It’s been a minute. Actually, it’s been 191,520 minutes.
133 days ago, the world shut down. Travel bans. Masks. Gloves. Hand sanitizer. Temperature checks. Social distancing. To say that this has been an insane time of life is, in fact, a huge understatement.
So I’ll start back at the beginning of it all. March 13th Shawn officially went on Spring break, March 19th Governor Pritzker put a travel ban into place, March 20th we found out school was officially online, and March 23rd Lace and I loaded a UHaul and moved north in with my parents back in Chicago.
March 23, 2020
A lot has happened since then. These photos are definitely more for me and my memories than an audience, but even so, they’re always fun to look at.
E-learning 2020Make shift double strollerPunks Easter 2020V: “I can’t believe mom is taking more photos.”Crocs for days Mother’s Day 2020Last day of school. Hallelujah.So much swimming4th of July Lemon blueberry cheesecake for Lace’s 27th birthday!BLM Movement Mylans Birthday #babesinthebasketKiwi & IrisRaspberry Lemon Cheesecake First trip back to the zoo + homemade rompers & dresses by me!This is us.
The last 133 days have been nothing short of crazy. I never thought I’d live through a pandemic, let alone raise our children through one. Yet, here we are and this is what we are doing.
We do our best day to day & that is all we can do. I’d rather focus on the good of every day than focus on the things that make life so weird right now.
These photos are just a very small look into our crazy & wonderful life.
This blog post is long over due, but that’s what happens when you’ve got three children and a million and ten things on your to do list. Unfortunately, lax things make the end of your list day after day after day.
So, here we go.
Approximately 965 days ago, I had just finished working out and I was getting ready to leave the gym as my phone rang. The 217/592-XXXX number that made my heart race more than a sprinted 5K would.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Is this Anna?”
“Yes it is. What’s up?”
“We have a little girl who is in protective custody. She’s 3 years old. She’s at the hospital getting her well check completed. Would you be interested in placement?”
“Yes! When will she be at our house? What size is she in? What is her name? Do we need to pick her up?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t have sizing information for you or her name. We have to let you know that she is African American. Are you still okay with taking placement?”
“Yes!”
This conversation has played over and over in my head over the last 965 day countless times. Did they really just ask if I was okay taking in a black child? Do people really deny placement if a child is black?
Now, I will note that as a licensed foster parent, you are able to specify ages and gender. For example, our license is for ages 0-3, but we do not specify for gender. So, I guess, it would only make sense to be able to specify race, but I’m not sure why one would do this??? I have a strong belief that, whether religious or not, people foster to help children to feel safe, loved, important, and wanted. So, why would race matter if this is truly your goal?
We picked her up at approximately 6:45 pm. We went to Old Navy to get pajamas & a few outfits and then we went to McDonald’s for dinner. We finally went home, read Dragons Love Tacos, and put our little girl to bed. Our life, as we knew it, had completely changed.
Over the months, babe quickly realized, I liked books. They were (are) everywhere in our home — organized by colors, of course. She also quickly realized that very few, if any, books contained “girls like me”.
Face. Palm. I felt terrible. How could I not realize this?!
The thing is, you don’t realize a lot of things until you’re put into a new situation that you had never been put into before. Hey white families with white children: how many books featuring different races do you have? Hey straight families with straight children, I bet “muffins with moms” and “doughnuts with dads” doesn’t offend you nearly as much as it does my spouse and I. Now, I totally get that there are people out there that have inclusive books in their homes and that there are progressive heterosexual people who are out there spreading awareness about LGBTQ+ issues, but that’s not my point. My point is, there are things you don’t think about, deal with, made uncomfortable by, unless you are put into situations that do so.
So, here we are. BN.com. Amazon.com. Google search:
Books with black main characters.
Fill me with knowledge. Fill me with hope that there are books for my daughter.
Oh, Princess Truly. One of our absolute favorites. She’s a scientist, a musician, a teacher. She believes she’s able to be anything with her magical puff hair. Obviously Babe loves that she has hair like PT.
