Sandy Carpenter joins the podcast in honor of Mother's Day to share her story of her daughters becoming a Carpenter. Discover her journey of foster care and adoption — the challenges and the happy moments.
Guest Sandy Carpenter, Executive Director with Avamere Living at Berry Park in Oregon City, is joined with podcast co-host Shaelynn Miller, current foster mom, for a mom-to-mom chat.
Sandy Carpenter joins the podcast in honor of Mother's Day to share her story of her daughters becoming a Carpenter. Discover her journey of foster care and adoption — the challenges and the happy moments.
Guest Sandy Carpenter, Executive Director with Avamere Living at Berry Park in Oregon City, is joined with podcast co-host Shaelynn Miller, current foster mom, for a mom-to-mom chat.
Shaelynn Miller: Passions, beliefs, life stories, helpful resources for the senior living journey. Discover all here on the People of Avamere Pod as we get to know our residents, employees, and partners one-on-one. I'm Shaelynn Miller, your co-host stepping in for Thomas Cloutier. Welcome to the People of Avamere Pod.
This month, we're honoring several notable observances, including Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, National Nurses Week, and Mother's Day. Follow any Avamere community on Facebook or Avamere Health Services on Instagram to see all the ways we're honoring these observances.
In recognition of Mother's Day, we're meeting Sandy Carpenter, Executive Director with Avamere Living at Berry Park in Oregon City. Sandy is a mom of two teenage daughters, Keara and Kendra. She adopted both girls after fostering for a little over two years, Sandy earned her MBA in healthcare management in early 2020, and worked for Avamere for two years.
Welcome, Sandy!
Sandy Carpenter: I am excited to be here.
Shaelynn Miller: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to meet with you today because we're going to talk about a topic that I'm passionate about, and I know you're passionate about. You are a former foster mom and now adoptive mother to these two beautiful ladies.
So we'll talk about your journey here. Where did your interest in fostering begin?
Sandy Carpenter: It's a good question. So I think fostering or adopting is something I always kind of had my heart, and my husband and I, when I realized I was going to be having some infertility issues, we entertained the fact, we kind of, in our mind had this pretty picture of that we would try to have a bio kid and then we would adopt down the road. But, you know, life never happens the way you want it to happen. But that we both kind of have that idea in our head that we would like to do that - adopt. We just didn't know about fostering yet. Well, we didn't, we hadn't thought about fostering yet.
We were first just looking at maybe adopting from another country, but then we kind of gradually went into looking at fostering.
Shaelynn Miller: Wow. So what was it about fostering when, when you finally kind of did make it over to that fostering area, what was it about foster care that you were like, wow, this is right for us, this is our path?
Sandy Carpenter: It was really the idea of kids in our own backyard needing help. And I know there's kind of in the adoption community, there can be a controversy between adopting overseas or adopting, you know, locally. My thought is all kids need homes and whatever your path is, that's great for you. We just felt like we wanted to support kids in our own community that really needed it.
Shaelynn Miller: Love that. Absolutely. It is so, so needed, especially with the foster care crisis. Like these kids really need supportive and loving homes. So thank you. Thank you for opening your home. How long did it take to become certified? What was that process like for you and your husband Rob?
Sandy Carpenter: So we first just kind of went online and started doing some research. And then we signed up for an informational session. So we went to that and then started taking classes. I think you can do classes online now, but this was 10 years ago. So we actually did several weekends where we did all day on the weekend and we both went. We could have actually had just one of us be certified and that would have worked, but we both really wanted to be there and soak up all the knowledge. So it was, I don't remember, maybe a month or more of classes. And then it took a while to be certified because you've got to do background checks. They do a home study. So I think we started in January and maybe we're finally certified by April or may of 2006.
Shaelynn Miller: Wow. That's actually faster than I thought it would be. My process personally was pretty lengthy, so, wow. I'm surprised to hear that, but that's awesome. That home study process, what was that like? I know for me, they told us that it would be very in depth. But once you're like in it, for me, it was very shocking just how in depth they get into your life, not just your current life, but your childhood and how you were raised. What was that like going through your whole life with someone who's essentially a stranger?
