Family Thanksgiving


My grown children say that the best birth control in the world is to spend a few hours at my house.

Thanksgiving in foster and adoptive homes are totally different than in other families homes. First of all we try to make traditional dishes for all of our children. In my house that is a wide variety of foods. A few years ago trying to respect my children culture, I attempted to make tamales. My sister has adopted many times as well so we were going to do this together as a family bonding. Our hispanic teens assured us they had done it and it was easy they said. We do everything in a big way around here. So several roast cooked and a huge mess in my kitchen.

We are making tamales or something slightly resembling tamales and our teens have disappeared to watch TV. We spend hours completing this task. They were horrible and un-eatable. So if any of my hispanic Moms want to borrow my girls to teach them I would be eternally grateful.

So this year we are doing collard greens. Its easy they say!

Besides the ethnic dish challenge we contend with our children loss in their lives at Holidays. There are many emotions going on both happy at having a forever family to spend Holidays with and Sadness in the loss of all they knew before and all they loss. This comes out sometimes in very emotional and sometimes destructive ways.

We have found that starting our own family traditions has been helpful. Like making everyones favorite pie. Seemed like a good idea 10 years ago and now has grown to 25 pies each Thanksgiving.

The best thing you can do for foster/adoptive families is to pray for our children and for our sanity. May you all have a blessed Holiday season.

Comments