I do my absolute best to find books that are non-fiction for babe to connect with. Right now, Babe is all about ballet so anything Misty Copeland is her jam. We read about slavery, the Underground Railroad, segregation, etc. They are tough topics, but it is part of her history. I can’t hide the past so all I can do is provide her with information. There are books out there for children on tough topics, read them.
These are two basic books. Nothing fancy, no major topics. Just black children as main characters. Funny story, if you’re ever wondering what babe looks like, she’s a spitting image of that little girl on The Library Book.
Nella, Nella, Nella. A black Princess who is also breaking gender stereotypes by being a Knight — our kinda book. We are constantly talking to Babe about how boys can wear dresses and paint their nails and play with baby dolls if they want and girls can play with tools and wear jeans and play with cars and trucks if they want. She is finally to the point of letting toys be toys without assigning gender. Add the fact that she is black on top of it? Way to go Nickelodeon!
This books makes my heart happy. We received this book from a woman I went to high school with who has never met my daughters, yet, knew this book would be perfect.
Another example of “something you don’t think about until you’re put into this situation.”
Black hair is not the same as white hair. Period.
Pink Gel. Weaves. Gel. Hair lotion. Baby Don’t Be Bald. Don’t wash her hair more than once a month or it will go dry. Hair bonnets and silk pillow cases. 4C hair type. Protective hair styles.
Guys, we’ve had Babe for almost 1000 days and we are still learning all of the time.
Babe is brilliant and she’s going to move mountains. She’s not the first, though, and she needs to know who came before her that paved the path for her. There is an entire history that she needs to know about, her history. This book provides photos of over 50 influential black women with descriptions of their lives and how they succeeded. Brilliant.
There are so many books out there for Black Children, as there should be. As a white adoptive mom, it is my job to find these books and provide them for my daughter. There are a million worlds for her to discover through reading, why shouldn’t she be able to connect with the main character while doing so?
We took you to the Atlantic Ocean today. You splashed and swam and jumped over the waves. You screamed as seagulls chased you, wanting the popcorn in your hands. Of course you just kept running instead of dropping the popcorn — I was rolling watching it all happen as I stood in the water. We collected shells and we dug in the sand. At lunch, I asked, “What has been your favorite part so far?” and you quickly responded with, “The ocean!”. I am so thankful that you got to experience the vast open space today of the water & there is one wish I have for you, to feel so small in the grand scheme of things. Sweetheart, know that you are so big and your mind is able to change the world, but also know that you are a single person. You are small when compared to the world. So travel, my love. Realize that the Atlantic Ocean is but one part of the world that is yours to explore and yours to spread your smile to everyone who will look your way. And trust me, they’ll be looking at you bc we all know you’re cute. Know that there are busses and trains and cars and planes. Know that there is so much to see and do and explore. It is my one wish I will forever hope for. I hope you loved today, even if it meant getting sand up your butt and your mom putting on too much sunscreen. Love you, BC.
We started with our invitations. Paper Culture is where it’s at. We knew we wanted to go with floral because of our location of the wedding: Mom’s Backyard. The site was super helpful and uber convenient. We were able to enter all of our addresses of our guests and our return addresses printed on the envelopes. I’m not saying that this is necessary, but when we only had 100 days until the big day, we needed convenient and the least time consuming thing out there. The invitations and RSVPs were at our door step within the week. Our biggest argument over these invitations were which stamp to use. Lace won with their choice of succulent & cactus themed stamps.
We knew our wedding would be small and that was our goal. Sometimes people ask if we wish we’d had a bigger wedding and our immediate answer is: “No!”. We had invited roughly 50 people and in the end, there were only a total of 38 people there, including us. We knew that because we would be saving so much from not having all of these extra people, we went ‘big’ on details. We also knew going into planning our wedding that we wanted to utilize as many ‘small shops’ as we could. Also, before we go any further, make note that if you are part of the LGBT community, reach out to shops because a lot of the time they are able to change their design on their pieces to better suite your wedding! Worst case is they say no and move onto a better shop!
