Jessica Kelso

Sunday was Kevin’s surprise party that I’d been working on since about a month before his actual birthday. Our friend Jared’s birthday is at the end of this month and Kevin’s was at the end of July, so they had made a comment about having a combined birthday party for the both of them. Jared’s wife Rachel and myself kind of just shrugged it off when they mentioned it but we secretly thought it was a great idea.  We told them we were going on a picnic after church and then to a water park and they were actually pretty excited about the water park. I don’t think they were too excited for the picnic though! We said we had to work in the nursery at church and after that we were going to get food for our picnic and asked the guys to just meet us down at the park behind our church. Little did they know, we had been decorating and picking up pizzas/cakes most of the morning instead of being in the nursery. When they got to the park and all of our friends were there, I think they were slightly confused seeing as how Kevin’s birthday had already came and went and Jared’s was still a couple of weeks away. We had patriotic decorations, pizza, a yummy carrot cake, huge super soaker water guns, and water balloons. Oh, and a pickle cake! Kevin loves pickles and loves cake, so I had someone make him his own small pickle cake. (I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of it!!) He’s been talking about this cake he had planned to make when he was little and never got the chance so I’ve been wanting to get one made for him and thought this was the perfect opportunity. Tina @ Fresco’s in downtown Lakeland made it for us. Quite a few of us tried it, and some said it was “okay” but I think the final decision was that pickles and cake don’t belong together. The carrot cake she made was absolutely amazing!  After cake, the guys played some kickball and had a water gun war. It was pretty funny watching grown men act like little boys for the day. When the girls got the guns away from them, we had a little fun ourselves. I unfortunately didn’t get hardly any pictures, but two of our photographer friends were taking pictures, so hopefully they got some good shots. I can’t wait to see them!

Kevin added a donation button to my blog. We’re not usually ones to accept money, and we definitely don’t like ASKING for it but we’ve had a couple friends ask how they can help us in preparing for having foster babies. . .  and money is the best thing we can come up with. Hand-me-downs are really good too! With the age range that we are doing (newborn – two), there are quite a few things we are going to need and are very fortunate to have amazing friends and family so we’re very hopeful that with everyone’s help we’ll have everything we need!

Today was Kelso Yard Sale 2k9 and now we’re Kelso’s Are Laid Up On The Couch 2K9. A couple of years ago I helped Kevin run a small sale at his duplex and I organized one at my parent’s house when I was younger, but this was my first REAL yard sale. We didn’t  have a ton of stuff, but I felt like it was enough to try and make some money. I offered to have a multi-family garage sale, and that is definitely what we had! It was chaotic at times, but mostly it stayed organized. Next time I will definitely wait until the cooler months because at times I was sweating in places I didn’t know could sweat, but I can’t complain too much after the turn out we had! It was posted in the newspaper,  Craigslist, and on Facebook. . . along with signs all around our area. A couple of times we had a steady line of people waiting to check out. I’m pretty sure we made close to $700-$800 total (all families included)! It was amazing. We still had a massive amount of things left over so all of it was donated. I was even able to grab some things for us in the process. After this last week at our foster class, I realized we could become foster parents as soon as November and have nothing but a couple of hand-me-down boy clothes from my sister in law. With the age range that we are planning to parent (newborn – two) there is a wide range of things we are going to need. Now I have a whole bin of different size clothing and a couple of toys. I know that’s not much but some good friends have offered to throw us a baby shower when it comes closer to the time so that will help out a lot too! We’re getting super excited the closer this comes to really happening. We’re trying to mentally prepare ourselves for what all will be changing in our lives, but since that is pretty much EVERYTHING. . . there is only so much preparing we can do! Each week in our class we hear more and more stories from other foster parents and how many children out there that need a good home and we know we are doing the right thing.