Just a sip of Coffey

 As September 11th gets closer, I have been thinking about our trajectories in life. Many people who were in the towers that day or in any of the hijacked planes were in those places because of previous events and decisions that put them there in the first place. Are their people who should have been in those places and weren't because they made ever so slightly different decisions? Most likely.  This thinking may be a bit selfish on my part because it makes me think about my life now, and how no matter how indirectly, this one day when I was a mere 12 year old girl would impact the way I live my life.  If we flash back to September 11, 2001 young Sam Coffey was in his 9th grade year. Upon seeing news reports of the events of the day, this teen made the decision that he would join the military. While he grew up with grandpas and uncles in the military, nothing was so compelling as this day to sway him to his decision to join. If you would have spoken to Sam on this day, I...

On August 25, 2021 our lives changed forever. We got the long awaited call for two children who needed a place to stay. We picked up these two children from the Christmas Box House later that day, and met the two most afraid children we have ever met in our lives. I feel the need to express my feelings about the past 6 months as a way to heal as well as write to remember our experiences.  I can’t even begin to express my feelings on this topic. Our kiddos moved on to a wonderful adoptive home about a week ago, and I didn’t realize that I could feel so many different emotions all at the same time.  The children had been living with us for a few months when we got word that the goal for their case was adoption. As two people who were expecting to foster multiple children before actually adopting any children, we felt overwhelmed. We discussed this topic from October on, and went back and forth with our decision daily. Sam and I fell in love with these kiddos pretty quickly and r...

   It has been forever since I have written a blog post, and I have drafted a few in the past year but haven't posted them. A lot has been going on in our little world over here and I feel like I want to share with my people. Since Sam and I have known each other, we have always known that we wanted to foster children and adopt as many as we can sustain in our household--two at a time. Our 10-year anniversary was this year, and in January, we decided that it has been long enough and we are ready to open our home to a little more love since we have a lot to give. We knew this would be a huge commitment but felt like we are finally ready and have the space to grow our family. We started taking foster classes through Utah Foster Care in March and finished by mid-April with everything we needed to do to prepare for a home study. For those of you that don't know much about foster care, a long list is given to families of what they need to do to be ready to foster children. On the l...

I have had many thoughts over the past few days, and I'm sure most of you have as well. Whether or not people care what I have to say, I've decided to put it out there. When I was in 6th grade, my teacher would put daily quotes on the board for us to put in our journals...one of them I remember well that has been at the front of my mind lately is "Watch your thoughts; for they become your words. Watch your words; for they become your actions. Watch your actions; for they become habits. What your habits; for they become your character. Watch your character; for it will become your destiny." -Frank Outlaw. I've been thinking so much about our world today and what is happening, we have become a society that is mean. Do we ever have anything nice to say to one another? This is not to say that I haven't seen some amazing people do amazing things, and seen people that are absolutely wonderfully kind; I am just saying look at your social media feed. How much of it is...

As this first overseas deployment comes to a close(or a near close), I have been thinking about what I have learned, and I'd like to share. When we found out about deployment, I clung to the present, hoping that if I clung on hard enough, leave day would never come; well, let's get real...it doesn't work that day. As deployment came closer, I was really doubting myself and my ability to handle the house, car, dogs, and life in general by myself. Struggling with anxiety my entire life, and even worse the past few years, I was quite terrified that this was going to be the worst thing that would ever happen to me. I knew that we'd be apart for an anniversary, a milestone birthday for Sam, and 189 other days that we would not be together. I have learned a lot about what it is like to live alone and to manage without a partner for a longer period of time...the first and most important thing is; It's not that bad! I don't mean to say that I love being alone, I just me...

Since my last blog post, my husband Sam has encouraged me to continue writing, so here it goes. Last week, my sister and I got talking about this component of my anxiety called emetophobia...ever heard of it?  The definition of  Emetophobia  is an intense phobia that causes overwhelming, intense anxiety pertaining to vomiting. This specific phobia can also include subcategories of what causes the anxiety, including a fear of vomiting in public, a fear of seeing vomit, a fear of watching the action of vomiting or fear of being nauseated.  So I guess this is a pretty big deal for me...definitely not my only anxiety trigger, but it's a big one. For people who have known me my whole life pretty much know this is serious for me, but never have I ever met anyone with the same issues....so as I was talking to my sister, we started to wonder if their are others who share this deep rooted fear of Barf/Vomit/Puke/Throw up or whatever else ya'll call it...other people ob...