Next Step

We made it to the orientation meeting last night. We also got the last of our background checks back in the mail. The meeting was nice, it also got us pretty excited. We were given a gigando stack of paperwork to fill out, but we can do that. We got the hard part completed, the background checks. We are excited to move on. The women at the meeting from the agency said that since we have completed the process before we may be able to move a little quicker through the process. We will still have to complete the required number of training hours, but we may be able to contact other agencies earlier. She wasn't sure, and I'm not holding my breath, but it would be cool to let the other agencies know that we are interested in a specific group of boys. So I will be going to an all day class on Saturday. Oh, yeah, fun :) There was another women at the meeting, her and her husband are planning on adopting out of foster care as well. She had a friend complete the training classes and the friend said that the classes were very beneficial and helped her to deal with situations that came up after she had adopted her son. It's good to know that we won't be doing these classes for nothing. I'm all for tools to help these kids! Another nice thing we learned is that we will probably get "child support" for them. Whew. While we really want to have these kids and know we are supposed to be doing this at this time, we were a little concerned about how we were going to make it work, money-wise, since Sean is still in school. Heavenly Father will make it possible. So, we are excited to move forward.

4 out of 6

For background checks there are 6 that have to be completed in this state. One of which is the FBI. Sean and I have 4 out of the 6 we need back already. The FBI ones are supposed to take up to 6 weeks. We got ours back in 1. Hopefully we will have the two remaining clearances by the time we go to the introduction meeting next Wednesday. Things are moving along. 

Our Journey has begun

I've been trying to post pictures from Christmas and also our nice family pictures from our Christmas card but this stupid blogger won't let me upload pictures from home. So, once I get that figured out, I'll post some pictures. But I wanted to write a little about what Sean and I have started. I think we are crazy :) About 2 months ago I was stalking The R house blog. (like always:) It's an awesome blog about open adoption and this family that has 3 little boys that are all adopted. So cute. anyway. They have something called "Matching Mondays." She had posted about a sibling group of 3 that were out west and they were in foster care. I couldn't get those little faces out of my mind. So I talked to Sean about it. I can't remember if I talked to anyone about it but about 3 years ago we started on a journey for adoption, wanting a baby, but felt we hadn't gotten the support or help we needed to get a child. So we dropped our agency and made lots of plans for vacations we were going to take, all over the world. The doctors still have no idea why we can't have biological children, so they can't fix it, so we have given up in that area as well. But, back to my point. I couldn't get these kids out of my mind. Sean was still in the "having fun on vacation" stage. Can't say as I blame him :) I talked to a friend of mine from church, Amy, about wanting more kids. I have felt for a while that our house is empty and it needs to be filled up. So I had been doing a little research on my own. Then another friend, Chelsea, called me. She used to be a social worker and now works with an adoption agency that helps families in the US adopt children from overseas. She had said that she really wanted to talk to me about it, but had been shot down too many times before by friends that she didn't want to step over that boundary. Amy told her to talk to me. So anyway. After Chelsea talked to me about international adoption Sean and I talked again about adopting kids.  We decided that maybe this was Heavenly Fathers way of telling us that yes, our house was empty and we needed to fill it up. We did research and I talked to Chelsea about international adoption and the cost really freaked us out. Then I talked to another friend and she said that money should never be an issue when it came to something this important. "Money can be a hurdle, not a mountain in your way." hmm. Well after looking, thinking, and discussing (Sean is in school) we decided that maybe be should look at domestic adoption. There are over 400,000 kids in foster care in the US alone. Sean and I have decided that we need to shrink that number by a few. Before Christmas we sent in our background checks to the appropriate departments and last Wednesday we got fingerprinted. We've already got 3 of the 6 background checks back. Crazy! And we have called the adoption agency that we will be working with and adopting kids from foster care is basically FREE!!! We will have to travel to meet and pick up the kids, but it's nothing compared to the expense we would have had to incur to adopt internationally. Maybe when we are both working at real jobs we will look internationally but for now, we'll hang out in the US. We've already been looking at kids and have a few favorites. We know that we are going to adopt a sibling group, we just haven't decided on how many for sure yet. But the process has started and we are looking forward to having a house full of fun, laughter and love. Can't wait. 

Fall colors & the carved pumpkin

We have a great view out  the front door of our house. Except for the guard rail, of course. I saw this view out of the door the other day and really wanted to capture the awesome colors of the season. I used all kinds of settings on my camera to get just the right look. I think it turned out pretty well.  This was before I carved up the pumpkin. That came next. When I was in Ohio visiting my sister I got this huge one cheap!

After cutting off the top & taking out the seeds I got to carving. I got this face off a website. Had to make it a little bigger, because like I said, it was huge. Thought he turned out pretty nice! Yet again I played with the camera trying to get just the right look. I think I'm getting better at the settings, but I doubt it.

Eeyore's vacation 2012

I posted a few years ago about how I'm probably too old to have Eeyore vacation with me, but o well, it still happens :) And the family enables me in my ....hmm, maybe it's an obsession. who knows.

 Anyway. E spent some time learning how to sail.

 Then he went kayaking. Canoeing too.

 He learned how to drive the motorboat

 And even tried to ride the tube

 He liked the pancakes at the Pancake House

 And Sean got a picture of him enjoying the sunshine

 Grandma Rife let him join her in the shade.

 Putting his toes in the water at Blue Lake

 And the best is... The donkey riding the donkey :)

Um, I think I need a life! :) Oh, and he seriously needed a bath after this vacation. he looked like a whole new donkey when he got out of the washing machine!

Holiday and birthday pics

Having teenagers and wanting to take nice family pics can be interesting. Annoying but highly entertaining :) Sean had just gotten home from a long day of work and I knew the weather wasn't gong to hold too much longer. And the girls are only here every other weekend, so had to get this done while I could. Sean was soo excited to be out taking pictures.

 He gets kinda goofy after a while.

 The girls were getting bored, or just looking for an excuse to play the latest: "ninja." Everytime I would stop to try & find a better spot this is what they were doing. so funny.

 After being in the sun and not liking the shadow and the sun in the face, we moved up to the patio of the mansion.  There were professionals up there taking pictures at the other end, I got annoyed, felt VERY amateur-ish, and we left to find a less "commercial" spot.

Sabrina doesn't like to smile with her mouth open. We tried our hardest to get her to smile bigger, but this is what we got. sigh.

The next weekend the girls were over we had a little time during the day when the weather was good and I had the girls come out to take some more pics. It was Abby's birthday and Sabrinas was in 2 weeks, so I thought it would be a good time to get some pics. Needless to say, I got a lot of this :) And then they were done.