Around Mumsys is our guest on Blogazine!

I have to be one of the luckest bloggers in the world to keep receiving such great stories from all of you! This story will be one you want soon forget and neither will you forget the sweet lady that was kind enough to share it with us. Would you believe we share the same name Maggie! So welcome lovely Maggie to Blogazine and into your hearts!

I am new to Blogger and by no means am I on the same level as the wonderful blog writers I have found here. I told my hubby the other day how much I love reading the blogs on Blogger, but since starting mine i feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I am not a writer, I do not make and/or sell anything nor do I do any of the other things that I have found some of you do who blog here. I have seen the results of a lot of great talent on all the blogs I have visited.
I was surprised and a little nervous but I felt honored when Maggie asked me to write about myself for her Blogazine. Thank you, sweet Maggie.

My name is also Maggie. My oldest son began calling me “Mumsy” many years
ago so I use that name for all my online activities.

I knew at a very young age and dreamed of what I wanted to do when I grew up, most of which came to pass but not in the way I thought that it would. I wanted to have a wonderful, handsome husband, 12 children and be a nurse.
I started trying to fulfill that dream at a very young age. I married at 16 against my mother’s wishes and advice. That marriage ended after 10 years with the only good thing coming from it being a wonderful son. My ex took our son and left the state where we were living. With the help of a lady in our governor’s office I finally found him after 20 years. There is no way to describe the feeling I had when I held that man in my arms. He was 8 years old when he was taken from me and 28 when I saw him again. I only gave birth to the one son and after miscarrying and having to have a hysterectomy at the age of 29 I thought my dream of having 12 children had been crushed, but it hadn’t, my children were just going to come to me in a different way than I expected them to.

My first time to help a child was when I was about 11 years old, my sister was 9. There was a little girl who was probably between 2 and 3 years old that we would see on the street near our home now and then. We did not know where the little girl lived. She was always dirty and her hair was all in tangles. One day I told my sister that we were going to clean that little girl up. We took her inside our house, gave her a bath, washed and ironed her dress, shampooed and fixed her hair then put her back out on the street where we found her. We never saw the little girl again after that. Today I would never dare do anything like that for I am sure I would be accused of kidnapping or be sued for something. It was a summer day in 1950 when we cleaned that little girl up.

I moved back to Arkansas after my marriage ended and started a new life. A man I worked with kept telling me that I would get along well with his cousin and kept asking me to double date with him, his lady friend and his cousin. I was pretty much down on men coming out of an abusive marriage and kept refusing the invitation. He told me that his cousin looked like Kirk Douglas and he was the sweetest guy I would ever meet. After several months of him not giving up on asking me I finally told him if he would promise to leave me alone about dating for ever after I would go out one time with his cousin.

The four of us went out one Saturday night. The only thing about his cousin that looked like Kirk Douglas was the way he combed his hair, but he was right about the guy being the sweetest one I would ever meet. We saw each other every night and some days after that and married 6 months later. That was over 40 years ago and we are still together and enjoy life very much. My hubby and son were abandoned by his first wife. His son was a teenager when we married, he and I got along from the get go and have a wonderful relationship still.

After we had been married 3 years we became foster parents for the state of Arkansas and for our local humane society. We fostered children for a little over 18 years and adopted 5 of our foster children.

Most of the children we took in were special needs children. After the first few years we only parented and cared for drug babies, severely physically abused babies, sexually abused babies, aids babies, babies who were not expected to live long or had extreme disabilities and those that were failure to thrive. That brought about my wish to become a nurse. I do not have a degree in nursing but I have been taught many procedures and care tactics that are performed by nurses. I learned about disorders, diseases, machines and medical terms and issues that I never knew existed until we began caring for those precious little babies with little or no hope of living for long or at all.

We saw many children find loving adoptive parents, some reunited with biological parents and some went to live with grandparents or other relatives. We still see and hear from some of them once in awhile. I still remember every child well and miss them and think about them often.

We are now retired from fostering children and my hubby has retired from carrying the mail. We still take in animals we find in need of a home if we have the room and the means to care for them although we no longer foster for the humane society either. Enough of those sweet critters find their way to us without us being foster parents. We now have 3 dogs, 3 cats, 2 guinea pigs and a hamster that keep us entertained.
Hubby and I enjoy working in the yard and piddling around the house. We have 5 wonderful grands, 3 boys and 2 girls and 2 precious great grands a boy and a girl.

My cup of dreams is running over with much more than I could ever have hoped for, I have a terrific hubby, 7 children and those precious grands. I was blessed to have cared for 117 precious foster children and as many or more sweet critters. Then to find such wonderful people here at Blogger, the blessings just keep coming. I love life and I am so thankful for everyone and everything that I share it with.

Mumsy’s Place http://flashpages.prodigy.net/millmag/Index.htm is my personal website where I have true stories about some of the children and critters if you would be interested in learning more about me and my life and then I also have my blog here on Blogger http://aroundmumsys.blogspot.com/

Borrowing the words from a song…who could ask for anything more?

Wow what a genuine loving person to come into our lives. Aren't we lucky to have met this Maggie today? I can not thank you enough Maggie for writing this for all of us. You are a blessing!

Remember everyone has a story to tell and we would love to read yours on one of the Blogazine post. So don't be shy send in your story to grandmayellowhairsblogazine@gmail.com....  be sure and include a picture too.

Love to all
Maggie