Happy Fall!

So… hello… my name is Jodi… it has been too long to count since my last entry… where to start… I got lots to share ya’ll….

I’ll start with the fact that Friday, September 17, 2010, I, Jodi Johnson, turned 40…. What?! Wowzer… it’s really weird to think of myself as a 40 year old… almost as weird as when the word cancer applied to me… but anyway here I am… 40… and ya know what? I’m excited about it actually. I mean, during my 30’s, I did so much growing up (but not too much) and just growing as a person and learning about my self and life and stuff and growing in my Faith and relationship with God… I’m saying it wrong because I don’t want to make it sound like anything I did… it’s just I can totally see where and why God has brought me to this point in life… well I think you know what I mean…my 30’s were just a great growth decade for me so I can’t wait to see what I learn in my 40’s ya know! I’m the most surprised at my attitude because I thought I would have a hard time with it… but here I am all happy and excited to see what God and life holds in store for me in my 40’s!

So there’s that… Jimmie and I are in the process of refinancing our house because the interest rates are so great right now… we actually had taken out a second mortgage a few years ago to get out of under a bunch of bills so now we’re rolling those two loans in to one and getting some extra. We were hoping to also get enough this time to do a big remodel of the back part of our house but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, so instead we’re looking in to buying a really nice camper. Our vision is that we’ll have it to like go up to Ohio and park it at Lake Cowan or Ceasar’s Creek that way we can sort of have a home base to invite people there or just visit without having to impose on anyone for longer periods of time… we miss so many of our friends in Ohio but when we go visit now, not that this is a bad thing, but since we stay with family there’s just only so much time and we don’t really get to visit anyone but family… which is not a complaint at all but we would like to be able to come up sometimes just for the purpose of visiting our Wilmington friends, ya know? Anyway…. There’s that…

oh yeah… the other thing we’re going to do for ourselves possibly is maybe hopefully possibly go on another cruise in February! Jimmie presented the idea to me in this way… “just a thought honey but I think we should treat ourselves to a cruise. Or we could take the Littles to Gatlinburg.” Umm so if the choice is to go kid free on a cruise ship and let loose or take two little kids to Gatlinburg… which one would ya’ll pick? Lol actually… I do have a cruise picked out but to be honest the thought of flying again freaks the crap out of me… I don’t like it… and lately I have been thinking what fun Matthew and Cali would have in Gatlinburg… so still not sure which one we’ll pick… maybe we’ll do both!

Now for some hard news for me to share… 3 years ago when we were going through our training to become foster parents, we heard about foster parents who disrupt placements, which means people who have foster children in their home that for some reason or another the foster parents decide that they can’t parent that child any longer and so they ask that the child be moved. When I heard about these cases, I thought to myself, self, what kind of person would do such a thing as to “kick a kid out” of their home. “I would never do that”… that should have been my clue… never say never, isn’t that the saying? In mid-August, we found out what kind of foster parent would do such a thing… because we disrupted with our 17 year old… it was a heart-wrenching decision but things came to a boiling point and we were just in over our heads. Out of respect to Austin, I am not going to run through the laundry list of events that lead us to this place, because, in all fairness, I knew from the beginning that we were way beyond our realm of parenting experience and we probably should have “disrupted” sooner but we kept holding out hope that somewhere something would click. It was an extremely good yet extremely challenging experience, parenting a teenager. I think in many ways Austin opened my eyes to a whole other way that the world operates and vice versa. At this point, all I can do is be content that I did my best with only good intentions while he was in our home and pray that he has a happy life. I will always think of him as a son and treasure the time he spent in our home. I’m totally candy coating the whole ordeal because, although I know that I know that I know that we made the right decision in disrupting, it was an agonizing ordeal and I cried off and on for several days… I’m tearing up now just typing about it… I know for a fact that he doesn’t understand right now either and that kills me… but eventually, if he is honest with himself, he’ll get it – hopefully… argh… anyway… there’s that…

And so our lives continue… Matthew and Cali are growing and just getting so smart and sassy day by day… it seems that the situation regarding their new brother who is scheduled to make his entrance in to the world in November is precarious at best. Mom is currently residing somewhere south of here, possibly Georgia or Florida… unsure if she plans to come back this way to give birth or to try to see her precious children… so there’s that…

And so the journey unfolds one day at a time… the whole journaling about Austin leaving has bummed me out and taken the wind out of my sail so I think that’s enough for today…. I will say this though… he has gone to another foster home. They only take teenagers and have much more experience in that whole area than we do so I think he is growing to enjoy his new home, which makes me happy as well…

Well… thanks for reading my random rambles… have a great week!

I wrote the above entry like a week or so ago and I just wanted to add one more little blip… tomorrow Jimmie and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary! Bless his heart… he’s been traveling for his job for about the last 3 weeks so he’ll be out of town tomorrow as well… but we’ll be together in our hearts! 14 years! What a journey it’s been… can’t wait to see what the next 14 years hold for us! I picked a great partner… he’s not a perfect man by any stretch... neither am I… but he’s perfect for me!