May 20th - Adoption Picnic

Today was an exciting day for us after receiving the sad news this past week. Today we got to attend the Central Valley Spring Adoption Picnic in Sacramento. This picnic was to be based around the available children that were considered hard to place, due to things like having a sibling group, being over the age of 4, etc. This sounded like such a wonderful event that we could not wait to experience it. The picnic started at 11:30 and went until 2 pm, yes it was a short time but we made the best of it. At the picnic there was approximately 20 children and about 100 families, this made the day very akward because everyone was trying to find a way to spend time with the few children that were there. They had lots of different events and games that you could do to help interact with the children. While we were there we had the opportunity to interact with 3 different sibling sets that we were interested in and also a few other children that just looked like they wanted to have fun. Now I will tell you a little about the sibling sets we were interested in; One of the sibling sets that were there came as a big shocker to us when I figured out who they were. It was the sibling set of 3 that we had prayed so hard may be ours. We instantly informed our SW that they were there so she could question if they were still available since they were at the picnic. At which point she found their SW and inquired about them, we found out they were still availble. This brought hope for us again. Then we got to meet the childrens SW at which point we were informed that there were over 20 plus families that were interested in these children, our hopes were shattered a little. But at least we were able to play bubbles with them and enjoy spending time playing other games as well. Then there was also a sibling set of 2 little caucasion girls, Maliyah age 6 and Amiyah age 3. They were as adorable as could be, but slightly shy due to all the people. We got to play ball with them and that was a lot of fun. There was also a sibling set of a little african american boy and girl, D'Jon age 4 and Shamaya age 2. We had fun helping them wait to hit the piniata and getting as much candy as they could. This day could not have come at a better time to help lift our spirits. Now we had three sets of children we were going to be waiting to hear back on. Because at the end of the day we had the opportunity to choose which children we wanted to submit our homestudy for and let our SW know so she could make sure to follow up on them.