I have to give a shout out to my husband for winning Microsoft’s MVP award for the third year in a row. I am so excited for him and all he has accomplishments with his job. Since he won this accomplishment Microsoft had him out to their offices in Redmond, WA for day of meetings, dinners, and fun. Below are some pictures of his good time there.
This trip was extra special for Eric this year because Jonny now works for Microsoft so Eric got to hang out with him and see his office and what he has been up to since taking his new job.
This weekend Eric and I went to the annual marriage conference that our church puts on. I love the fact that we go to a church that wants marriages to be great and puts so much time and effort into making an amazingly fun marriage conference weekend. Friday night we met up with Kendall and Tim for dinner before church then headed on to the event. The speaker was great and we learned tons about our marriage together and future roles as parents. After the speaker they had a wedding cake reception. It was so nice getting to hang out with some of my girl friends and their husbands. I have to say that one of the highlights of the nights was seeing one of my friends referral pictures that she got earlier that week. Her kids are SO cute and I am very happy for them at this exciting part of the adoption process.
On Saturday morning we got up early and headed back on over to the church for the second day of the conference. They had a photo booth set up where you could take pictures with funny signs. Here are some shots from our silly session…
Overall the weekend was great. Eric and I had a blast getting to learn more about each other and how we can make our marriage stronger!
In case you have not noticed movies are a big hobby around here. We love going to the movies which means we LOVE award season! Dana came over tonight to watch the winners take stage. We typically dress up, eat yummy food, and have contests at our Oscar Party but since Eric was out of town Dana and I decided to make it low key this year. We still had decorations, VERY yummy food, and our contests but wore our pajamas instead!
About a month ago I stumbled upon this very unique cake stand…and needless to say felt the NEED to have one!
So I sent out a quick email to all the men in my life asking if anyone wanted to make this for me. It had been several weeks so I was pretty sure no one was up for the challenge. But last night Kendall came over to borrow some clothes and when I went to answer the door she told me to close my eyes. Upon opening them I saw Tim carrying this beauty!
I was SO excited! I could not believe that he actually made me one. He found this tree cutting company and asked them if he could go to one of the sites to see get some lumber. Once at the job site he had them go up in the trees and cut different sizes until he found the perfect two pieces. He then took it home and sealed it so the bark will not chip off over the years.
It took a while but I counted the rings and my “stump stand” as I like to call it is more than 100 years old. How cool is that! Thanks so much Tim. Now I need to make you a cake to serve on it as a thank you!
Today marks the 2 month marker of us “officially waiting”. I have to say I thought it would be easier when we started waiting but boy was I wrong. This waiting is HARD. Sometimes if I let my brain really get going I can literally drive myself crazy! I am like a psycho searching other waiting families blogs trying to figure out how long they have been waiting, if they got a referral yet, doing the math to see when our referral should come, you know just the crazy stalker kind of things… I have also called our social worker probably too many times too (Just to check in!) But I have a feeling if I don’t stop she may stop avoiding my phone calls. Have I mentioned that I have control issues! And all of this who knows when is really doing a number on me. You have no idea…
But then other days I am just fine. Actually happy that we have some more time for just us two. I also have several more home projects I want to finish before the baby comes, many more books I need to read to find out what type of parent I want to be, and many more late nights and sleeping in that I would like to have.
So I guess to sum up waiting month 2 I will have to say I have 2 completely different personalities. Please continue to pray for Oliver wherever he is right now that he will be loved and protected. If you don’t mind shout out a couple of prayers for me too…That I don’t drive myself or Eric crazy during the wait!
As all of you know if you follow my blog you know that I have the cutest nieces and nephew ever! They are so sweet and funny and constantly surprise you. Today I almost peed in my pants laughing at this funny story Nichole called to tell me about her conversation with Bella when she picked her up from school. So it goes like this:
Bella: Mom, Guess What?
Nichole: What?
Bella: I got a new cousin today at school!
Nichole: (Thinking what in the world) Oh really who?
Bella: There is a new boy in class that is my cousin. There he is right there! (Pointing out the window of the car
as they are still in the carpool lane.)
And who was Bella’s new cousin? A little asian boy! Yep that is right I guess we have conditioned her so much that her new cousin she will be getting will be an asian and she had recently watched adoption videos on this blog so now any new asian boy she meets is obviously her new cousin! Isn’t she just the cutest!!!
