Some people take in stray animals... some people collect stamps...

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Not Me!  I take in and collect children!  So much more exciting than pets or stamps. 

I have my own four daughters, my grandson, another grandbaby on the way, and I also count in my "collection" several of my girls' friends who have stayed with us from time to time.  There are the neighbor girls, the kids we've hosted from Up with People and the exchange student we had for a school-year.  I still think about all of my little daycare kids (who are all in college now), and my DI and 4-H  kids.  They are all my kids. I have more kids in my little people collection than I can count. 

Gonna get one more!

We are going to host another exchange student. This one is a girl from The Netherlands. She'll be 17 when we get her, which isn't until August 2011.  A year away.  When we hosted Anna (student from Germany), we had a big whopping 20 minute notice and we kept her for 10 months.  Feels odd to have so much planning time, but that's probably good to have time to think things through. 

When I was in high school I was pretty good friends with one of the exchange students who attended our school in my senior year. Her name was Brigette  and she was so nice!  We kept in touch for a little bit after school, but like all of my other high school friends, I just quit making contact.  After I got into college, I shook off high school and didn't look back for a long time.  Too long.  Now with facebook, I've reconnected with many of my old high school friends and discovered how nice it is to have longtime friends back.  One of the friends I reconnected with is Brigette. 

Brigette's daughter is the exchange student we will be hosting.  How wonderful that I already know her mom and can communicate with her on facebook! In English!  We had a very big language barrier with the parents of our German exchange student. It would have been so nice to talk with her parents once in a while. Sometimes mom-to-mom is the best way to find out what our kids are doing.

We have already discussed some of the practical things about merging her into our family for a year, just to make sure she will fit in well.  Now we just need to do the official paperwork.  Looks like we have plenty of time to get ready. Sure looking forward to having another teenage "daughter"!