Still Alive and Busier than Ever!

I know I haven't been around much over the last month, but I promise I have a good reason. I have been working hard at Cornerstone (including preparing for 2 of my own groups and 5 VBS's this summer!), starting a new job, having kids in the house and writing a devotional book for Teen Club. Of course, a lot of these things have not only added to my weekly work hours, but also my emotional stress. I am going to update you on everything (at least as much as I can remember!) today. I will be dating posts from when they actually happened, so hopefully you will be all caught up if you just keep scrolling down.

Thanks for being patient with me, and especially for continuing to pray!!

Shopping!

I HATE shopping! I hate shopping almost as much as I hate camping, which is saying a lot. Hell for me would probably be eternal shopping during the day, camping at night constantly surrounded by people chomping on gum and/or whistling. Oh, and I would probably have the hiccups forever too. (I have a lot of pet peeves, haha). Unfortunately, sometimes shopping is necessary and my new job at CASA has created that need.

Pretty much my entire wardrobe consists of jeans, Cornerstone t-shirts, some Virginia Tech sweatshirts and a few bridesmaid dresses. Not exactly proper courtroom attire, haha. Over the last year as a CASA volunteer I was able to borrow clothes from Ashley whenever I needed to go to court, which was only once every 3-4 months. Now that I have to go to court at least once a week (sometimes more than that), I don't think Ashley would appreciate me borrowing that many outfits, haha. Plus, I do occasionally have meetings at the office as well, so a "professional" wardrobe has become necessary.

My mom (because she is AWESOME!) ordered me several suits on line. Unfortunately, not one of them fit me. So, I decided to take them back to the store and make a shopping day out of it. And thankfully, Ashley and Shera agreed to go with me! (They have great fashion sense! Me.. not so much). So, we loaded up with the suits to return, some President's Day sale fliers, a few coupons and a gift card to Bahama Breeze (so we could have a yummy lunch!) and headed out for a day of horror shopping.

It ended up being a kind of crazy day, but I have to admit that it was pretty fun. We had hoped to eat lunch first, but the restaurant actually lost power just before we got there. We didn't mind, though, because they gave us a $10 gift card and told us to come back later. So, while we waited for their power to come back on, we did some shopping. Thanks to all the sales and clearance racks, I was able to get a lot for very little!

We went back to Bahama Breeze around 2:30 and they said they should be up and running in about 30 minutes. So, we hit another store and found more great deals! We went back to Bahama Breeze at 3:30, and by this time there was a wait. We decided to wait; it was basically free food thanks to our gift cards! We finally got to eat around 4:30, and it was worth the wait! We started with an appetizer, then each ordered fancy drinks and entrees and only spent $1.62 of our own money!

We made one more stop at another store having a great sale before we finally got home around 7:30. It was a LONG, but VERY successful day! Thanks to returning the suits my mom bought and combining that with coupons and sales; and shopping exclusively from clearance racks, I was was able to basically get an entire wardrobe (4 pairs of dress pants, 4 pairs of shoes, 7 new shirts, 3 new sweaters, and several new pairs of earrings and dress socks) while spending only $15 of my own money!!!

I went from a completely empty closet to this:

I'm still not a fan of shopping, at all, But, thanks to today, I won't have to do it again any time soon!

New Job!!!

I have just been hired as a supervisor for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), and I don't think I could be more excited!! (I am NOT leaving Cornerstone!) I will be working full time at Cornerstone and then part-time (15-20 hours a week) at CASA. I know it sounds like a lot, but its actually less hours than when I worked for AIM and Cornerstone (I was working 30 ours a week at AIM), and I am VERY passionate about my work at CASA and it goes hand in hand with my passion at Cornerstone. I can't wait!!!

I actually applied for the job back in August when they were looking for a new supervisor because my supervisor was leaving. I was interviewed and the director told me that they already had someone in mind for the position they were hiring for, but that they would be hiring another supervisor within a month or so and they would like to hire me for that position. So, she told me that she would be in touch.

Over the next few months, the director stayed in close contact with me, constantly telling me that they did still want to hire me, but they had to wait for the finding to come in. (CASA is a non-profit organization). CASA gets about 1/3 of their budget from the Department of Human Services (they have a contract with DHS), but DHS was about 6 months behind in paying them. The other 2/3 of the budget comes from private donations and those were way down for the year. So, I was basically in a waiting game.

In January I once again talked to the director and she said she was hoping to have the money to hire me by April. However, about 5 days later I got another phone call asking me if I could start in February!! It turns out that one of the other supervisors was leaving CASA and they needed to replace him immediately. So, a week after I got the phone call, I started my new part time job!

To say that I am passionate about CASA would be a HUGE understatement, and the more involved I become, the more passionate I become. If you don't remember exactly what CASA is all about, you can refer to my first post about it here.

