![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2779\/4145630938_a731c0cfb2.jpg\")
<\/a>\n
\nWe also found some great gender neutral decals featuring a jungle animal theme and Laurie went right to work decorating the new nursery walls (our old guest room) as soon as the crib was put together.<\/p>\n
We can’t wait! Laurie’s been able to put much of our feelings into a post she shared earlier this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n And as the the Christmas season approaches, I’m starting to wonder what Joseph might have been feeling as he anxiously expected the birth of “his” son. <\/p>\n Suddenly the story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus takes on another dimension for me as I’m anxiously expecting a child in my own home — who isn’t biologically mine. <\/p>\n But does biologically make that much of a difference? <\/p>\n It doesn’t in my mind and I doubt it did in Joseph’s mind. Sure he had his initial doubts, but it appears he got over them rather quickly.<\/p>\n From the little bit we know, Joseph cared for Jesus as if he was his own son, even teaching him his trade along the way.<\/p>\n While Joseph was worried about public opinion of his situation, we’ve had so many supportive comments come our way that I’ve started to assume everyone was just as excited about us having a child as we are — regardless of genetics.<\/p>\n And before I forget, we want to thank each and everyone of you who have offered you’re encouragement and support during this time. It means so much!<\/p>\n And yet, there are others who don’t see that. Somehow they see biological children as “better?”<\/p>\n I know this, because Laurie and I felt the sting of a wayward comment tonight at a public event.<\/p>\n A group of ladies were talking about a friend(s) they knew who were adopting and foster care was mentioned.<\/p>\n One of the ladies responded, “Foster care — isn’t that like Rent-A-Kid?”<\/p>\n I didn’t hear it. But Laurie did and I could tell right away that it stung her to the core. <\/p>\n One thing I’ve come to realize and appreciate about Laurie as of late — is her protective nature. You don’t mess with or take advantage of those she loves. She was ready to throw down.<\/p>\n I quietly reminded her of the friends of Leigh Annee Touhy in The Blind Side<\/a>, who obviously didn’t “get” Leigh Anne’s desire to care and ultimately adopt Michael Oher. As foolish and ignorant as those women came across in the movie — these women were coming across the same way.<\/p>\n I don’t know if it helped Laurie at all — I’m not sure it helped me — but it did at least take my focus off the sting for the time being.<\/p>\n We were both tempted to say something to the ladies — but the moment had passed. We simply ignored the comment and moved on.<\/p>\n But what should we have done? Should something have been said? Should we have corrected their misinformation? How would you have responded?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Laurie and I are getting excited as our expectancy grows, just counting down the days till we hope to have our foster-parent certification, followed by more waiting till we get the call that we have a foster child waiting for us. Over the Thanksgiving break we did a little shopping and purchased a brand new … Continue reading How would you respond?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[2023,1137,484,2772,2042],"class_list":["post-4870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mi-familia","tag-adoption","tag-children","tag-christmas","tag-foster-care","tag-respond"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1gy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2651\/4139556829_4f95afd586.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2715\/4140316668_f52495edbf.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n