While Matt and I are currently going through the process of growing our family we have also been experiencing growing pains in another area. Factor 1 is growing like crazy, to put it frankly Matt has been slammed. Continue reading “Growing Pains”
This Weekend in Pictures
I am trying to get better at remembering to take pictures before we bring Tom and Jerry home. Continue reading “This Weekend in Pictures”
Nicknames
Matt and I decided to come up with nicknames to call our future children while referring to them on the blog (because future children just sounds so impersonal). The nicknames do not have to stick once we bring them home, because we might possibly come up with nicknames that are more fitting their personalities. We came up with Tom and Jerry (pretty sure Matt came up with it). We were thinking of favorite childhood characters when we came up with that one and Matt liked it the best, so it stuck.I came up with the idea for this from two other adoption related blogs Salty and Bonnie and Clyde.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Today is my favorite holiday and I cannot wait to be celebrating with family, stuffing my face, and watching the Cowboys. I began to realize last night that watching the Cowboys made me a hypocrite in my last post because I am against people working on holidays instead of being with their families. I still am and would be more than willing for them to move one of my favorite traditions to the Friday after Thanksgiving so more people could spend the day with their families.
I would also like to share what I am most thankful for today. The short answer Matt. The long answer is he is the most loving, caring husband, he is always there for me, he knows just how much to push me to help me be the best I can be without going too far. He is always respectful, kind, and he can almost always make me laugh, sometimes he does think he is funnier than he is. You are amazing honey and I love you so much.
Please remember all that you have today and enjoy your family traditions. Feel free to post what you are most thankful for in the comments section.
Buy Nothing Day
I am not against shopping in general, but I do think Thanksgiving weekend shopping has gotten out of hand. This should be a time to celebrate and relax with your families, not spend hours in line trying to find that perfect gift. Some stores are even open on Thanksgiving now, which makes me sad for their employees and for the people willing to buy on these days. Is their family that bad to be around that they would rather go shopping? Please unless it is an absolute emergency never buy anything on a holiday. Everyone should be given the chance to celebrate with their families. Obviously people in emergency medical jobs will have to work, I can’t tell people to stop getting hurt or sick on holidays that is out of their control. My fondest memories of this weekend are eating, playing games, and decorating for the Christmas holidays. I would not have those found memories if my mom had gone out every Black Friday in search of the perfect gifts. In fact, those perfect gifts would probably long be forgotten. Please join me this year for Buy Nothing Day and do something fun with your family instead.
100 things I am thankful for
I saw this on a friend’s blog and think it is a great idea. We have so much to be thankful for and sometimes I need to be reminded of that. Continue reading “100 things I am thankful for”
Ethiopia Page
I created a page on Ethiopia as a part of our blog. It is a work in progress and contains basic facts and some pictures I borrowed from other web users, since we have not yet been. It also has a few links to relevant info on Ethiopia and adoption.
If you have any questions about Ethiopia, please ask and if I don’t know the answer I will try my hardest to find out.
We want to share our children’s culture and heritage with you and are excited about learning more about it ourselves.
Long Weekend
We had a long weekend of classes and they gave us plenty to think about and more to research on our own. We got home a little while ago and I got to watch the fourth quarter of the Cowboys game which they won! We also came home to cat puke on the kitchen table, thanks Carter. He also puked on the bedspread this morning, I am starting to get worried about him.
I am just going to post some random pics for everyone to enjoy since I don’t really have any cohesive thoughts for this evening.
Matt and me at the beach:
Mom bought frog towels for the new frog bathroom and we couldn’t resist the urge to give them a whirl:
Matt and Carter making signs for last weekends car wash:
Home Study – Part Two
The home study went fine today. I was actually much more relaxed than I thought I would be, I did start to get nervous an hour or so before, but not overly nervous. I had everything done that I had wanted to get done and was happy with how the house looked. We even let her see the samples of green paint on the bathroom wall that we have yet to paint over with the one we chose, she agreed with us on the color, we will make sure we paint it before her next visit. She asked us questions from how we met to how we plan to raise our children. She is coming back for our second visit November 30 and after that will write up a report to submit to the court here in Pinal County.
For those of you wondering how Tank did, he was an angel for Tank standards, seriously I prayed all day long for that boy to be good and he was. He did his happy bark for her not his scared bark. We have been working with him a lot lately and he is doing a lot better, but still a little neurotic.
We also got word that our second letter of introduction was good, so we are done with that too. Thanks honey for doing such an awesome job on it. We have our classes this weekend and we have a booklet we have to finish before our next home visit, plus the 10 hours of dvds, so we are busy for a while.
Home Study (EEK!)
We got the word last night that our first home study appointment is this Friday afternoon. Now I was fully expecting this to happen after Thanksgiving, and let’s just say there was some stuff I planned to get done around the house next weekend. I know I have enough time to make my house presentable, but there is that part of me that wants it to be perfect, I clearly do not have time to make that happen. I think I am okay with that, I have to be. We didn’t have time to do anything last night after we got the call, because we already had plans, and we have plans again tonight. Seriously, we never have plans two nights in a row except for the one week we have our home study. We have our appointments at the doctor this morning, hopefully that doesn’t suck two hours out of our day like usual.
By the way unusual happening this morning. It is raining!
Adoption Paperwork Update
We have been working diligently, albeit slowly, on our all our paperwork and have sent the bulk of what is needed to our home study agency, and we received confirmation yesterday that they had received it. We see the doctor Thursday to get letters from her stating she found us to be in “good mental and physical health,” and we also are still waiting on our police clearance letters from Pinal County. After we get those to our agency we will officially start the home study process.
This weekend we have International Adoption Preparation Classes from 8 am to 4 pm both days. It looks like we will be learning a lot of helpful information. We also get to meet other people adopting internationally, some of which I have already been talking to online.
Matt wrote our letter of introduction (I was told the most important document in our dossier to Ethiopia) last night and I thought sent it to our agency coordinator to get her opinion, but just got an email from her that I sent the wrong attachment, so I just sent it off. I had already written one, but it was no quite up to par. So, I turned it over to Matt since he is a much better writer in the creative aspect of it, and after rereading this blog post like five times and still finding mistakes I am beginning to wonder if he is also better at the grammar aspect.
Next week we plan on starting our 10 hour dvd course. I think that is it for now.
Wow I missed a lot
If you are thinking this right now and you just happened to remember to check our blog, you must not subscribe.
I know of two ways to subscribe to a blog (there are probably more, but I only know of two so that is the info you are getting).
The first is to subscribe through our blog to get emails of updates.
But if you don’t want a bunch of emails filling up your inbox or you have several blogs you read, google reader is a great way to go. I now use google reader, I will say I was hesitant at first when Matt introduced it to me, but it is relatively easy to use and helps keep me in the loop. Of course, if you use google reader you actually have to remember to go to google reader to check for updates.
Please feel free to share other ways to subscribe to blogs.
Get Out of the Car!
That is the gist of an article on cnn.com today. Continue reading “Get Out of the Car!”
Happy Veterans Day!
Just want to send out a big Thank You to all those who have served and who currently are serving. Your work for this country is much appreciated!