As a supervisor I will be overseeing volunteers who are working on cases. I will attend all their court hearings, help them write court reports and provide support, advice, and whatever else they may need in order to advocate for the kids they are working with. I currently have 14 cases with 13 volunteers and a total of 26 kids.

I am kinda jumping right into the deep end, but I have a lot of support (another supervisor, Cynthia, actually took over the work of the guy who left CASA and then I took over Cynthia's caseload. So, she is still around whenever I have questions!) and everyone seems to have a lot of confidence in me; I hope they're right!

I'm just getting started, but I am sure you will be hearing more about all of this soon. In the meantime, PLEASE be praying for the kids who are in foster care in Philadelphia. Just reading through the case files on my cases brought me to my knees, crying uncontrollably and pleading for God to move in each of their lives. The blinders are off my eyes and my heart is broken; now use me for your glory, Lord.

More Kids!

February started off with more kids! I got a call on Wednesday asking if I was interested in respite foster care for the weekend. (Respite foster care is short term, no more than 2 weeks. Usually kids go into respite care because their foster parents either need a break or are going out of town and can't take the kids with them). Kids in foster care can't just go to a friend's house for the weekend. Any home they stay in has to be an approved foster home, so the phone call I got was not uncommon. :)

In this case, the foster parents were going away for the weekend and couldn't take the kids. I figured I could handle anything for a weekend, so I said yes! It turned out to be A LOT of fun, but also A LOT of work, haha.

"A" and "L" arrived on Friday night, and despite being only about an hour away from their bed time, they were FULL of energy. "A" is a 6 year old girl and "L" is a 3 year old boy. I had originally said that I would only take 5-10 year olds, but I okayed a 3 year old since it was just for a weekend. I don't think I will be doing that again any time soon. :)

Of course, the kids immediately fell in love with Gizmo and enjoyed talking to him (he's not exactly playful, haha). "A" even drew a picture of him (yes, I WILL be framing this):

Friday we just played with the kids and finally got them to bed close to 9:30. I had hoped that would mean they would sleep in the next morning, but that didn't happen. They were up and ready for the day at 7:00 a.m.! Ashley and I were NOT prepared for that, haha.

On Saturday we had a pretty fun day. We went to see the movie "Tangled" in the afternoon and then to my friend Shera's birthday party that night. Shera's party was Circus themed, so we all dressed up. Ashley and I were eccentric tiger trainers (a la Sigfried and Roy) and the kids were our tigers, haha. (We got the outfits from a thrift store!).

Once again, we had a pretty late night so I once again hoped that maybe they would sleep in the next morning... and once again, they did NOT! They were up and ready to go at 7 again, but we didn't need to be at church until 9:30!

Church was really fun and they seemed to enjoy it. (They mentioned that their church doesn't have toys, haha). They were kind of shy, but had already met some people from church, so they warmed up to everyone pretty quickly.

After church we decided to take a trip to the aquarium (yay for memberships!), and that was a BLAST! "A" really enjoyed getting to touch so many of the animals, and "L" really liked living vicariously through "A", haha. He wouldn't touch anything except the jellyfish, because they were squishy, haha. The best part was "L" constantly yelling either "I want to eat that!" or, "Can I go swimming with him?". He made us laugh a lot! (He was very insistent that he could swim with the hippos, he just needed to take his shirt off, haha).








I was actually able to get them to sleep at a decent hour on Sunday night because we had to get "A" to school on Monday morning. (The foster parents picked "L" up in the afternoon). Of course, the morning I actually needed them to get up early, they were both zombies! I was able to get them both up and ready to go and we drive the hour to "A"'s school. Then we had another hour drive home, during which "L" started to feel sick. We stopped to get some children's Tylenol and he seemed to feel a little better after that and a little nap in his car seat.

I had hoped that "L" would be picked up around noon (that's what I was told), but his foster parents didn't come until 4. THANK GOODNESS I own a Wii!! Otherwise, that poor kid would have been SO bored!! We did go to Chick Fil A for lunch and he played in the play area for a while, which gave me a bit of a break. (He wasn't so good at playing by himself. He CONSTANTLY needed my attention). Otherwise, he and I spent most of the day playing Disney Princess (which is actually pretty educational, haha).

Overall, it was a really fun weekend and they were really great kids. But, I definitely realized that I am NOT ready for toddlers in my house full time. I think I will stick with older kids for now!

Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. They had a few melt downs, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get "L" to stop calling me "mommy". (I promise I was nice about it, just constantly reminding him that I am not mommy, I am Trish). I knew I would likely not see him again, so I wanted to be as careful as possible about any attachments forming. I don't know anything about their situation other than that they are so young and right now can't live with their parents. So, I hope they felt special and loved had a really fun weekend away. And I hope I will continue to pray for these most precious of creations.

("A" doesn't actually were glasses. She found these at our house and wore them all day, haha)


(And once again, THANK YOU AUNT PATTY for buying me a Wii!! We would NOT have survived this weekend without it!!) :)