Our journey to foster parenting has reached the next step. Along with the many hours of training classes, we had to gather what felt like a thousand documents, medical records, financial information, shot records (for the dog and the kids), references, insurance documentation and more. I am thankful that I have the history of working with foster care kids and agencies because I really didn’t feel put out by all of this. We had to jump through many other hoops (have a fire extinguisher handy, lock up the medications, etc.). If you are interested in what all we had to do, ask me and I’ll be glad to tell you!

On July 7, 2016 we received an official letter stating that we have been approved as a foster home for the State of Tennessee. I texted my closest people and shared the good news with them. I was thinking that we could get a call at any time. Then, I got a text from our foster parent support worker (social workers are texting these days). He said that we’re NOW fully approved and he wanted to stop by and chat, show me some things on the DCS website and he was giving our names to placement TODAY. That was yesterday. Right before my friend and I were heading out of town for a retreat with some monks (more on that later).

So NOW we are fully approved and even though our parameters are very small (single baby 0-3 years old) and we probably won’t get a call soon, we are ready and we are available!