No Girls

Well I got an e-mail back from the girls' worker and a best interest staffing has already been scheduled for next Monday for them. Which means that we can't be included or considered b/c we don't have our homestudy update done yet :(

I'm a little in shock, I just felt that those girls were the ones meant to be with us...and now what????

So many emotions

Wow this adoption stuff is emotionally draining!! :)

Mike and I are getting TB tests done today so on Friday all of the paperwork (except fingerprinting) will be done and we can send it back to the agency! We are supposed to be getting an e-mail with the information for who we need to contact about the fingerprinting soon. The agency is having a hard time getting information from our past foster agencies...not a big surprise :)

Last week I got an e-mail from the lady from the site the girls are on. She said that if we gave her our adoption workers contact information then she would let them know who to contact for more information about the girls...problem is we don't have an adoption worker yet (we get one of those AFTER our homestudy update is done). So the lady that we've been working with from the adoption agency said we could give her information to the website lady...CONFUSED YET?? We gave that information and yesterday I got e-mails of the website lady giving the adoption lady the information and the adoption lady saying that we were not far enough along for her to inquire to the girl's worker. UUUGGGHHHH!!!! So I e-mailed back adoption lady and told her that I just really want to make the girl's worker aware that we would love to have more information about them and possibly be included in their best interest staffing after our update is completed.

SOOOOO, I got an e-mail back from adoption lady saying that she can't inquire for us but that many people inquire on their own and encouraged me to do that. YAY!

SOOOOO, I just sent an e-mail to the girl's worker explaining our position (in a much shorter version than this!) and asking for more information about the girls...hopefully we'll hear back from her soon! I hope I didn't step on any toes, I'm NERVOUS!

Better Day

Yesterday was a better day! Well except for the fact that after further checking little brother determined that my van needs a new alternator...a new $317 + labor alternator :( If you don't laugh you'll cry is my new motto :-)

I'm really hoping that all this stress and chaos is meant to be preparing us for the stress and chaos we will be experiencing with the changes to come in adding to our family this year!! Speaking of that...

Yesterday I finished up all of my end of the adoption packet paperwork except for two things, health assessments and fingerprinting. I'm waiting for a call from the adoption worker about those two things before getting them done and then we'll be ready to send back our packet. I'm really getting excited!!

I haven't updated on Brooke and Lexy in a while so here goes...

There's been the normal teen girl drama stuff going on with Brooke :-) Her cheer squad has begun cheering for boys basketball and she's loving it. She's getting a little nervous that in less than two months she'll be trying out for high school cheerleading...this is causing mom some stress too!

Lexy has been doing great! She couldn't wait to go back to school after Christmas break and was disappointed when they had several snow days...not only b/c she couldn't go to school but that it was too cold to play in the snow! She was very upset that we did not get to make a snowman so hopefully we get a little more snow to do that (did I just say that??).

Be Happy

Yesterday turned out to be a no good rotten stressful day! It started out with my new van STILL making the squeaking/squealing noise that we (little brother & I) thought we had fixed on Friday. The noise is now SO loud that I am totally embarrassed to drive anywhere!! I was pissy all day yesterday because of that squeak!

Then I went over to switch over the tags from the old van to the new (tried to do this Friday and the dealership had messed up the title so I had to drive back up there for them to fix it). Come to find out, you have to have sold the old van to switch over the tags...SO I had to pay the full price for new tags since the old van is still sitting in our driveway while we try to decided what to do with it :(

I was so stressed after that that I plopped myself on the couch to watch a movie for the afternoon...BUT the DVD player didn't want to work UGH! I did finally get the movie to play on the laptop but by then I just wanted a nap so I slept thru some of the movie.

