New Beginnings
I am a mother of 5 children and 5 grandchildren. When I raised my first three children (now grown with children of their own; thus, the grandkids), I was unable to stay at home with them because I was a single mother trying to support three kids on very little income. They were kind of latch key kids in a way. After the third one left home, I was feeling the empty nest syndrome very strongly and was not ready to be without kids at home.
I had gotten remarried by that point in time, and my husband and I decided we wanted to adopt a baby through the state DHS system. We were told that was almost impossible because the waiting list was so long for infants. We were also told that it might work in our favor if we fostered them first, so we went through the foster care classes and started fostering kids in our home. We fostered a few older children, and then we received an infant named Sean who was 2 weeks old.
I fell in love with Sean immediately, and it was like he was ours from the beginning. He was not legally free for adoption for awhile, but then his parents ended up giving up their rights, and we started the adoption process when he was about 15 months old. During that time, I was feeling sad that he would never know any of his true blood relatives and would feel alone, so my husband and I prayed for God to bring us another child. Our prayer was something like this: "God, we want Sean to be raised with a sibling, and we are asking that you bring another baby to us; preferably a girl who can be raised with him. I know this is asking a lot, but maybe you could even have her look like him so they feel like real brother and sister".
The next DAY, my husband and I went to lunch, and DHS called during our lunch. They said that they had a little girl who was 3 days old who was going straight into adoption because her mother gave her over to them immediately after having her. They asked if we might be interested in adopting her too, and we immediately said yes. Then, as almost an afterthought they said, "Oh, and she just HAPPENS to be Sean's full-blood SISTER!" I get goosebumps every time I think about it! Anyway, we ended up adopting her too, and they are no 12 and 10 (almost 11).
Once we adopted Sean and Sarah (Sean was already named, but we named Sarah), I gave up a great paying job to stay at home with them. I started with an EBay business about 11 years ago and have been steadily working that through the years. I kept seeing Etsy mentioned when I would do searches for items, and I went to the site to investigate further. I wasn't sure what I was doing, but I just started listing things. I am new to Etsy and just joined in November, but I am enjoying it immensely. Even though the kids are older now, I have never had a desire to go back to work outside the home as there is hardly a a day that goes by that I don't need to go to one of the kids' schools to attend a party, an outing, deliver a forgotten lunch or homework, talk to a teacher, etc. There are times when it is very challenging on one income with me just bringing in bits here and there to help with the household income, but I know that is what I am supposed to do.
I love the hunt of finding a good bargain, and I love finding unique items that just look cool to me. I don't know a lot about Vintage or Antique items, so I am learning as I go. I can usually kind of tell if something is old or not, but sometimes I have to search a lot to try to find a brand or worth of an item before listing it. I believe in honesty, integrity, and good service, and I try to treat others that way I would want to be treated.
I plan to continue searching for trinkets and growing my Etsy business one day at a time. Afterall, we are not promised a tomorrow, so whatever I can do today counts.