It's coming along

I have not posted in almost 4 months.  Wow.  Things are coming along slowly but surely to be foster parents.  We have finally purchased all the items we need for foster parenting and completed the "kids room" (oh, we do still have to move our things out of the closet, but other than that we're good).  We had a date night going to Ikea this week.  It was a long drive.  I am definitely not ready to go on a long road trip because the 2 hours to Ikea and 2 hours back felt like torture to me.  But I am pretty proud of ourselves for making it out of there spending less than $100.  And I finally have a dresser that fits my things in it!  The dresser I was using was technically a kids dresser and it was always bursting full.  Now the kids dresser is in the kids room.

On another note I am no longer employed.  I really think this is something that needed to happen.  My job was stressing me out so much.  It also wore me down quite a bit.  I had no energy for anything after work.  We both feel strongly that I need to be at home more for when the foster kids come.  I do have another job lined up though, I can start after my background check clears. (This will be 3 different background checks in a period of about 4 months!)  I don't want to go into details yet because I haven't started, but I think it will be perfect.  I can work full or part time.  I am very excited for all our new adventures!  We have both had so much fun planning and decorating the "kid's room" here are some pictures:

We have to have all the beds and the crib all set up for the home study even though only 2 kids can stay in the room at once.  You can also see my old dresser in the middle photo there.  The boxes of toys and things look messy in front of the bookshelf there but we have a place for them, they're just not in their spot yet.  It was a bit of a challenge trying to create a gender neutral room which is why we went with green.  I wasn't sure about that at first because the color scheme in the bathroom is green, but it worked out after all.  I spoke with our licensor and we won't be able to have our home study for at least another two weeks because they are so busy, but we are going to take our new "kid's room" on a test run tomorrow night!  My cousin's kids are coming for an overnighter.  Every time they have come over that room has always been a mess of boxes, so I am curious to see their reaction.  We did show them these pictures so they may not be too impressed, but we'll see!  This is such an exciting time!  I hope that within the first half of May we can get some foster kids!