Foster Care Update

I was hoping to already have started doing foster care by now, but buying a house that needed some renovations set us back a few months on our schedule. Where are we in the process right now? Not very far. We've switched agencies and sent in our new application. The first agency we picked out did not work with children under 5 very often. The new agency we are going through said they definitely have a need for foster parents for young children. We're just waiting for our application to be approved and then we'll continue the rest of our meetings and training. It's looking like we won't be able to make it to this next round of training's in November due to a conflict with one of Justin's classes. The next training's aren't until after the new year sometime. So we still have quite a bit of time left. When we started thinking about foster care we were planning on just taking 1 foster child. However, after quite a bit of thought we are now hoping for sibling groups of 2. There is a greater need for homes to accept siblings. We are hoping for one sibling in elementary school and one under 5. The agency we are going through does do emergency foster care so we may get short term placements of just a few days or weeks or we may have the same children with us for more than a year.

We've made it pretty close to our budgeted goal of getting everything needed for a child (or two) birth-5, though we still have a few things to get. We hadn't planned on taking older children so we had not budgeted for a twin bed. That will definitely put us over even though we found a great deal for a new mattress.

Some of my favorite budget friendly finds include: quality clothing for 13 cents a piece, free changing table/dresser, free baby monitor courtesy of grandma Cindy, water table for 50 cents.

This weekend we also got a good deal on a little play house ($25), though it is tied for 4th place as one of the most expensive things we've bought so far. It was worth it! I can't wait to put a kiddie pool at the end and make a water slide!