Sandy Carpenter: It was a lot. I remember lots of paperwork and the thing that kept kind of hitting home to me is that anybody can be a biological parent, but they really put you through the ringer as a foster parent, which I can understand, there's rules and regulations that need to be followed, but it was just kind of an amazing contrast between all every little thing that you knew bio parent probably wouldn't have even had in their home or had to have their background looked into. And again, it's understandable. You don't want to give kids to just anybody, but it was, it was just a weird kind of feeling to think that if we had had kids natural, nobody would be coming to our home. Nobody would be looking and making sure our medicines were locked up or all that, but it's just kind of the way it happened. It just was, I do remember being a lot and also didn't realize they were going to look that far back into your life. But it does make sense of why, but it was a lot. And we still have locks on our cupboards today just cause we never took the baby locks off. Just things like that, that, you know, we're still left over from foster parenthood.
Shaelynn Miller: Yeah, totally. It definitely makes sense. And I know the way they explained it to us was these children are coming from homes where they may have been neglected. They may have experienced severe abuse. And so the reason they're so thorough in these background checks is because they want to make sure that these kids from coming from these environments are in a very stable home. And so when they put it like that, it totally makes sense. But yeah, it doesn't, it still doesn't take away from the fact that it is a lot. And it's hard. It's hard to go through some of that, but I would say the kids are definitely worth it.
Sandy Carpenter: Absolutely.
Shaelynn Miller: So walk me through that first day as a foster parent, what was that like?
Sandy Carpenter: It was really interesting because I know a lot of friends that I had in the foster community would just get, you know, called in the middle of the night and the kid dropped on them, which we weren't sure what was going to happen. But our story's a little different. We got a call in June of 2012, about two little girls who ended up becoming our daughters. But at the time they were in California with grandparents and were actually in a YMCA program that their grandparents wanted them to finish. So we actually had a couple of months to prepare, which was rare and the foster community, it was helpful because we felt we could get their rooms ready.
We knew it was two girls. So we knew their ages. We knew kind of the basics to get, which a lot of people don't in the fostering community. So that was a nice advantage. So that first day we knew more about them than some people would, we'd had some phone calls with them beforehand, but it was still just overwhelming.
We just kept looking at ourselves like, oh my gosh, they're here, they're here. And it was, it was fun. It was, it was nervous, but it was fun because the girls had so much energy and they were actually in a great mood. I mean, things came out later, but that first, you know, a little while. It was actually fun.
The girls ran around the house, they were looking to see what their rooms were. They each had their own room and they hadn't had their own room before. So that was really fun for them. They were trying to, you know, torture our cat a little bit. So it was actually fun for the first little while, but we just, it just felt surreal too.
We just kept looking at ourselves going, oh my gosh, we've got kids in our house and it was this kind of amazing.
Shaelynn Miller: Yeah, that is certainly a rare occasion to have several months to prepare like that. And how old were your daughters when they were welcomed into your home?
Sandy Carpenter: They were five and six.
Shaelynn Miller: When you think back on your time of fostering, what do you remember most?
Sandy Carpenter: I think I remember most just you just don't realize how many hoops you've got to jump through and all of the, the things you've gotta be careful about. And it was a, it's kind of a blur now, but it was a lot of having to make sure that you were doing things by the book that you will let the social worker know if something happened. What surprised me one time is that one of our girls had to go to the ER and it was something minor, but then there was a whole investigation afterwards.
And I, again, I understand why, but it was, nobody had told me that. So it was a little, it was a little scary because you're kind of realizing that you really want. Parenting them alone. You and the state are co-parenting even if you're the one making the decisions right then and feeding them and all that, you still had to be so careful.
And I wouldn't say that to discourage anyone from fostering. It's just the reality of it. It's definitely not like just, you know, long-term babysitting or something.
Shaelynn Miller: Absolutely. I can totally relate to that. Like whenever a child in your care, even just like the littlest scrapes, it's like, oh my gosh, like I got to make sure I document this. I got to say what happened, take lots of pictures. And then you have the worry of, just like you mentioned, is this going to bring up an investigation? You know, it's scary. How long did your investigation last?
Sandy Carpenter: It was just a couple of days and they wanted to find out what happened. I talked to someone on the phone and then I got something in the mail that it was unsubstantiated. So it was fine, but it's just a scary process. It was a good thing that I had other foster parent friends at the time that were like, oh, this is normal. It happens. Don't worry. That was a huge help. It's just having this online and in person, there were several foster parents I had met during our time in our class. And online, there was like a Facebook group to kind of lean on and I still am friends with a lot of those people to this day.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, good. Yeah. That's support is so, so key. So key. Were you able to lean onto your family and these friends for respite care when you needed it?
Sandy Carpenter: Yes. I have an amazing mother-in-law who lives close by and was really involved in this whole process. She's been rooting, you know, for us to be parents from the beginning.
And so she would take the girls sometimes when we needed it or. Make some food and bring it over for dinner because I was working. I mean, my husband, I still worked during this process. So I wouldn't have to worry about cooking when I got home. So she was a huge help. And then we had a great social worker too, who would also also point us in the right direction of things we needed.
It was super helpful. And then daycare helped to, after a while we were like, okay, we need daycare after school, before school. And that helped a lot.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, good. Yeah. That is so needed to have that help. So you fostered your daughters for a little over two years before becoming a forever family through adoption. So tell me about that experience. What was it like for you and Rob and your daughters?
Sandy Carpenter: Well, the thing that I always like to say is that experience. And I would tell this to my girls too adoption isn't always a happy thing. It involves loss that the girls had to say goodbye to their biological mother. They had to the court had to terminate her rights, which is just a hard thing.
It was, and they were old enough to understand some people have babies and they don't understand that process, but they had to go through that. So it was kind of a lengthy court thing. And that was hard because I had so much empathy for my girls' biological mother, because I couldn't imagine what it would be like, but you also know the other circumstances that sometimes makes it hard to be empathetic, but I never wanted my girls to think that I thought any less of their biological mother. I wanted them to understand that adoption comes with loss and it's not always pretty. And it's okay to be sad. That's the thing I always like to reiterate is that just remember there's so many emotions involved and it might be happy for the people on our end who waited nine years to be parents.
And it was a huge deal for us and the girls were happy to be adopted, but I always wanted to recognize that along with that, there is loss. Recognize that, and not feel like the girls' lives begin with us. They have this whole history of things they went through before us, but their adoption day was super happy and we had a party and it was, we had so many friends and family that came out, they just packed the courtroom.
It was just a really, it was a really beautiful time. We were just all bawling up there and cause you know, it was, it was over nine years of infertility and wanting to be parents. And then our girls were pretty spoiled because of that. We joke about, we had like nine years of pent up parenting. So they, they had lots of big stuffed animals and they were totally spoiled, which is, you know, good and bad thing.
But that's what happens when you wait nine years to be parents. But it was, it was mostly an exciting time, but like I said, there's definitely lots of feelings that happened mixed in there.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, of course. Yeah. I think you bring up an excellent point. You know, you're gaining more family through adoption, but you're right. There's also loss. There's also loss of their mother, their family. Are they still able to have contact with their biological mother?
Sandy Carpenter: They don't right now. But they have a sister who they share, they share biology with their biological mom and their sister they see sometimes. So that's been good for them to have that connection and not feel like they, you know, their history is completely lost to.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, good. That's good to have that connection there. So as you know, as we both know, in foster care, the first goal is reunification. And if that can not be achieved than adoption or guardianship is considered. So how did you and Rob your daughters feel in that moment? When they said, okay, we're changing the plan to adoption.
Sandy Carpenter: So the way that it worked is the girls plan was always, well, when we got them, they were already looking at adoption. It wasn't finalized yet, but they had been in the system long enough for reunification to probably not so much beyond the table anymore. They came from their grandparents to us. Their grandparents were supposed to adopt them. So they'd already had adoption on their plan. But when they came to us, we knew there was a lot of hoops to jump through still. So we would talk to them about that. They would probably get, we call it becoming a Carpenter. That's my last name. So they were excited about that and would ask all the time.
And when we finally found out we had an adoption date, that was super exciting. And we even made a little sign. I didn't send you the picture, but we have a sign where it says when we're finally getting adopted date and everything on it. So we were all excited. They were excited too. Cause they, I know that they had wanted permanent so much that they were, they were still worried they were going to have to move. I think even up to the point of being adopted, at least my older one who remembered more did. So it was really exciting to just know they're not going anywhere.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, wow. So even from the moment they were placed with you, adoption had been brought up. And it wasn't until two and a half years later that it was official. So that's a long timeline.
Sandy Carpenter: Yes, it was a lot. It was a lot of them questioning us, and the girls, you know, when will we be adopted or when will we become Carpenters? And, you know, we were 90% sure, but there was still that doubt in your mind. Like what if somebody, some other families hoops in or what happens in that?
