decided to stay the night Friday night, so Cris took the fold out couch and we had a girls sleep over where we stayed up too late laughing and being silly. Saturday we got up and headed to Orlando where we went to Downtown Disney and Disney Quest. We did a little shopping. Cris liked talking with Sweetie about Oakley Sunglasses (that is what they are doing in the above picture). Then had dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe. I showed Sweetie how to use my SLR camera and she enjoyed taking pictures of all the animals in the dining area. 

She has a pretty good eye and gets the focus right and the pictures centered. Then it was time to go and I gave her a piggy back ride all the way to the car, which was quite far away. I joked how I was going to lose a ton of weight just trying to keep up with her and carry her. 

We went back to Palm Coast where we went swimming. Cris started teaching Sweetie some word in Spanish, it was real cute.Sweetie had said she wasn't going to go to sleep until 3 am. They poor thing was so tired she passed out before midnight. A good thing, because I never would have made it! 

This am we went to Panera and got some breakfast then took Sweetie home, where we were able to see her room and spend a little time with her. She must have given us 20 hugs and kisses each and telling us she loved us and wanted us to adopt her now. Then we had to drive away with her waving from the door.

When we were almost home I called to check on her and she was so sad. Her foster mom told me she was sad and I could also just hear it on her voice when she was on the phone. She said she was missing us already and she wants us to come next week. It just breaks my heart to hear her so sad.

Our original plan was to have to visit there one more time and then have her come here for a week and then move her by mid to end of July. I am going to see if we can skip the next visit down there and just bring her up here for a week.

I want to take a second to thank everyone who has been supporting us through this journey. The comments and the prayers we have received have been amazing. I feel so blessed to have so many people care enough about our journey to follow it on this blog and through my facebook. It is completely overwhelming to see all of the awesome comments and Likes on our pictures. Having you all along for the ride of this journey has meant more than you will ever know. Love you all :) Now, this girl is going to cuddle up with my pups and pass out myself! 

Mother's Day

Today was my first Mother's Day and sadly my daughter is still in Florida. But I did get to talk to her! 

Our call today was an hour and a half. She wished me a happy mother's day and read me a poem she wrote for me. I will get a copy of Friday when we go down to meet her. She was very excited to read the poem she wrote for me. It was very touching. I am not sure if I will frame it or put it in the scrapbook I am starting for this chapter if our life. I was talking to her about scrapbooking and she wants to do a scrapbook together. 

We talked about how she will miss her foster mom and a couple of her friends when she moves. I reassured her that we will help her keep in contact. 

Our plans for this coming weekend are Friday meet Sweetie's social worker at noon, meet the social worker in the afternoon. Then after school we will meet Sweetie with her foster mother for dinner. Saturday we are going to a water park with just her. This will be our first full day together!

This week can not go fast enough! 

Our Trip Is Booked To See Sweetie!

11 Days and we will finally be meeting Sweetie! With all of the twist and turns over the last 16 month it is almost hard to believe that we are finally getting to the point of meeting her. Yay! We booked our hotel room. 

We have a full schedule when we go down. Friday we will drive seven and a half hours to meet up with her social worker for lunch. Then we will meet up with her therapist and then meet her after school. 

The next day we are taking her to Wet N Wild with her foster mom and foster brother. 

That will be fun! Sunday we will just have breakfast and head home. I am sure it will go super fast and I will not want to leave her in Florida. There is a possibility that she may spend the night with us in our hotel room. We got a 1 bedroom suite, so if she does stay over there will be 2 sleeping areas.
We talked about having her come to visit after school gets out. For now I am aiming for the weekend of June 8th :) I can't wait for her to see her room and meet the dogs! That will be an awesome day!!!

Our call last night went well. Started kind of slow... typical kid stuff... like when I asked her what she did this week she answered by saying "nothing". I am actually glad to hear such a typical response from her. It was the first conversation where I didn't feel like she was trying to just please us. 

I had sent her a book about taking care of turtles this past week. During the call we talked a lot about different kinds of turtles and how to care for them. She made me laugh a few times during our turtle talk... at one point she mentioned how this one only needs a space of 15x15 feet... Once I explained that is larger than her room she laughed and said that maybe something smaller would be a good idea. 

She has been having some more challenging behavior with her foster mother. Nothing major, just starting to talk back a bit. I am thinking she is starting to push away as a form of protecting herself. Although this is a huge gain for our family, this is still another loss for Sweetie. It is so easy to forget in the middle of all of the excitement that this is a hard time for her, no matter how strong of a front she puts up. 

Just one more Sunday night conversation and we will go to see her.