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!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...

Gopher?

I have a story for you my friends, quiet an interesting one if I do say so myself. Before I actually start with the story I feel as though I need to give you a bit of background. First of all: it's summer. And I'm a teacher. Need I say more?

No, really I've been blessed with what, so far at least, has been a nice, relaxing summer. Sure I'm gathering paperwork for the adoption, attending a few trainings, and writing an autobiography, but really? In the scheme of things? This summer has been sooooooooo nice. And relaxing.

Most of this relaxing has to do with the fact that I have time (ahhh, time!) to read. I love to read. In fact, when I was little I would check out stacks of books at a time. And read them within a week. But, back to this summer. Last year I started taking my books outside to read. I make my cup of coffee, get my granola bar, set up my Adirondack chair under my tree, place my footstool nearby and plop down with whatever book I happen to be reading. (The fact that I'm under a tree is important! Take note.)

Now, if you know me you will realize K and I live out in the country. Surrounded by fields. Way far away from any type of forested area. And also? We don't have much in the way of trees on our property. So I take advantage of the one we have in our backyard.

Earlier this week I was reading as described above and hear a "thud" behind me. Naturally I turn around (thinking is was a cat of course) and what do I see? A gopher running away from me towards the garden! Do you know the "thud" means? The gopher had to have been SITTING IN THE TREE the whole time! Yikes! I don't know about you my friends, but that was a bit spooky. Moral of my story? Check all trees for gophers. Because you know what? They can climb.

A Turn of Events

In my head I've been keeping this blog current; writing about important life decisions, recording funny anecdotes, and just keeping up with life in general. But, as is evidenced by the date of my last post, this logging of events is decisively all in my head! Although there is a lot I could write about, I'll try to keep this post based on one topic: children. Or, more specifically, decisions we have made in regards to children.

As you know, K and I have been trying to expand our family for several years now. Last year at this time we moved to Dr. Delightful who prescribed a more "natural" way to conceive. We also had agreed that IUI and IVF procedures were not for us for both personal feelings and money issues. Quite frankly, at the end of April we were done with keeping track of temperatures, timing everything, and shooting me up with drugs. The whole process was getting old and every month brought a new heartache. And actually, a year earlier we said we would try the whole Creighton method for a year and then reevaluate everything.

These feelings led us to be more open with each other about the idea of adoption. We had been adamantly sure that this wasn't the direction for us, but with month after month filled with disappointments we began talking about it again. It turns out that we were both more open to the idea and felt perhaps that this was a path we should further explore. After doing some research and spending time in thought and prayer, we made inquiries to several agencies. We picked one of the agencies, submitted our application and began taking the necessary classes in June.

We are still deep within the initial steps on the path toward adoption and I would be lying if I said we didn't have any doubts. However, I will say that we feel called to be parents and feel this is the path God has chosen for us to expand our family. It is awesome to be able to forget about taking my temperature at 6am, forgo with the whole charting of cervical mucus, and answering "no" when dr's ask me if I'm taking any prescriptions. It is daunting to imagine that our future children are potentially living somewhere within the U.S. right now. What do they look like? What do they like to eat? Will they like living with us? Will we be good parents? How will we work through any past issues?

These questions (and more) and the topic of adoption in general are at the forefront of my thinking over the summer months. I'm using my time this summer to continue doing research, filling out all sorts of paperwork, and getting the house in order for our expanding family. (It's during times like this that I feel fortunate beyond belief to have summers off..sigh, gotta love that!)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter my friends! What a busy week it has been. As I mentioned in my last post, I made the decision to become Catholic and entered into the church yesterday. This was a decision that took me a while to come to, but one I do not regret making. When K and I got married we both stayed with the religions we were raised with. And, both being determined to make something work, went to both of our churches on most weekends. This became a lot of work and I began feeling that I felt more connected with the Catholic church we attended. This past fall, I inquired about becoming Catholic and have been taking classes since September.

What an interesting journey! I learned some things about myself and, most importantly, have felt closer to God during the journey. Yesterday was our Easter Vigil which is the time when new members are welcomed in the church. The ceremony was like nothing I had seen before and lasted for quite a long time! It was good though. This morning, K and I hosted a Easter Brunch to celebrate both Easter and my coming into the church.

Mom and Dad came to visit and yesterday Momma and I spent pretty much the whole day cooking! We made homemade blueberry muffins, fruit salad, brunch enchiladas, and egg and Hungarian sausage. It was my first time making the enchilada and, thankfully, everyone said they tasted yummy. Whew! I have found that I really like finding new recipes (All Recipes.com is my friend) and trying them...but it's tricky b/c there's typically only K and I eating! Thankfully all 14 of us this morning ate well and had a good time with each other's company.

Right now I'm staring at my Easter basket and watching The 10 Commandments...what lovely things to do on Easter! Easter isn't quite Easter without seeing either The 10 Commandments or The Sound of Music. Both of these movies were always on every Easter growing up and now it doesn't quite seem like right if I don't see one! (This is why I've kept The 10 Commandments on our DVR for, oh... a year now ;) )

Happy Easter!