Round 1: Check

We had our first part of our home study bright and early on Sunday morning. It went very well and our worker basically asked us questions to get to know us better. Not hard really and it went a lot off of the auto biography we had already written.

(As an aside...remember when I spoke about being very wordy when I write? Yeah, totally the case with this autobiography. Our worker said that typically these first initial visits are lengthy because she has to ask a lot of questions to go further into the family's life. In my case, she said, she wouldn't need to ask a lot of questions because my autobiography was so in depth. I had a good chuckle at that!)

Then she took a tour of the house, including the newly painted upstairs (Yay!), and learned that our basement is "not livable space." Tee hee hee, ya think?!? Really, it's just a cellar. I mean I guess you could stand up in it if you so desired (I typically don't because I abhor getting cobwebs in my hair) but it's pretty small. Like, it has the basic necessities (deep freeze, furnace, hot water heater, wine...) and that's pretty much it.

Overall it went really well and now we have the task of filling out a check sheet that asks about the characteristics we "will consider" and those "we will not consider." Some of these are pretty cut and dry (will we consider a child who is a high achiever? Umm...sure!) while others will require a bit of research. One thing we have learned is that it is easier in this stage to be as open as possible since a lot of these kiddos have certain characteristics marked against them based on a one time occurrence.

From here we will continue to attend the support groups offered by the agency, fill out any remaining paper work, and then welcome our worker back in our home for another series of questions. And then? And then we get to seriously start looking at children's profiles. In other words, we are getting close to the time where we can really start thinking of the children who will be playing upstairs, laughing at Murphy's antics, and eating supper with us around our kitchen table. And that is what we have been praying and waiting for for a really, really long time.

Grand Rapids

Every once in a while K has extra trainings that he has to go to for work. This week, the training was in Grand Rapids, MI and I got to join him since I'm still on break. Exciting times! Grand Rapids has lots of fun things to do and, my goodness, the shopping! For a girl transplanted to the country after growing up relatively close to shopping plazas it was a dream come true! I spent most of Monday hopping from place to place and feeling guilty because I think I spent too much money. But, hey, I did get some new clothes for the school year.

On Tuesday K and I went to Meijer Gardens and Sculpture park. Wow! What an amazing place. It has acres and acres of walking trails and sculptures as well as an indoor green house filled with tropical plants. It also provided many opportunities for photo taking. Like 75 pictures worth.

(See, I've been on this mission to take lots of photos that will then be put together in our "welcome book" for our future children. Kinda like a book of things and people they will see when the live with us. As I gathered pictures to put in I realized that I didn't really have a lot of photos of certain things so, hence the photo-taking mission.)

And last night we went to Robinette Winery and guess what? They give you wine glasses with your tastings that have little birds on them. I probably haven't said this yet, but friends? I love birds. And? I love wine. Now I have bird wine glasses. Totally cool. (Yes, I do realize that it's the small things in life that make me happy. I'm good with that.)

Bye bye purple!

Remember how I said I was in a cleaning frenzy in my last post? Well, that cleaning frenzy was very productive and I can now say I'm almost finished painting one of the upstairs rooms (read: future playroom). The upstairs was rather frightening when we bought our house. The front room was a lovely combination of blue walls, green baseboards, and yellow around the window frame. Yikes! I think they were going with some sort of garden theme or something. I repainted that shortly after moving in and it is now a neutral shade of taupe. A lil' darker than I would like, but it works.

The second room upstairs looked something like this:

With parts like this that just make you ask "Why?!"

Not hateful, but also not quite our style. The difficult part of this whole process (well, besides the fact that I can't reach part of the wall without go-go gadget arms since the wall shares with the staircase) was choosing the right shade to paint it. We went with the same light green that is in our kitchen because we thought it could be dressed up for a boy (with blue) or a girl (with pinks) or could be boy/girl (with reds and yellows). And the best part? We had a whole gallon of the stuff in our basement.

Now the room looks better with the nice, soft shade of green. I plan to make curtains for the windows in the color schemes mentioned above once we know who we will be adding to our family! I also found some really awesome wall decals in the shape of flowers that I'm contemplating purchasing if we have a girl(s) because you can actually customize the colors of the flowers to the room decor. How cool is that?

Cleaning Frenzy

This morning we got the call we had been waiting for - we have scheduled the first leg of our home study! So excited. Squee! Along with this excitement comes an almost obsessive need to clean. I find this a bit crazy because I've been cleaning and organizing literally all summer long. And also? The home study isn't for another week and a half! So you know whatever I "clean" now will just need to be cleaned again, lol.

So today I focused on small things like, you know, beginning to paint the nastiness of the purple room upstairs. What color will it be? Heck if I know! Tee hee, but I do have a goal to put the coats of primer/hiding paint on before the end of the week. And then perhaps the color of the room will jump out at me. We have the idea that this room will be a playroom since you have to walk through it to get to the "front" upstairs room. I don't want to go with the neutral tan that is throughout the house but instead want something fun (that's not a bright purple). It's hard to go fun when you're trying to be gender neutral!

Oh, and I've also been sprucing up the deck by repainting some stuff out there. Needless to say K is going to think I've gone nuts when he gets home!

Cookies Galore!

K's brother is getting married in just about a month! This is quite exciting since there has been about three years in between marriages on K's side. His bachelor party was last night and I was asked to make cookies for the event. The thing is...they were expecting up to 100 people at the party. Yikes, that's a lot of cookies my friends!

My first batch of goodness consisted of mini muffin sized brownies with peanut butter cups smooshed inside. I also made mini brownie bites with Andes mints inside and on the top as a garnish. Just FYI: 1 family size of brownie mix makes 4 dozen mini muffins. This is good information if you need to make a lot of something! It was even better because I got the boxes of brownies for $1.00 a piece! Score!

I made some chocolate chip cookies and then some reverse chocolate chip cookies. Never heard of reverse chocolate chippers? Basically they are a chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips. If you want to make them extra awesome throw some mini (regular) chocolate chips in as well. Yum.

My day was complete four and a half hours and 18 dozen cookies later. I must say they all turned out splendid!

Things I have learned

K and I are plugging away on the nuts and blots of our adoption. As of this Friday we plan to have turned in all of our paperwork and will complete the last of the required classes we have to take. This process has helped me become aware of a couple things. 1: I am, apparently, a pack rat. 2: When I write I become very wordy.

Part of my mission in this adoption journey has been to clean the upstairs. Because, you know, our kids need a place to have their rooms. I started this process last year and, well, abandoned it because I just couldn't make sense of where I was going to put everything. For a year, the upstairs was a place where we would put things that we wanted but didn't have any other place to keep. Since we don't have a workable basement for storage this is our compromise. Except, not anymore!
I picked up this project again this summer and was motivated to make it better and find homes for everything. I had piles for Goodwill, school, mom and dad, trash, and recycle. And my friends? I must say that it's looking better! Not perfect, but good enough that I gave K the go-ahead to call the fire chief to come over for the fire inspection. (Because honestly? I thought anyone but close family and friends would have a heart attack if they walked through it as it was last year!)

Oh and, yes...I am very wordy when I write. This became apparent when I wrote my autobiography that will be read by the social worker who will do our home study. In my defence, we were given a page with guidelines and talking points to include in our writing. Somehow though, my autobiography is currently 8 pages while K's is half of that. Oh, and it's all single spaced and size 11 font. Sigh...

But, happy news! Since we are getting all this initial stuff done that means we are all the closer to our home study! Yeah!