I mean, that's the, a lot of adoptive parents have gone through that, so it's, it's really nerve wracking. So it was really exciting to finally have an adoption date.
Shaelynn Miller: That's so great. So looking back, what's something you wish you knew about the fostering and adoption journey?
Sandy Carpenter: I think just how hard it can be. I mean, they try to prepare you, the people who training you in the classes do a great job, but you just never know until you're in the trenches.
Especially I think I would emphasize more in a foster class about the honeymoon period and how there is definitely one. And when it's over, it's over and can be really rough. Our girls just have a lot of behaviors because they, you know, I mean, think about all they've been through. There was just a lot they were dealing with, there was grief going on.
There was, you know beyond that, just other learning disabilities, some of my girls had, so there was some of that challenges as well. And then I was trying to navigate all that and then never having been parents before on top of that. I've known people who were parents before and then decided to foster and adopt.
And yeah, it's a different process, but at least you've been apparent before we we were told many times that we were just thrown into this and had to swim and we swam, we did it, but it was, it was rough. There is definitely a honeymoon period. It's been great and it's this new environment, it's really fun.
And then when it's over, it's over. And we had counselors that always let us know if the kids have big behaviors, it's because they trust you. So you had to kind of hang on to that because everything else just made you feel like I'm not doing this right. I did believe that, that they trusted us enough to have, you know, to show this vulnerable side of themselves. And we got through it, but it was not easy.
Shaelynn Miller: I am so glad you said that Sandy, because I completely agree. And I'm glad there's someone else who feels the same way on hanging on to that of they're expressing these behaviors because they feel safe. Because it is so, so, so hard. It's so hard. And so thank you for saying that. Like, I mean, I completely agree.
Sandy Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. It can be really difficult, but it's worth it.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh yes, 100% worth it. As a foster parent, what resources did you find helpful?
Sandy Carpenter: I'm a foster parent in Southwest Washington called Bridge the Gap. Bridge the Gap is a charity that actually helps foster kids be able to do activities and things like that.
So through that, they were able to take swim lessons, some other things like that, that was a huge help because the girls got to feel some normalcy. I think of just being a kid that gets to go and swim and do ballet. That was a huge resource, as well as the state being able to get us daycare. Like I mentioned before for the girls before and after school, that helped a ton.
And then just having an amazing social worker who was there anytime we needed to call her email or whatever.
Shaelynn Miller: Awesome. Thank you for sharing. What advice do you have for fellow parents who are currently fostering or even currently adopting?
Sandy Carpenter: I would say just hang in there. I think a big part of it is just waiting, waiting, waiting, especially if you're wanting to adopt, there's just such a weight.
And I remember just crying at night just thinking, oh my God, just so much fear of what happens if these kids don't end up with us forever. And that of course is on the adoption side of it. And I think just have faith that I feel like our daughters were meant to be. And I think things will work out when I'm meant to be.
I know that's, I don't want it to be a platitude, but it's just so true in our case. And then if you're just setting out to foster, again one thing that I hear people say a lot about fostering: oh, I can never foster. I get too attached to the kids. And my response to that, which I've heard before in the fostering community is your heart can take it. These kids can't. You can take the connecting with a kid, your heart being in it, and then having to move on. That kid needs that attachment that you were able to provide for her however long. And you as the adult will get over it, even if it's hard.
We did have one little boy we fostered for just a weekend after we had the girls for about a year. I fell in love with him over three days. And it was so hard to let him go, but we were just there as part of his story for those three days until he moved on to where he needed to go. And I think that's the biggest thing in fostering is that kids need that connection and attachment. Whether you feel like you can't foster because you'd become attached.
Well, those kids need that attachment. You know, you can get through it. The kids would suffer more not having enough people in the system than having somebody who's worried about, you know, moving, having them move along. The kids just need that. So I hope I explained that well enough.
Shaelynn Miller: You did. Exactly. Get too attached. That's what the kids need. It's exactly what they need.
Sandy Carpenter: Yeah. You need that love and support even if it's just for a little while.
Shaelynn Miller: Exactly. So Mother's Day is coming up. What's Mother's Day like for you and your daughters?
Sandy Carpenter: Mother's Day was always a hard one for me. I mean, all those nine years when we suffered from infertility, I wouldn't go to church on that day because they always did something to recognize mothers.