When I picked Brooke up from school I told her about my day and that I was pissy, her response..."oh great" hehe! We then went to pick Lexy up from her afterschool PE session that she has a few times a week for the next couple of weeks. When we parked, the car in front of us had a licence plate that said BE HAPPY...I really did try to take that advice for the rest of the evening but I'm pretty sure if you asked Mike or the girls they would tell you I didn't do a very good job :-)

So today is a new day, cloudy rainy and dreary but a new day none the less. My goal for today is to focus on all the good things in my life and BE HAPPY!!!!

paper pregnancy

I know I haven't been posting much and I've been thinking about why today. I'm thinking that somewhere deep down I don't want to keep posting about all the adoption stuff and then jinx it and for some reason it not happen. I've come to terms (I think) with the fact that we might not get this all done in time to be considered for the three girls (that I dream, think and talk about often) but I am excited for this journey. I think the years of doing foster care and losing several babies that in my heart I just felt were MINE have resulted in some sort of trauma that I fear the worst in the whole adoption situation. Or....


Maybe now that we have started all the paperwork to get this thing going, I'm experiencing the first trimester of my paper pregnancy...the fears, the emotions, the hormones, the weird cravings...ok so I haven't had those :-)


Either way, here's where we are...


We got the adoption packet in the mail yesterday. We have a ton of papers to fill out, health assessments to have done, fingerprinting, budgets, floor plans, reference letters to send out, etc. I started on this tonight and got a good portion filled out already :-)

This and That

It's finally warming up around here!!!!!! It's suppose to get up to about 31 today, gonna feel like a heatwave! AND the kids are back at school and Mike's back at work!!

On Saturday we couldn't stand to be in the house any longer so we all bundled up and ventured out for some family fun time. We signed Brooke and I up for a sewing class (one of her Christmas presents), did a little shopping, walked around the mall and went to a buffet for dinner. It was so nice to get out of the house for a little bit even though we froze our butts off going from car to building and back.

Out of the blue this morning Lexy started asking me questions about the three girls and then told Brooke and I "I hope those three girls get to be my sisters, I'll be a really good big sister". She then asked if they would be here by Valentine's Day when I told her no that it would probably be much longer than that she said "well I guess by December 1st then" lol...I love that girl to pieces! After dropping the girls off at school this morning, I made copies of our old homestudy and other paperwork and I'm getting them in the mail today to our adoption agency!

After school tonight we get to go watch Brooke cheer for the boys basketball game. She has been looking forward to it and was very excited this morning!

Adoption News

Well Brooke and Lexy had school for two days this week...and three snow days!! At this rate we are going to have snow on the ground until April!

Flurries are flying around today so it'll be another day of sitting on the couch in our jammies! There's lots we could be accomplishing around the house but....welll...we're lazy :-)

Adoption update:
I FINALLY talked with the adoption agency worker today to go over the packet of papers that she sent. We have to gather some paperwork, sign some releases and send it all back to her now. She also said that she's going to go ahead and send out our adoption paperwork packet on Monday (even though technically she's supposed to wait to see if our past foster agencies have anything bad to say about us) so that we can get a head start on it. She's still thinking that we'll be able to do an update instead of a full homestudy which is exciting since that will take less time and $$!

I got a reply to my e-mail about the three girls. I had asked if there had been much interest in them...there has been but a lot of it has been from out of state and the girls aren't available for out-of-state adoption so good news. They have really been on my mind lately. I've been planning out room arrangements/decorations/bedding, looking at bigger houses (on the internet and driving by) and Mike even indulged my insanity by letting me buy a couple of extra backpacks (that we just might need next year) that were on sale. :-)

Seriously???????

Just got word that schools are closed tomorrow!!!!!!!

I wouldn't mind at all but I am SO tired of being stuck inside because of the snow...and so are the girls (they were actually looking forward to going to school!)! Here in KS we are used to seeing snow and then watching it disappear the next day. There has now been snow on the ground for a week with more falling about every other day! Word is there will be NO melting at all this next week, haven't heard if there's more snow coming.

I was looking forward to having a quiet house tomorrow to work on getting pictures onto the computer and made into scrap pages...and just having a quiet house in general!! Mike does have to go back to work tomorrow on light duty so I guess that will be one less in the house.