so...i wrote this blog probably in May 2011 and just never uploaded it....MUCH has changed, and I will have to update on that soon, but here ya go for now...

hello! campise fam update :)

Well since the last post some dear dear friends hosted a house "almost" complete party and foster journey celebration party! It is indescribable the love we felt and feel from such amazing people! We feel honored to know and walk through life with the following friends that hosted this amazing party for us...The Allisons, The Bakers, The Beans, The Benaglios, The Bruyninckxs, The Halsells, and The Mullinses!!!!!!! My goodness can they host it up :) We love you all so much and are so grateful for yalls amazing friendships and support for us as we walk down this journey! Here are a few blog posts from Aimee and Brandie that have pics from the party!!!

http://thehalsells.blogspot.com/2011/04/campise-shower.html

http://oliveandpearlhandmade.blogspot.com/2011/04/aint-no-party-like-campise-party.html

Every detail of the party was just so special!! From the decorations, photo booth, food, drinks, and fun arts and crafts! We had so many amazing friends and family come all the way to the big T (Taylor) to celebrate with us! How blessed we feel! Thank you all sooo very much for coming to celebrate with us! Your love and prayer are appreciated more than you know and are absolutely felt!

The house is pretty much complete minus some finishing up in the kitchen! We still need to make upper cabinets, put on door fronts on lower cabinets, and put in backsplash, but other than that it is COMPLETE!! And honestly, I don't even care when the rest of the kitchen is complete it has just been such a blessed to have a workable kitchen and be able to walk around our house without shoes and most importantly being able to have friends over, so great!!!

On the fostering front...we have been officially licensed since February 15th, but still not kiddos yet. We know that the Lord has sweet sweet plans for our family, so we are just trusting that! We continue to pray protection over the kids that the Lord has in store for us and for protection over all kids in foster care actually. We are also praying for peace and patience as we wait and do not know the plans He has set out for us! We have had many calls and submitted our home study many times, but I guess it has not been in the Lord's timing yet.

A brief story of us coming to this point in our lives, okay let's be honest, it's me, Kathrin, it probably won't be brief :)!...We have always known we wanted to have children! We had briefly talked about adoption prior to getting married. I always thought, "maybe I would adopt one day" when growing up, but don't think that I honestly thought it would happen. How sweet the Lord's plans are because it honestly has been a journey that we feel lucky and blessed to be on. Challenging at times of course, but a true blessing. We began trying to have biological children in September of 2007 as we continue to try. Quite a few years back probably, 2 1/2 to 3 years ago the Lord began stirring in my heart about adoption. It was one sermon at our church (Austin Stone) that the Lord really captured my heart and adoption was more on the fore front on my mind! Then quite a few months after that we had gone to First Tuesday Prayer, which is the 1st Tuesday of every month where our church gathers for a time of singing and prayer. This particular month the theme of the prayer was orphans and wow did the Lord really capture my heart and he was really beginning to stir in David's as well!! From that point on we really starting talking more about orphans and what we thought that would look like in our lives personally. David was always open to it, but wasn't 100% sure initially if it was what the Lord was calling us specifically to it at the time. He kind of thought of it as "shouldn't everyone as believers be part of orphan care to some extent". (Which yes I feel like is true, whether it be assisting someone that is caring for the orphan, caring for the orphan, or financially supporting someone...anyways). But over the next months the Lord really captured David's heart about it being more specifically for us.

Our church started having these orphan care meetings (which have now turned into the For the Orphan Network) and we began attending those meetings. It is there that we really found out a little more about all avenues of taking care of orphans. We learned a little more about domestic adoption, international adoption, and foster care. Then a few months later our church for the first time had a sign up to go through training to become licensed as foster parents. We were not sure that we wanted to do foster care at this point, but wanted to learn more about it because it was a possibility. The classes were going to be held on Sundays for 6-8 weeks with an agency (different than whom we ended up going with). We signed up for the classes, then shortly after signing up for the class the earthquake hit in Haiti and our hearts were burdened. Another agency (our agency) Caring Family Network had a fast track opportunity to get licensed quickly just in case a few Haitian orphans were able to come to the US and our church wanted people to be equipped. Our agency knew going into this that the orphans may not even ever come to the US and if they did they did not know how it would look, but wanted to do the training to be ready in case.

So, we signed up and the journey begins!!!!! We were honored to be taking the class with some dear friends. It was so amazing how the Lord aligned the hearts of us already close friends. It is amazing to see how the Lord knitted our lives together from the beginning and that He knew all along we would be walking this journey together; oh Lord you are so good!! So, we signed up for the classes that would begin the next week with friends Aaron and Shauna Mullins and Brad and Rachael Allison. We also met some great friends going through the classes. So, it was 3 days of classes ALL day. So, we were finished with the classes in less than 2 weeks. What a crazy but amazing journey! Our friendship grew deeper with the Allisons and Mullinses and we met new friends as well. We have become such great friends with people from our agency, we feel so blessed to be part of the CFN family! So, we were done with classes by February of 2010, but we had to still get lots of paperwork finished and most of all we had to finish the House. We had to get a home inspection by the county and our agency and a fire inspection, and well...with wholes into the ground we had a LONG way to go.

Fast forwarding A LOT we finally became licensed February 15th, 2011! It took us a long while to get the house ready which was really our only delay, but we finally were able to have the house ready enough to pass inspections. There were 6 families that went through training with us and out of the families, 4 of us are officially licensed. 2 families with precious foster babies and 2 of us waiting. So, during all of the journey the Mullinses have moved to Taylor. Seriously, how crazy is that the Lord knew all along that we would be such great friends with them, both sharing the blessing of fostering and eventually living in the same stinkin city, so very cool!!! They moved to Taylor from Round Rock, so our drive time went from 35 minutes to less than 1 minute. We are now in walking distance, .2 miles to be exact. Oh man and there kiddos, Dave and I could go on forever about how precious their kids are!! A now precious 2 year old boy and a beautiful 1 year old girl!! The Allisons were blessed with their sweet little biological son February 15th, the day we were officially licensed! So, they are put fostering on hold for a bit, but their hearts are in line with caring for orphans! They love helping and serving within the foster care community!

So, this is a clip-it of our fostering journey thus far! We continue to try to have biological children as well! We feel very strongly lead to foster care! We will continue to pursue both and if both happen we will be doubly blessed.

We love you guys and just wanted to give your guys an update with some update pictures!!