Our cake topper was shipped all the way from the Ukraine. The shop owner was super friendly and was able to custom cut “Mrs & Mrs”. It came in silver so we had my mom paint it gold to match our colors better.
Our oldest babe was our ring bearer. We wanted to make sure she was able to carry the rings without risking them being dropped in the grass to be lost forever. These didn’t come from quite as far, but from good ol’ Greeneville, TN. Amber, the shop owner, had no issues custom engraving these either.
Our rings. The absolute hardest thing to not wear for 100 days. For those of you who don’t know, Lace and I are huge Disney fans. By we, I mean I am a huge Disney fan and Lace is just there for the photo ops, Disney treats, and waiting in line to see Cinderella every time we go. #notkidding. Anyway, one of the first times Lace and I went to Disney together, I bought this Pandora ring. Rose gold and b-e-a-utiful. You know, until I worked at an airport and got it stuck on a 50lb bag, twisted the ring, and half of the crystals came flying out. Insert very sad Anna. When we flew to Boston for our annual June vacation, Lace popped the question on a beach in Martha’s Vineyard. To my surprise, it looked identical to my Pandora ring, except it was bigger and, well, real. I learnt the story of how the reached out to Amelie at Identity Diamonds. They worked together to create the most beautiful ring that I instantly fell in love with. So, obviously, we knew where we would be getting our wedding bands from. We both reached out to Amelie and she helped to create the most perfect rings. Fun fact: Lace continued to get our wedding date wrong so I had Amelie engrave it in their ring. Love you, babe!
I was in love with my dress from the moment I tried it on. It was ordered online and I had no alterations. I typically only wear on type of dress so I knew what I needed to look for. And then I found it. It was less than $400 and it was absolute perfect.. If only it had pockets.
Lace also had the most perfect outfit and let me just tell you, they looked handsome AF. #swoon. They did amazing with small shops through Instagram & Etsy as well. Their shoes were from a company called Tomboy Toes who focus on creating classy shoes for people who have smaller feet. Their tie (and their brothers bowtie) were from The St. Louis Skinny. Lace had already purchased the perfect color socks for our wedding and sent it to the owner of the shop and poof, they created these ties that matched perfectly.
So, I’m making the assumption that you’re able to tell by now what our colors were: coral, peach, white, & gold. Pinterest helped me to narrow down on what type of flowers I wanted and how I wanted the bouquets & boutonnière to look. My mom is loyal to this little mom& pop shop in a town right new to ours and went and explained what I wanted. While I went and got my hair done on our wedding day, my sister went to pick up the flowers and let me tell you, breathtakingly beautiful. Floral arrangements is a form of art and I will fight you if you disagree.
The “venue” was an easy choice. My mom’s garden was always a place of comfort growing up and choosing it as our place to celebrate our marriage was an easy choice. We were able to work with caterers and rental places to ensure we had everything we need for the day. 40 chairs and 6 tables. We didn’t have any kind of arranged seating and it was interesting to see who ended up together and who didn’t. My mom and Lace set up the back yard while my SIL, sister, and daughter went out and got our nails done and got ice cream. I forgot my phone at home that night and it must have been fate. I’m so thankful I didn’t have any say in how they set it all up because they couldn’t have done it any better. Our centerpieces were a combination of “Marketplace” on facebook for the wood centerpieces, thrift stores for all of our mason jars, Joanns for the numbers on the tables, white lanterns borrowed from a friend, and babies breathe purchased the day before.
As most of you probably know, I’m pretty big into taking photos. I’m nothing professional and nothing super impressive, but I wanted something personal for our guestbook. We ended up using a letter board we already owned, some Pinsperation, buying a moleskin book, and using a polaroid camera. We set it up on some old slats of crates from my sisters wedding and using a piece of plywood and covering it with a white tablecloth. Voila. Perfection.
My hair piece: something old. My mom made it with pieces of her vail from her wedding when she married my father. She added in new roses that matched our wedding colors. Something I will forever cherish. Also, peep that amazing fade & design from our girl, Jessa. Talk about pure talent.