And then my first Mother's Day even was difficult just because it was kind of surreal. And we didn't know if we were keeping the girls. And so it was just, it's always been a little weird for me, I think because there, you know, no matter how in, in my heart and our, in my children's heart, they know that I'm their mom, society still likes to call adoptive mothers, adopted moms, or even like step parents, step parents, or, you know, it's like, we're all parents. And I feel like you can be a mom to that kid down the street that you feed all the time, or you can be a mom to your kid's friend who doesn't have the best home life.
Those are all ways of parenting or mothering. And I always say that there's a lot of, kind of too much distinction, I think, between a birth parent and an adoptive parent, that's always been a little bit hard for me. As the years have gone by, it's been a little better.
You just, after a while, you just don't think about it. Your kids are your kids. But there are definitely times where I'll watch a movie or a news show or something, and they'll say so-and-so's adoptive parent. And I just think they're just a parent. Why can't we just be parents? Why'd we have to have all these labels and differentiate, you know, unless there's a reason, like in this interview, of course we're talking about adoption, but for the most part, it that's always been hard for me. It's like, why do we have to distinguish?
Shaelynn Miller: Thank you for sharing, Sandy. That is such an excellent point. Yeah. There's so many different types of mothers and fathers and I'm at the end of the day, they're mothers and fathers. Thank you for sharing. So let's get to know more about you, Sandy. So you have quite a story here on your education. So tell me about your education.
Sandy Carpenter: So my girls, we'd had them about a year, and I had decided I wanted to go back and finish my bachelor's degree. I went off into the working world and didn't finish my degree and I just thought it would be, well, I wanted a career advancement and I also thought it would be great example to my daughters to go back to school.
So I did Warner Pacific's adult to reprogram, which is here in Portland. And I went back. Let's see. So it was a 2013, cause we'd gotten the girls in 2012. So. Really the girls were my inspiration and my husband and my mother-in-law were amazing. Again, making sure that the kids got taken care of while I wrote paper after paper, after paper.
And then I graduated in 2016 with a double major in business administration and human development. And actually, you know how you can write something on your graduation cap? I had put the girls middle names on there. We had given them new middle names of Hope and Joy actually, which was really a neat, special thing for us to be able to do when we adopted them.
So my cap and gown said Hope and Joy as a little nod to them. I'm going to have a picture of me kneeling with you where you can see the back of my cap and the girl standing next to me on my graduation. So that was a really special moment. And then a couple of years later, I decided I wanted to go back and get a master's degree to really be able to do what I wanted to do, which was work with seniors.
When I was getting my bachelor's degree, I had to take human development classes to have enough credits to graduate. And I took an adult development course. And in that adult development course was a whole portion about aging and death and dying and that sort of thing. And it just really spoke to me when I was younger.
I wanted to work with seniors and never did. I was really close to my grandparents and a lot of older people in my church. And I just started thinking, you know, what if I go back and get a master's degree, maybe that's something that I can do. I actually thought maybe I would be a nursing home administrator.
So I did Western Governors University's program for an MBA, and it's an MBA in healthcare management. And I graduated from that in the very beginning of 2020. Little did we know what was coming down the pipeline. And then, so actually it started with Avamere in the summer of 2020 as an executive director in training.
So right in the middle of the pandemic. So I kind of, haven't known senior living without masks and all of the stuff we face every day, but it's been really amazing to go through all of this education and then see that I'm getting to do something I really love because of it. It's been super exciting.
And again more inspiration for my daughters to hopefully go to school and do something they really love when they're older.
Shaelynn Miller: So was Avamere kind of your first introduction to the senior living and healthcare field?
Sandy Carpenter: It was. Yeah. So my degree, we did things related to healthcare, you know, an MBA with a healthcare focus, but I knew I needed to start somewhere in training because I didn't have that background that some people do in healthcare.
Some people who've been nurses or things like that. So the executive director in training program is really what helped me get my feet wet in senior living and just learning all of the things that I learned in that time. It's been almost a couple of weeks to almost two years in June now it'll be that I've been with the company and I've just loved it.
I especially love what I call my little old people and all of the amazing things they have to share. And it's been a really great road.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, that's great. So you started out at Avamere at Sandy, which is so appropriate given your first name. And now you're at Avamere Living at Berry Park.
