We had our first actual foster kid experience last night. My step mother in law works for CPS and had this girl, I will call her A, that was waiting on her foster mom to get into town to accept placement. We were at baseball practice and they stopped by to say hi.  Not 10 minutes after they left, I got a call asking if we would be willing to keep an eye on her for a coiple of hours. Absolutly, no problem. We are doing this whole foster parent thing to help kids out. So SMIL drops her off and we all come home. This girl is fantastic. She played football with my boys, offered to help with dinner, watched a movie. She fit right in.  I loaded her up with some make up and let her raid my Lemongrass Spa stash.  After a couple of hours, I took her to where her foster mom was going to pick her up from. I gave her a hug and drove home. 

When I got home, Steve was pretty upset. We talked and he told me he wanted to keep her. I told him I was hessitant to take teenagers since we have 0 experience with them.  We had originally agreed on boys, ages 4 to 10. Well this beautiful girl threw a wrench in everything we thought we wanted. He called SMIL and talked with her. We found out that she has a little brother in a different home in our preferred age range. We offered to take both of them even though I was still really apprehensive. 

I went to bed thinking about her. I woke up thinking about her. I have decided that, if it turns into a longer term placement, that I am ok with taking this girl and her brother.  You know how you get something stuck in your head and cant seem to get it out, no matter what you do?  This is totally like that.  I see a lot of younger me in A and I truly think we both could benefit from this placement. 

I have a foster class tonight so I will talk with my trainer to see what has to be done ASAP to get them both in our home. We are only half way through our training but the need for foster parents is so great here, there shouldnt be a problem.