It’s clear in everything I’ve said to friends and family that I expected our foster sons to stay around for a good while. Maybe a year, I said, envisioning a long settling in process before they’d be allowed to return to their parents. And then I got word last Friday that perhaps this would not be our reality, perhaps something was going to happen very fast. I’m grateful that I heard whisperings through the grapevine as it allowed me to start considering the very idea. Over the weekend I organized diapers, put Thomas the Train DVDs in the proper locations and made mental lists of what belonged to whom.

On Tuesday a judge ordered the boys to return to their home and within three hours they were gone from our home. In that three hours I sorted and folded and packed and created a small mountain of things that belonged to them. (This is not the norm for foster kids, that they’d enter your home with a lot of possessions, but our boys did indeed come with a lot of things.) I cried off and on as I packed up their teeny t-shirts and little man pants, Spiderman undies and the Pull-ups that were our current reality. I prayed and prayed and prayed over these items. And eventually we installed carseats in a new car, added the boys to the car, and kissed them goodbye.

This is foster care.

Jeremy and I never pretended to be the boys’ Mom and Dad. In our hearts and on our lips we were their foster mom and dad. In the practicalities of day to day life, however, we loved them and treated them as our own. Hugs. Tickling. Feeding snacks and meals. Getting drinks and changing diapers. Bedtime stories and morning wake-ups. Doctor appointment after doctor appointment. We loved them. We were the second Mommy and Daddy for them, and they called us Mommy and Daddy because that’s the role we played. We loved them.

You don’t care for someone everyday for almost five weeks and then send them off without your heart being impacted. Jeremy, Liv and I are processing this change differently from one another and since I’m the verbose, emotional one, you get a blog post with a few ideas in it. I miss the boys and the fullness they bring to our house. I do not miss getting up early in the morning. I miss sweet cheeks to kiss and little bodies to bathe. I do not miss the dinnertime ritual (so shoot me, it’s true—dinner is much easier with one 9 year old child). More than the missing, the wondering is what gets to me. It’s testing my faith in new ways, this trusting God with what is best for the boys. I did not approve of their removal from our house, but then again, no one asked me. Foster parents, for those who are wondering, don’t get much say in the legal matters of a case. After caring so intimately for these little people for days on end, they are outside of my control and decision-making. And that’s hard to bear. I hope and pray they are being cared for well.

I wrote about the reality of our 2013 Christmas card and now find myself in a place where I could actually mail it out. But a little bit of my Christmas spirit is lacking now. This is not how I envisioned celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas will not be what I envisioned either. Going back to a family of three feels normal to me, though, so the adjustment will come and the missing will decrease—I know this much is true.

We were there for the boys when they needed us, and I hope we can be there for them in the future if they ever need us again. As I was putting clean sheets on the now-vacant bed in our foster room I could feel the tiniest spark of excitement at a new body finding it’s way into our home, a new little person who could use a warm bed and a few loving family members. May God use us. May He give us grace to sustain us in sadness and in joy. And may He use normal, tired people like us to love others. Amen.

Ho ho ho. Let’s do this thing!

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I had a Christmas card all picked out and waiting for order in an online shopping cart. Our family of three, cracking up and being super silly at Disneyland last summer. I don’t know what kept me from pulling the trigger, but I didn’t order it.

And now that card doesn’t feel fitting.

Our family looks a little different today than it did three weeks and two days ago. We are still the Tredway Three in legal terms. We are still the Tredway Three in history and in permanency. But something else is going on that makes it, well, odd to send out a card with the three of us featured. We are the Tredway Five right now.

There are five seat belts in our car that get used every time we venture out as a family. Thank goodness for the larger sized sedan we purchased last July—we can just barely fit two carseats and a 9 year old in the back seat. There are five place settings at the table every time we eat a meal. Three normal size forks and two preschool-sized ones. Three Fiestaware plates and two Spiderman bowls. There are potty seats haphazardly tossed next to two toilets in the house. Boxes of diapers trip me as I walk into my office and piles of boy pajamas sit in the previously all-girl-all-the-time bathroom upstairs. Our house is again filled with blocks and board books, little puzzles and farm sets. An often grabbed-for Febreze has a twin upstairs in our vain attempts to mask the odors that come alongside diapered toddlers, and we’re still getting the rhythm of what goes in the indoor garbage can versus the outdoor garbage can.

Two precious faces have been entrusted to our care. For how long, we do not know.

Jeremy and I are Mommy and Daddy to two extra little people who already have a Mommy and Daddy. We drive home each evening to pronouncements of, “Here we are! We’re home!” and we say, “Yes! We’re home!” Because what else is this place if not home? Here you are safe, we say. You are fed, bathed, hugged, snuggled, disciplined, sung over, prayed over and loved in a million different ways. For however long you are here, this is your home.

So you see my predicament in blithely mailing out a Christmas card with three goofy (or Goofy) Tredways on the front. We are still those people, and yet we are not those people at all. For now, for this season, there are five of us. For better or for worse, the Tredway Five.

Pssst… Wanna see our Disney pic? Of course you do. I LOVE this shot. Makes me all happy inside.

I love this shot of my fun, generous, sassy friend Amanda. This is another one-shot post, but there are MANY more gems from a shoot with the fabulous Wittmann family. Stay tuned.

I have many great shots from a recent family photoshoot with the Mackrill family, but little Rowan has a special place in my heart. This kid! He is feisty and hilarious and smart and all kinds of wonderful words in between. I could take pictures of him all day long and could fill books of the funny things he says and does. This kid is a treat. He reminds me, in many ways, of Livia and thus I know precisely what his mama does from day to day. Rowan’s mommy is a special woman. [big smile]

Now that I have two little boys in my household I value Rowan’s four grubby fingers all the more. Every night I empty a tubful of water and marvel at how exponentially dirtier it is than any bath water Livia ever played in. And this is a mud-loving little girl we’re talking about. Snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Little boys. There’s nothing like ’em!