We aren’t religious. Lace grew up around religion but it doesn’t dictate our relationship by any-means. When I was 18, I was kicked out of a church I’d been part of for multiple years and since then, I haven’t stepped back in. No, I’m not looking for some pity or even some kind of advice/ recognition that not all churches are like that. I’m aware that all churches aren’t like this, but even so, I have no desire to go to church. So, that left us with: “If we’re not getting married in a church or by a pastor or in the court house, who will do it?”. That was easy. Christopher. Oh brother. Literally. The man who was our officiant at our wedding was my brother. Truly one of the most amazing men I know. Honest, true, pure, humorous, and always a secret up his sleeve. He made our wedding day everything we could’ve ever dreamt of. Thank you.
My brother kept it a secret until the very end, where, well, I was in tears. That little book he has there in his hands wasn’t just any book. It was the book we needed for our wedding. As I sit here typing this, I have tears in my eyes. Always focuses on the details of perfection. As he read the ceremony, keeping his composure, Lace and I cried, laughed, rolled our eyes in happiness. It wasn’t until family photos that he handed us the missing piece of our very own fairytale, a piece of my very favorite tale.
We ate pizza for dinner paired with Portillo’s chopped salad, ate delicious cake, and drank amazing drinks. We ordered our pizza servers off of Amazon, our cake plates were from target, and our serving pieces for our cake were from Magnolia. Our cake was from Small Cakes in Naperville. We had two alcohol-free drinks and two with alcohol in them. Our drink dispensers were ones we borrowed from our family & friends.
We didn’t have a dance floor and we don’t regret it. If you’ve been with me since the beginning, I outted myself and told the world that I actually hate dancing. Lace is a pro and they’re really good at it. Me? Nah, I’m good, thanks. We did do parent dances & we danced with out girls. Oh, and we obviously did our ‘first dance’.
The majority of the rest of the night was spent mingling with friends & family, eating more food, drinking more coke, sneaking away for some “just married” memories, and going and taking more photos in the sunset.
So you made it to the end. Go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back because this was a long one. If you made it to the end just because you were looking at these amazing photos, I don’t blame you. One piece of advice my sister gave me when we decided to start planning our wedding was: hire a photographer because you’re not going to have time to take your own photos. Shout out to the best sister because I will back up this advice any day. We met Racheal through another photographer who was booked up and I will forever be thankful for this referral. We met our photog and instantly hit it off. I mean, we love Disney & she loves disney, we love cats & she loves cats. WE EACH HAVE A CAT NAMED LUNA. Freaking fate. I had heard it time and time again that hiring a photographer for your wedding is an investment. And, if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t for Rachael. I seriously look at these photos every day and reminisce on this event, our wedding.
Reach out to Racheal if you’re ever needing photos taken. I can guarantee you won’t regret it and you’ll forever be in love with the results.
I think I wrote this post mostly for myself, but then I think of the things I hear about big weddings and how thankful I am that we did things differently. I would recommend having a smaller wedding. Our evening wasn’t spent standing in a line just hugging people. We were able to actually converse with everyone there for a decent amount of time before having to go talk to someone else. — We love our girls and it was extremely important for them to be there with us for the day, but it was also important that we weren’t watching them on our day. We hired a sitter and I would 10/10 recommend doing so if you have smaller kids. We also had a #kidfree wedding. Also would 10/10 recommend. — We didn’t spend our lives savings on this wedding. In the end, I think we spent less than $3,000. A lot of what we used for our wedding was borrowed, found at thrift stores, or hand made. Spending less money on the less important things makes it more possible to spend money on the smaller, more intimate details like ring boxes or imported cake toppers. One last piece of advice or a reminder at that: it’s not vital for you to have a brides/groom party. You’re not going to hurt anyones feelings and you’re not going to piss anyone off. Plus, it’s going to be a huge money saver in the long run.
I’m obviously not any kind of wedding planner, but I did love our day and how everything turned out. It was special and intimate and simply lovely.
