Friday, October 29, 2010

Beat the Ducks

We arrived in LA last night to visit my brother and, of course, go to the SC-Oregon game.  Oregon is #2 in the country and it would be just wonderful to knock them out with a loss.  There is no love lost between these two football programs.  Fight On for Ol SC.

Looks like we are headed to the beach today.  Mike has never seen Santa Monica, Venice and some of the other LA beaches.  He really has only been to my personal favorite, Hermosa Beach, several times and he wants to flavor some others. The weather is a perfect 80 degrees.

We are staying with my brother, who just recently bought his first house.  It is perfect.  They did a great job of decorating and the location is ideal. How can you go wrong with Ralph's on one side and the Beverly Center on the other.  Not to mention the shops on Robertson where all of the stars like to go.  Who knows maybe we'll get lucky and see someone.   Off we go!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Where does the time go?

Next week I celebrate a milestone birthday.  Happy 29th Birthday to me.  Amazing how quickly life goes racing by.  To help us celebrate, my parents are arriving in town.  I always love having them at the house and really wish that I could see them way more often than I do.  It will be really nice to have them here on my birthday.  It sounds like Mike's parents and grandmom will be over as well.  To be honest, that is all I really need for my birthday:  my family and of course, the pups.

Tomorrow, we have our second visit with our social worker.  Hard to imagine, that she will then be starting the home study that will be sent to Eugene, Oregon.  This morning we also made a stop at the post office to  start the passport process.  Seems like someone misplaced our passport somewhere in the house!  Who could that be?

Monday, October 11, 2010

A Day in Lancaster

Home Study Part I

We met with our social worker on Saturday.  She was great and we were able to get comfortable with her right away.  She asked both of us questions about our upbringing including our parents, siblings and school history.  She also wanted a little information about our personality types and wanted to see the house.  Her comment:  white carpet: wow, that will be hard to keep clean.

We are meeting with her next Sunday on a more individual basis to discuss our marriage and philosophy toward raising children. Mike and I were raised very similarly: core family principles with a strong emphasis on values.  We plan to raise our child much the same way.  We both were extremely lucky to have such wonderful parents.

The latest update from the Korea program within our agency left us breathless.  If we can get our home study finished by early November, we have a good chance of getting a referral by the end of the year.  Of course, we then have the wait for travel.  We were told that Korea is really looking to build a domestic adoption program (and is even flirting with closing international adoption by 2012).  In anticipation of this phase, Korea has been decreasing EPs for international adoption.  Our agency, in turn, decided to scale back their program.  Due to blind luck or God's intervention, we got lucky.  Korea was not as successful as it anticipated in its domestic program and there are kids available (mainly boys).
Our social worker emphasized that we really should get everything in by mid-November.  Hard not to get excited, but the realistic side of me still believes it will be longer.  Our goal is to just keep moving forward.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

I Made It Home

This past week I've been attending work training down in D.C.  It is part of successful leadership program and I found that I'm not that bad of a leader (at least according to my wonderful staff).  Upon arriving home, I was quickly reminded of the real leader in our house: Little Miss Mattie.  As we made our way around the park, she quickly went to the lead and visited with every pup, child and adult.

Cesar Milan would really be frightened with my inner pack leading abilities, especially since half way through the walk the girls had pretty much tied me up with their leashes.  Can't a girl dream of having two well behaving pets instead of the dogs that everyone sees coming a mile away!

On Saturday, we have our first home study visit.  We are excited but a little nervous with what this will entail.  On the bright side, I have used this as an opportunity to finally get Mike to clean his share of the bedroom closet (who says that women have more junk).  AND, I'm really thinking that the garage should be cleaned for her next visit.  I may have to invite her over to the house---even after our home study is completed.  I'm seeing results on this end.

Friday, October 1, 2010


What do you mean that it's raining?  We're ready for our walk. This is completely unacceptable!

Home Study

We received a voice mail from our social work to call in order to schedule our first home study session.   It is now officially set for next Saturday at 3:00.  Wow, I can't believe how quickly we made it through the initial paperwork.  We are so excited to start the home study process.  One step closer:  I consider this to be Phase II.  We got word from our agency that there are lots of boys available, with a wait time for a referral around 6 months (18 months for a girl).  They are really encouraging us to get our act together quickly.  Fine by us.  So, we'll hurry up and then wait!

Tomorrow, we are also scheduled to attend our PIP classes, Session I and II.  We are actually working backward, we've already done Session III and IV.  It really is interesting to interact with other families going through the process.  After this class, we'll have one more to do, but that doesn't occur until after we receive our referral.

Mike is a little bummed today.  We had heavy rain overnight from a tropical storm. So, no golf for him today.  He'll be home early---just in time to help clean.