March 22, 2016
Things here have been great. The boys are doing well in school, taking swimming lessons and doing track and soccer. Ghani started piano lessons. The boys each won a scholarship to a summer program – Ghani will play tennis and Hedayat will get some dance lessons. We managed to get them signed up for soccer in the Parkland Soccer Club and the boys met the Allen HS soccer coach, who is keen to have them on the team. My mother has started tutoring the boys in English.
We are looking forward to a great summer, with a trip to AZ, a week at the beach, and lots of soccer.
I still have too many things to do and not nearly enough time, but that is normal. We have a bazillion house projects, of course, and all in all, we are all doing pretty fantastic.
So, Wednesday morning I got a call from LCFS – our original caseworker. She said that they had 2 Hazara boys who had been living in a group home and needed to be placed elsewhere. Something had happened with some of the other boys and I don’t quite get the story but the Hazara boys were upset by what had transpired and needed a place to go. Could we take them?
“Ummmm. Well…. We do have two extra beds in the guest room… we might have to re-arrange things a bit… “
“Great, one of us will bring them by this afternoon.”
Uh oh.
Of course, that is a slightly abbreviated version, but pretty much how it went. We agreed to keep the boys through the end of the school year so as not to disrupt their schooling again.
Oh geez, what did we just do? The first afternoon/evening was a bit tense. I was definitely feeling anxious about it and kicking myself for agreeing to this.
The new boys do not care for dogs and while they like soccer, they love volleyball. They only eat halal, which is extremely inconvenient. Both Ghani and Hedayat asked me a lot of questions about why Esa and Rashon were here and how long they would stay. They seemed relieved to hear that the boys were only staying until the end of school. I assured each of them that we were very happy with the 4 of us as a family and did not want to do anything that would put that happiness at risk.
But yesterday afternoon was better. The 4 boys seemed more at ease with one another, and I had a nice conversation with the new boys. Nolan hung out with them for a while before dinner. We had a very nice St Patrick’s Day dinner at the cabin (with my mother and Bob and Charlie and Margaret).
I have no idea how this is going to work, but these boys have been bounced around quite a bit, so I hope that we can make it work for the next three months without too much trauma (to any of us!). We are also trying to get some other local families to take on fostering, so these boys will have a good place to go from here.
Unfortunately, LCFS is getting bought out, and we don’t know by whom yet. They just found out on Wednesday. So they are not processing new applications for foster parents. Could this week get any weirder? The program that we are in will continue under the new ownership/management, and we may very well keep our caseworker, if he gets hired on by the new organization.
Please wish us luck. I think we need some.