With that, I will make it known that I’m never doing all of this again. Sorry, Lace, looks like you’re stuck with me. I love you.
Lace and I got married three weeks and one day ago. Already. A lot of the things have stayed the same: appointments, caseworker visits, running around, keeping the kids alive, but one thing changed: more free time because planning the damn wedding was finished. Thank goodness.
#neverdoingthatagain.
Lace and I had this huge honeymoon planned. We were going to drive up through Detroit, go through Canada and end up at Niagara Falls. We were going to continue going south to the Adirondacks and rail bike through the mountains. We’d leave there and go to different flower shops and then head back through Pennsylvania, down to Cincinnati to get Tom & Chee, and back home again. We’ve always loved to road trip – it’s always been one of ‘our things’ that we loved to plan, execute, and take a million photos on the way. It was four days before we were leaving, we had my mom coming down to watch the girls, things were packed, and then we were talking and decided to cancel the whole thing. This is not a drill & I’m not kidding.
So now the questions were: what to do and where to go.
A few years back, before babe was a part of the picture, we planned out this roadtrip down to Louisiana. Not for the history, not the food, not the culture, but for the worlds longest causeway. Yup, you read that correctly. Along the way, we’d planned to stop at multiple national parks, but that’s about it. Neither of us had been there, but we officially knew where we wanted to go: New Orleans, LA.
We literally knew nothing, so Lace started looking at hotels while I reached out via Instagram. The thing I love about social media is the way it connects you to people, everywhere. The thing I love about my Instagram is that 99.9% of the people I follow are foster parents. So, here went nothing. I had over 35 responses to my question of “We’re leaving for NOLA in 3 days.. what should we do?!”. Yet, most of the answers were directed at one thing:
Beignets. Cafe Du Monde.
So, cool. One thing, one place to see while we were there for 6 days. Okay. But what else?
Thankful for Ally & Julia – Both foster parents in Louisiana. Seriously, without your help, I don’t think we would’ve seen, learned, and eaten all of the amazing things we did.
So here we are. 11 hours and 12 minutes later. Slidell, LA. Approx. 45 minutes from downtown New Orleans. Oh, and don’t call it down town or people will look at you like you’ve got five heads, it’s The Quarter.
We made a list: Cafe Du Monde. Jean Lafitte National Historical Park. New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. Cafe Du Monde. AudubonAquarium. Bourbon Street. Cafe Du Monde. Worlds Longest Causeway. The beach. Magazine Street. Pjs Coffee. New food. Cemetery Tours. Listen to live music. Oh, and more Cafe Du Monde.
So here goes it:
1.The Worlds Longest Causeway (in the USA). Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. 23.83 miles long. Heavily patrolled by police. $5 each way to get over.
2. Cafe Du Monde. Originated in 1862. 800 Decatur Street New Orleans 70116. Three Beignets for $2.73. I highly recommend getting 7 orders. Kidding. Kind of. Seriously the most delicious thing ever. If you’re going to NOLA, get these.
3. Market Street Cafe, New Orleans. We tried roast beef Po Boys, alligator Po Boys, gumbo, jambalaya, and the New Orleans hurricane drink. Yum, yum, and yum. Holy crap. YUM. I personally tried Po Boys at other restaurants during our trip here, but this one was seriously the best of them all. I don’t think I would’ve minded eating every dinner here. Also, alligator does taste like chicken, they’re not lying.
4. Magazine Street. This street was lined with adorable shops and restaurants/ cafes. Mardi Gras beads in the trees, on the houses, on the fences, everywhere. We were able to venture up and down this streets and find book shops, personal health shops, PJs Coffee, children’s stores, clothing shops, etc. We also ate a bomb.com lunch at Blue Oak BBQ.
Blue Oak BBQ. 10/10.
5. Biloxi Beach, Biloxi, Mississippi. We rented these adorable little paired chairs for the day, brought our cooler full of drinks & snacks, and slept the day away. I wouldn’t say it was the most beautiful beach in the world, but it definitely wasn’t the worst. It was very clean and the sun was shining. Thats all that mattered.