Sandy Carpenter: And we're all independent living in Oregon city. And we've got a great community. We have great staff here. I really love this building and it's been great coming back here. I was here for a while, went to Sandy and came back.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, wonderful. Let's talk about some of your hobbies. You like to sing karaoke. What's your favorite song to sing?
Sandy Carpenter: Well, my favorite go-to karaoke song is like, no, is it like a, like a prayer from Madona. That's just a good one. So I love that one and I love a lot of old country songs. And I did, I used to sing karaoke a lot at the Sandy building. I haven't really done much at Berry Park, but once the word gets out and the probably have sing some karaoke for them too.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, yeah. If anyone's listening to this podcast at Berry Park , you're probably going to see them coming to your office door. So you also love to read and listen to audio books. What are you currently reading or listening to?
Sandy Carpenter: I do a lot of audio books now because I have kind of a commute living in Vancouver, but right now the one I'm listening to is by the same author. I listened to one book by her and then the other one it's called the Forest of Vanishing Stars. Her name is Kristin Harmel and I can't remember the other book I wrote read by her, but it's basically, it's kind of a historical novels set in World War II. And I used to never really like those novels because the Nazis are so mean, but it was a really good book. I think she has more than one book on World War II .
Okay, I'm looking it up just so I can tell you the name of it. Oh, The Book of Lost Names. That was the first one I read by her. And now I'm reading the Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmell is her name and it's really good. And sometimes audio books are even more fun to listen to because you have actors that are kind of bringing the characters to life.
So I really loved that, but I've been a reader since fourth grade. When my mom got me the Babysitter's Club books. I don't know if you've ever read those, but that totally got me into reading. And it's my favorite thing to do.
Shaelynn Miller: Awesome. So are those World War II books, are they fiction or non-fiction?
Sandy Carpenter: They're fiction, but they're kind of based on true events. The one I'm reading right now is about a woman who was raised in the forest and she actually helped Jews that escaped into the forest to survive. And I'm waiting till the end, because they're going to tell the true story. So I'm really excited to hear about that.
Shaelynn Miller: Wow. Thank you for sharing. What's your go-to snack?
Sandy Carpenter: Oh, my go-to snack. That's a good question. I love hummus. So I like to do a lot of veggies and hummus or pita and hummus. That's probably my favorite, roasted red pepper hummus. That's the best kind.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, yum. My husband has been making homemade hummus.
Sandy Carpenter: Oh, that's the best.
Shaelynn Miller: So good. Well, thank you for sharing, Sandy. Before I ask you this last question here, is there anything else that you would like to share about yourself or fostering or adopting?
Sandy Carpenter: I gave my family a lot of credit for helping, but I wanted to just reiterate what a great partner my husband has been in all this. He's a funny guy. And there are things that we learned from fostering that he still uses to this day.
So one thing that we learned instead of timeouts for kids, you do a time in where they need more attention. So you have them stay by your side and do an activity or something. So if our cats are misbehaving, he'll grab them up and say they need a time in. So I don't know why I told you that, but it's just hope he's a funny guy, but he learned that from fostering
Shaelynn Miller: I love that. And it's so true because especially, I think this is going to apply to any kids, whether you're in foster care or not. They really need help working through their emotions, understanding their emotions, and so leaving them alone to deal with their emotions can be really scary for them, especially for kids who have experienced neglect. So yeah, I totally agree with that. Totally agree. So here at Avamere we consider our residents family. What does family mean to you?
Sandy Carpenter: That's a great question. I think, especially because of my experience, to me, family's who you make it and family is really just those that are supportive of you and those that you take care of and they take care of you.
So definitely applies to my residents because even though yeah, I'm in charge of this building and I'm in charge of their care, in a way they care for me in so many little ways. They'll want to bring me things or come and tell me about their day or I just had a resident show me a picture of a new grand baby he got to meet. And just, those are just the really fun things about it is just really feeling like you're, you're sharing your lives together. And just having that mutual caring and even, you know, when you've got the grumpy ones, you still care about them, because if you can make the grumpy one smile, you really, you know, you've really accomplished something.
Shaelynn Miller: Oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing, Sandy. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and about your fostering journey and adoption journey and fun facts about you as well.
Sandy Carpenter: Thanks. I loved sharing it actually.
Shaelynn Miller: Thank you for listening to the People of Avamere Pod. Find us on your favorite podcast platform and follow your local Avamere community on Facebook to keep listening in.