Happy Halloween

We have been busy the past few days with fall activities. Wednesday Griffen had a Halloween party at his preschool. We all brought food to share and had a lunch in between the morning and afternoon classes. The kids all got to wear their costumes and there was a lot of yummy food to eat. Griffen once again chose to be Batman this year. He loves this costume and since it is a big one, who knows, he may be Batman for the next few years. Unfortunately, Thursday I had a training to go to so Griffen missed his field trip to the pumpkin patch.

Batman ready for battle

However, today Austin's class had a fieldtrip today and Griffen got to tag along. Usually, I am the one who goes on the fieldtrips with the boys but today Dean went. He found out that our friend Dan was going so he scheduled his day so that he was able to go too. As Conne and I did our grocery shopping together today, the boys enjoyed a "lovely" rainy day at the farm. I knew that some of the first words I would hear about the fieldtrip would be "You owe me one" and guess what...I was right. They were soaked when they finally got home.

Austin's class at Stoney Ridge

Waiting in the rain.

Then tonight was our church's annual Harvest Party. It is a fun night filled with all kinds of games and candy. The theme this year was Narnia so we got to walk through the wardrobe and into a winter land. The boys had a lot of fun and left with pails of candy.

The Land of Narnia

Griffen knocking down "The Walls of Jericho"

Superman and his bucket of candy.


The most creative costume of the night...Jake as himself.

Twenty Years Ago Today...

...it was the big Homecoming football game. There was a dance after the football game and I once again went with my friends. I remember standing at my friends locker as a slow song began to play and complaining that I hated slow songs because I never had anyone to dance with. Shelly then pointed out that Dean had just come around the corner and that I should ask him to dance. So.....I did! (Wait, wasn't I the one who was always to shy to talk to a boy?) And not only did I ask him to dance but he said yes! AND... I ended up asking him to dance like three or four more times that night.

At school the next week, I was walking around with Shelly and she asked me if Dean had called me the night before. I thought "surely she's joking." I probably said something to the effect of "yeah right, why would he call me?" She told me that he had called her to get my phone number. As I was about to tell her to stop joking with me, Dean walked up beside me and said hi and then proceeded to tell me that he had tried to call me the night before. Completely in shock, I told him that I had been at band practice. He then asked if he could call me that night. So began our time of getting to know each other, talking on the phone and at school. I was 15 at the time and it had always been known that I wasn't going to get to start dating until I was 16, and that was about 4 months away.

Here I am most likely talking to Dean

Pumpkin Carving

When we got up this morning, the only thing that we really had planned was Austin's last soccer game. At about noon, plans changed as we packed up our pumpkins (the kiddo versions AND the little orange ones we got last week) and headed over to Toni and Jason's house for some pumpkin carving fun. The adventure was made even more fun as friends of ours, Shawn and Bonnie Cunnungham, joined the group too. We seen the Cunninghams for awhile as they moved out to the county a couple of years ago and are attending another church. It was very fun to reconnect with them and catch up on things.


Griffen was very excited about his pumpkin. You can't really see it, but the black markings on his pumpkin is the face that Griff drew all by himself. We had to enlarge it a bit to carve it.


Jake worked hard at cleaning his pumpkin.

Griff's happy face pumpkin. (The original face drawing was in the eye on the left.)

Jake's "Spongebob" Pumpkin. He carved it on his own.

Austin's cute pumpkin. He drew it and had help from Dean to cut it.

Nine years ago, we went to Stoney Ridge for the first time with Toni, Jason, and Jordan and Shawn, Bonnie, and their oldest Rebecca. Afterwards, we carved our pumpkins at Shawn and Bonnie's house. We continued this for the next few years until things got busier for everyone and we all started going at different times. So today was fun to get everyone together again and document how much the kids have changed, in size and number.

The Sims, the Hendricksons, and the Cunninghams - October 1999

Our little pumpkins' first trip to Stoney Ridge.

All EIGHT kiddos today!

Twenty Years Ago...

...I attended a Friday night football game. Well actually, I was a part of the marching band so I was playing AT the game. The tradition at our high school was to have a dance after each home game, so after the game I went to the dance with my friends. Nothing spectacular happened until the very end when suddenly my friend, Shelly, came up from behind and grabbed my arm. She pulled me across the floor and stopped right in front of Dean. As the last song of the dance began (a slow one at that), she said, "Kim this is Dean. Dean this is Kim." And pushing us together she commanded, "Dance!" So we did.

So after about a month of bugging her, Shelly had finally introduced me to Dean. Now what? After the dance, he said something like "nice to meet you" and left. That next week, true to myself, I was WAAAAAAYYYY to shy to say anything to him even if I was standing right there with Shelly. I was later told by Dean that he did point me out to his friend as "the girl I danced with" but he couldn't remember my name.

This is how the next week went, until....

_______________

I found some fun pictures of us in high school. I thought you might enjoy them while waiting for the continuation of our story. Stay tuned...you never know when the next segment will happen.

This is Prom 1989. We were both 16 in this picture. I was a sophmore and Dean a junior.

This is prom 1990. We are 17. Dean's senior year and my junior year. (This is my favorite prom dress. They were all special because my Grandma Mahlum made all of them.)

Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday was our annual trip to Stoney Ridge Farm. We have gone almost every year since Jacob was almost one. This year we went with our friends, the Pursleys and their three kiddos. We got Jake out of school an hour early and headed out for our adventure. The day had started out with some blue skies but then turned to rain in the afternoon. by the time we got out to the farm it was raining pretty good and was really raining when we were out at the pumpkin patch. We were thankful though that we didn't have to deal with crowds. I am sure today was a vry busy day here as the weather was nice and it is Saturday.

This cute little donkey didn't look so happy about the rain.

We started our adventure by looking at the animals and kids did the bin maze. Then we waited for the tractor to come around and give us a ride out to the patch. The kids started to do the corn maze but there was A LOT of mud so they turned around and came back. We each picked our pumpkins and then headed back. We decided to call it good after that and left. We ended our night by having a pizza dinner at the Pursley's house. Even though we got very wet we had a fun time.
Griffen inspecting his pumpkin. His biggest complaint was that it had bugs on it.

The kids searching for the right pumpkin.

Jake the photographer.

Austin and his find.

Griffen's New Talents

So I figured that I needed to post something since it has been a week and Griffen has pulled through with some amazing new talents. By the way, if you are wating for the continuation of the story of how Dean and I met, you have to be patient a little while longer. Just remember that twenty years ago I was waiting too.

Anyway, back to this post. Griffen has learned two new skills this past week. The first one is that he is now able to skip. He only does three skips in a row but he is getting pretty good. The video below is from today. I wish I had gotten it recorded when he first did it because it was so cute. He worked so hard at getting it right and his little knees ddin't bend much if at all. Now he is getting better, it looks more like skipping instead of a hop with a kick.

The other new skill is winking. I have been winking at Griff a few times lately and he has been trying hard to copy me. Last night at dinner, I once again winked his direction. He copied by blinking both eyes and then trying to figure out how to only get one eye closed (before he was usually satisfied with the blink). He tried to close both eyes and then open just one (a reverse wink?) then we heard him say, "THERE! I did it!" when we looked his way this is what we saw...

...he was so proud of himself, that he had figured out this clever way of winking. I think it was VERY clever of him. Hope you all are having a great day and are finding lots of great fall activities to enjoy.

Here We Go!

Well, we are on our way to becoming liscenced foster parents! This past Saturday, I recieved my official "graduation" certificate as I finished all 27 hours of PRIDE training. Dean wasn't able to graduate because he had to leave early one day but we still qualify since only one of us needed to finish all 27 hours. It was a great class and we both learned a lot. The last segment of the class was a panel of foster parents talking to us about their experiences and then answering our questions. I left feeling that God is so good. I have wondered a lot about the chances of actually getting a small baby (as new as possible) by going through the foster care system but pretty much every foster/adopt parent that I have come into contact with recently has brought their babies home from the hospital. This was true of almost every one of the members of the panel. Most of them had brought one if not two or three babies home. The actual adoption process can take longer this route, especially if parental rights are not relinquished but need to be terminated. I worry about the chance of thinking we are going to adopt a particular baby and then after a long time have it fall through but I am also learning to let go and trust God. He knows what will happen and will give us what we need.

So now we are taking the next BIG step and mailing off our application tomorrow. At training they mentioned that it takes about 90 days from the time we mail the application until we get our liscence.
Some of the parents on the panel added that once your liscence is approved the calls start very soon after (some even finding out that they got their liscence when the placement coordinator called asking if they would take a child.) Once again I don't want to get my hopes up about getting a call right away but at the same time the thought of a baby being in our house in 3-4 months is crazy. "Pregnancy" on fast forward! The organizational part of me goes into overdrive when I think about it, trying to figure out the logistics of where things need to go, what we need to get, ..... YIKES! Three months isn't that far away and how well can you prepare when you don't really know how old this new one will be? I can honestly say that the "nesting" instinct is kicking in too. Last week I had (and still have) an overwhelming urge to clean out closets, reorganize rooms, get the house in order. Poor Dean, he will never be able to find anything. So now I know that I just need to pray and ask for God's peace, patience, and guidance as we prepare for the newest member of our family! And I once again ask our friends and family to pray with us, that we are able to get the rest of our requirements done soon and that God will make it VERY clear when we get "The Call". Thank you all so much for walking beside us through this new adventure.

About twenty years ago...

...(gosh, has it really been twenty years?) I was in the beginning of my first year as a full fledged high schooler. One morning, I was walking around with my friend Shelly before school started when she stopped these two guys and asked one if he could give her a ride home after school. As they walked away, I quickly asked her who that was. She reminded me of a boy we had seen on the bus to her dad's house the previous spring. His name was Dean Hendrickson and he was a cousin of a guy we knew from junior high. He sure looked a lot different than that spring on the bus. (For one, he didn't have braces anymore). I asked her then if she could introduce me to him and she agreed she would. I figured that I didn't really have a chance since he was a year older and so very cute but what the heck, it wouldn't hurt to at least meet him right? Now all I had to do was wait for Shelly to actually introduce us. --- (Stay tuned for the rest of the story.)