6. Mid City Voodoux Tattoos. Lace and I have a habit of getting new tattoos when we travel to different states. She was the only one who got something this time, but I’ve already got some ideas for our next trip. This tattoo shop was amazing and her artist was super friendly. She was open about her experience during Hurricane Katrina (without us asking about it). 10 points to whoever knows what this tattoo represents.
7. Old Town Slidell Soda Shoppe. The owner collects ice cream scoops and if you’re able to bring him one that he doesn’t have, you’ll be gifted a $15 gift card. There were over thirty flavors of ice cream from Creole Cream Cheese to Nectar to Ponchatoula Strawberry. Don’t worry, I stuck with mint chocolate chip & cookies and cream. Let me just tell you, it was some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. Lace had blueberry cheesecake & peach — delish.
8. Cemetery Tours. Roughly $60 for two people. Totally worth it. The thing is, you’ll drive around NOLA and see that the graves are actually built above ground. They were build in the 18th and 19th centuries. Yup. You read that correctly. We explored the St. Louis Cemetery #1 with a tour group and late went and explored St. Louis #2 & #3 on our own. The history of these cemeteries is absolutely fascinating and I would highly recommend making time for it.
9. Our last day was spent walking around with nowhere to be other than our reservation at Willa Jean. Super cute and modern place where they revolve around biscuits, gravy, and expensive drinks. Although they do take walk ins, I would guide you towards making a reservation before you go.
Overall.
This trip was everything we could’ve hoped for and then some. The history that we learned, the culture we experienced, the food we ate. NOLA was breathtakingly beautiful. We are always such planners and it was so nice just being able to not have to be anywhere at any time. We had no commitments to meeting people or canceling appointments. With living such a structured life at home because of the girls, it was heavenly doing things on our time. Oh, one last recommendations: learn to use their Street Cars. It will save you close to $50 / day for parking down town. Okay, one more recommendation: EAT ALL THE BEIGNYAYS.
Homemade Mardi Gras masks. Live music on Bourbon St. Double Shotgun House.
I’m Anna. No nick names, no inside-joke names, no shortened versions of my name — just, Anna. I’m twenty-six years old, engaged, and have countless children. Literally and kidding all at the same time.
I’m a part time home maker, full time run around to make it to every appointment; part time macaron maker, full time maker of all to-do lists.
Currently, my fiancé, Lace, and I have three children under our roof. Babe is our oldest at five-years-old, next is BB at 18 months old, and finally is bebe at 17 months old. Yes, you read that right – there is roughly one month between the two littles – fifty days to be exact.
I’ve never been a writer and I’m pretty sure my mom wrote the majority of my essays in high school (and probably college), but here I am, doing this whole ‘writing’ thing. I was once told that it isn’t the fancy words or the extravagant language that is used, but the feelings and the honesty that goes into your writings that counts. So, I’ll continue forward. If you follow me on Instagram, not only do you get to witness my daily posts, but also my genuine words of my girls, my fiancé, our foster kittens, and everything else going on in the life of me, a SAHM, that is really and truly never home.
I often find myself stuck in this rut of what to do with my days. I was a teacher for three years before giving it up to be a full-time foster parent. Three years & six kids later, my life revolves around them, their appointments, court hearings, and visits with birth parents, which leaves little time for me and this whole “self-care” thing that is constantly pushed in our faces.
I’m not entirely sure what I hope to come of this blog or who will even follow along side it, but I hope to continue to be as honest and open as I can, to use this as an outlet for frustrating feelings, happy times, and somewhere someone can come to read to laugh at the humor of my every day life.
Life with these girls is hysterical and although I hate dancing, they love it and because of that, I will dance.
For two years now, I’ve been wanting, yearning to start a blog. To write about anything: court hearings, foster care, travel, books, macarons, photography, anything. So here I am, 11:17 on April 27, 2019, starting a blog.
What do I have to lose?
Here’s to the next chapter. Won’t you join me as we dance our way through?
Dancing Through the Days 