"Nesting"

It's been two months since our first foster children left us. The break has been extremely beneficial and rejuvenating, and I am eager to meet our new ones! During this break I've been trying to get things back on track--spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Now that I am feeling a lot better, as opposed to being completely exhausted from caring for needy children and ignoring my own needs, I have begun to work on our house...

It certainly won't be featured in the latest home magazine, but with our love seat and recliner against the wall we have so much more space for the (soon-to-be-here) children to play! Letting them play in the living room makes supervision so much easier.

My computer must be in the living room, too, because I work on Sunday School material and other church related stuff, so if it was back in our bedroom I couldn't supervise the children while I worked. Someday we would love to have a huge living area/family room that would give the children more space to play, but for now rearranging and smaller furniture helps.

craft and Lego table

Besides organizing the toys again (relabeling the bins), I took our kids clothing inventory and put it into a much more accessible chest of drawers rather than the bin they were in. Now I can see exactly what we have and wouldn't really even have to look at the inventory sheet when we get children who arrive with only the clothes on their back.

I love the idea of freezer cooking--cooking much more than we're going to eat in a day and freezing the rest or preparing foods ahead of time. Some people go as far as only cooking once a month. I did that once and it was wonderful! Now, I just make a huge pot of soup and put the rest in the freezer, and now that we bought an upright freezer I have so much more room to store meals!

Today, my mom came over and helped me switch the "baby" or younger child's furniture to the room closer to our bedroom. So, we took the oldest of our three twin mattresses and box spring to a thrift store since we don't plan to take three children any time soon. We will have to buy a crib if we get a baby since they don't allow ones with drop-down sides anymore. We have a pack n play that we can use temporarily, though.