Last Tuesday, March 2nd, we had our second home visit, and yesterday, March 9th, was our home safety inspection. Both visits went really well.

Last week Mel and Nate made a very special trip, they went to the Broomfield Health and Human Services (HHS) office to drop off our paperwork, and get the approval process officially started. We are so excited. Next steps, Sherry, the foster care supervisor from HHS, starts the background process, we get fingerprinted and take the core training classes.

Tonight we had our first meeting with the Foster Coordinator for our county. Basically with was the orientation to the program. She had an outline in front of her, but said since it was just us we could just ask any questions we had. And so we did. By the end of the meeting she gave us the outline, and low-and-behold we'd covered everything on the outline and much more. Not to say we won't have a million more questions as time progresses, but we definitely have a good base of information. Sherry made us feel so comfortable, and was so easy to talk to.

This year we bought a fresh cage free turkey for American Thanksgiving. I chose to brine it and roast it wrapped in cheese cloth. It ended up being a ridiculously good bird - very moist and flavourful. It was so darn good, I thought I would write up the recipe I put together from several other recipes.

The Brine

The first step was to make a brine the morning before the day you plan on roasting the turkey. Brining a turkey is one of the best ways to produce and extraordinarily juicy and succulent meal.

2 cups of kosher salt 2 cups of sugar 1 1/2 gallons of water 1/2 gallon of orange juice 4 bay leaves 1 whole bulb of garlic various herbs and spices 2 teaspoons ground black pepper 1 whole lemon

Often the most overlooked people caught up in the typhoon of Reactive Attachment Disorder are the foster or adoptive parents. The fostadopt parent has done nothing but try and bring a child into their home with the intent of caring for and supporting that child. The fostadopt parent has had nothing to do with the child's previous experiences which were often brutal and neglectful. These experiences have twisted the behaviours of the child into strange patterns that bear little resemblance to a normal child but have to do with the child's survival mechanisms.

So what does this do the parent? Parents of the RAD child usually appear angry, rigid, emotionally distant, and rejecting. Friends and family may feel that the parent(s) overreact to the child's behaviour. What they don't know is that these parents almost never have a break from the child's behaviours which can include: