Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Life is a Flower of Which Love is the Honey-Victor Hugo
We went to a beautiful wedding a few weekends ago. Everything was absolutely perfect! We were thrilled that we got to share in the joy and happiness of this special couple's wedding day. If you get a chance to glance at the animoto, you will see how the beautiful pictures that were captured by the couple's friends and family are "worth more than a thousand words" and how they are "simply priceless!"
Thursday, March 24, 2011
2 Special Pieces of Mail + More
I love receiving mail that isn't a bill, who doesn't? Today we got two surprises in the mail. The first item was from my aunt who took a video of our wedding. Something happened to our copy of our video. We had it, it was even taped on at the end when someone couldn't find a blank tape (still had all of the wedding on it), but I believe when we moved to our house it went to that black hole where you can never find things. Lucky for us she had her original and transferred it to DVD. This is a special treasure! We are very lucky to have such a special aunt. :0)
The second item that we recieved in the mail came from this amazing artist that I found through a friend's blog.
If you are wondering where we are in the adoption process, there's nothing official to announce yet. We do know that our social worker has all of the documents to complete our homestudy, so pretty soon we should be posting that our homestudy is on it's way to Korea. We have had the chance to review our homestudy and one thing we saw were the comments our references wrote about us. Although we do not know who said what, we feel very blessed to have such special friends in our lives, who will also be a part of our child's life, too.
The second item that we recieved in the mail came from this amazing artist that I found through a friend's blog.
Don't you love the envelope? You know that something fabulous has to be inside, when someone takes the time to make the envelope so wonderful!
Kim is also a Korean adoptee and she actually grew up in Wisconsin, too! Small world, right? Check out her shop if you get a chance: http://www.kilsook.etsy.com/ The artwork will be revealed on a later post, but I will add that after admiring her artwork and "chatting" she also sent a special something for a special someone in my family. Kim you are the BEST! :-)
If you are wondering where we are in the adoption process, there's nothing official to announce yet. We do know that our social worker has all of the documents to complete our homestudy, so pretty soon we should be posting that our homestudy is on it's way to Korea. We have had the chance to review our homestudy and one thing we saw were the comments our references wrote about us. Although we do not know who said what, we feel very blessed to have such special friends in our lives, who will also be a part of our child's life, too.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Spring Break!
Spring Break!!! Oh...have I waited for thee! One week off...HEAVENLY!!! Have I been productive? Not really...but that's the best part of having vacation! Yesterday, I began to create a scrapbook for the baby. I've been going back and forth about whether or not to buy a pre-made book or make one from scratch. The scrapbook won. My main concern is it may never get finished. Hmmm, well maybe I need to buy an adoptee baby book just in case, LOL!
Monday, March 7, 2011
New Water Heater + Homestudy= Busy Weekend!
What a weekend! Last Friday, we got in touch with our social worker and she told us that we could either do our homestudy on Monday or Tuesday or wait until after Spring Break...of course not wanting to wait, I said let's do it on Monday. So, this weekend we cleaned, cleaned, cleaned and I must say our house looks pretty amazing! I heard that other people's social workers were not so strict about the house appearance, meaning we didn't have to kill ourselves with cleaning. So, I really didn't freak out too much. However, I didn't share that tidbit with Matt... he really organized and cleaned like a trooper. I must say our closets have never looked better and we have gotten rid of a bunch of clutter! Yay for Spring Cleaning!
In preparation for the visit, our social worker had sent a fire and health inspection sheet to take a look at, and for some reason one item that caught my eye was making sure that all gas lines had metal hoses. I know...that is really bizarre that, that is the one thing that caught my eye. I knew that our air conditioner/heating unit had one and I could tell that our dryer had one, but I thought I would peek at the water heater. When I opened the door, I saw water dripping from one of the pipes. Since we are not handy at all, we decided to call a 24/7 plumbing company...and it's a good thing we did. First, our water heater is around 15 years old which in water heater years is ANCIENT. 2nd, when it's dripping like that the guy said it is getting ready to blow. Yup, that's right, with our luck it would have probably blown right through the roof and landed in our neighbors garage as our social worker drove up. ;) So, last night at around 9 pm we got a new water heater and regulator...and am I glad we did...all I'm going to say it's really nice to have hot, hot, hot water.
... back to the visit. It was a great visit. Our social worker is a very sweet lady and the whole session took about 5 hours. This is the one and only time we'll see her until we do the post adoption visits. I would like to say that everything was perfect and the dogs acted like movie dogs...however, if you know our dogs that did not happen... actually they did act like movie dogs except like the dogs in the movies where everyone in the audience is laughing because the dogs are crazy and the owner is running around like a chicken with their head cut off. I had taken the beagles for a walk in the hopes that they would be tired, and I was playing ball with Ace when she knocked on the door. Well, it went a little bonko...it's a good thing our social worker loves dogs. I had Callie and Ace on leashes and I thought Gracie would stay inside, of course she didn't...she took off. So I had to run after Gracie with the other 2 dogs on the leashes...when I caught up with Gracie I had to pick her up, which Callie hates, so we had listen to Callie scolding Gracie for the first 10 minutes of the visit. However, after meeting our crazy dogs, listening to us talk about our family and all of our secrets (don't worry we only told some of them ;) Lol! ), looking briefly around the house, our SW thought we would be great parents....soooooo....now we wait for our homestudy to be written up, approved by our local agency, and then it will be sent to our International agency.
and really...we feel like the real waiting is beginning. Right now, it seems like things are moving super quick, but things will definitely slow down. Writing up the homestudy and sending it to our agency should be done by the end of March....once that's turned in to the international agency, then we start waiting for our referral. (AKA matched with a child) The average wait time for a referral is actually not as long as we had thought...so there is a chance that our baby could already be born or is going to be born any day. I admit, that a lot of times it seems surreal...but with each step that gets checked off, it's becoming more real every day. :0)
In preparation for the visit, our social worker had sent a fire and health inspection sheet to take a look at, and for some reason one item that caught my eye was making sure that all gas lines had metal hoses. I know...that is really bizarre that, that is the one thing that caught my eye. I knew that our air conditioner/heating unit had one and I could tell that our dryer had one, but I thought I would peek at the water heater. When I opened the door, I saw water dripping from one of the pipes. Since we are not handy at all, we decided to call a 24/7 plumbing company...and it's a good thing we did. First, our water heater is around 15 years old which in water heater years is ANCIENT. 2nd, when it's dripping like that the guy said it is getting ready to blow. Yup, that's right, with our luck it would have probably blown right through the roof and landed in our neighbors garage as our social worker drove up. ;) So, last night at around 9 pm we got a new water heater and regulator...and am I glad we did...all I'm going to say it's really nice to have hot, hot, hot water.
... back to the visit. It was a great visit. Our social worker is a very sweet lady and the whole session took about 5 hours. This is the one and only time we'll see her until we do the post adoption visits. I would like to say that everything was perfect and the dogs acted like movie dogs...however, if you know our dogs that did not happen... actually they did act like movie dogs except like the dogs in the movies where everyone in the audience is laughing because the dogs are crazy and the owner is running around like a chicken with their head cut off. I had taken the beagles for a walk in the hopes that they would be tired, and I was playing ball with Ace when she knocked on the door. Well, it went a little bonko...it's a good thing our social worker loves dogs. I had Callie and Ace on leashes and I thought Gracie would stay inside, of course she didn't...she took off. So I had to run after Gracie with the other 2 dogs on the leashes...when I caught up with Gracie I had to pick her up, which Callie hates, so we had listen to Callie scolding Gracie for the first 10 minutes of the visit. However, after meeting our crazy dogs, listening to us talk about our family and all of our secrets (don't worry we only told some of them ;) Lol! ), looking briefly around the house, our SW thought we would be great parents....soooooo....now we wait for our homestudy to be written up, approved by our local agency, and then it will be sent to our International agency.
and really...we feel like the real waiting is beginning. Right now, it seems like things are moving super quick, but things will definitely slow down. Writing up the homestudy and sending it to our agency should be done by the end of March....once that's turned in to the international agency, then we start waiting for our referral. (AKA matched with a child) The average wait time for a referral is actually not as long as we had thought...so there is a chance that our baby could already be born or is going to be born any day. I admit, that a lot of times it seems surreal...but with each step that gets checked off, it's becoming more real every day. :0)
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