(Check out the blog that made Bella excited about her new cousin if you have some time but I warn you that you probably need to grab a box of tissues because it is too sweet. Whittaker Woman)
Tonight my sweet sister-in-law Nichole introduced me to the crazy world of children’s consignment sales. And this world is SERIOUS business…for real! I was so lucky because Nichole was able to get us early previous passes the a couple of nights before the public opening. It was so serious all the window were covered up so you could not see in while you were waiting in line. You had to have a pass for a certain time slot. Nichole’s friend Krista was able to get me bumped from the 7 slot to 6:30 which meant I was able to jump a bunch of other hunting moms. Once you get in the door you have signs you can put on the items to claim the stuff. It was about a 4 hour ordeal that involved waiting in line to check out for about an hour. But it was totally worth it. I learned a lot about baby products from Nichole, Krista, and all the other moms. And also just had a good time hanging out with them. But the most exciting thing was the amount of money I saved…it was several, several hundreds of dollars…woo hoo! Now if I could just get my little man home to play with his new items!
So trying out another Terminology Tuesday. I thought for the first couple of Tuesdays we could go over our adoption process and all the terms. I know when we first started out on this crazy adoption journey I searched everywhere for someone really breaking down the steps.
Application: Although I know all of you know what an application is but in regards to adoption the application is a simple form the agency requires you to fill out to see if they even want to proceed with your adoption. We had to fill out two separate applications. One to the in-state agency that was doing our homestudy and another to our out of state placing agency. The form is pretty simple. It covers general questions: Name, Age, Social, etc. Ours then went into a little more specific info: Salary, Number of Years Married, Spiritual Beliefs, Weight, Height. I am not sure what the agencies are looking for in this initial process but it is a pretty painless step. I am thinking they briefly look to see if we are suitable parents and if so then if we meet the general criteria for the country you are wanting to adopt from. Ex: South Korea you must have proper weight to height ratio, over the age of 25, been married for a minimum of 3 years, etc. We filled out our application in a matter of minutes and sent it in with a minimal fee to the two agencies. The fees are typically non-refundable. It just covers the agency’s cost of taking time to review your documents and to check you briefly out. So to sum this up the application process is pretty simple and nothing to stress over.
Happy Valentines! I hope all of you had a very blessed day. Since we are trying to save money for the adoption our Valentines was low key. After work I came home and took a quick little nap then got up and got ready for our date night. We decided to try out a local Korean restaurant for our valentines dinner. The restaurant was very cool and laid back. It certainly seems like somewhere we can bring Oliver, make a mess, and everything will be just fine. They gave us a sampling of all of these dishes to try. It was pretty good. Granted there were some items I am just not going to be able to eat since I like bland food but since Eric loves spicy things he really enjoyed it. I was just excited to get to spend our valentines kind of celebrating our little man even though he is not with us now.
After dinner I came home to an awesome surprise…a scavenger hunt! You see we were watching The Office last week and one of the characters gave a scavenger hunt and I told Eric that would be the coolest! And I guess he was listening. He hid all of these amazing clues and at the end of each clue was a little surprise. I told him that this was the best present ever! I would love a scavenger hunt that leads me to pretzel M&M’s any day over jewelry (now don’t get me wrong I love necklaces…) but this was the perfect surprise to make a perfect valentines day!
I am so lucky to be married to such an amazing man that puts up with my crazy self and surprises me with a cool hunt around the house even though I only gave him a card cut out of construction paper!
Today was our little nieces Mae’s 2nd birthday party. Her birthday party was scheduled for last week but was moved to tonight because she was sick the week of her actual birthday. The poor little girl has lived a hard life lately…Over the past couple of weeks she has had croup twice, strep, and an ear infection. But tonight she was back to her normal, healthy, happy, sweet little self. Mae wanted a Micky Mouse party and Nichole made her wish come true. The party was decorated super cute and there was VERY yummy food and cake.
Mae loved all of her cute presents and ate her yummy cake. She was being super loving tonight and let me play with her a good bit and even sat in my lap for a long time watching her Tinkerbell movie. She all the sudden looked at me with a funny little look so I asked her if she needed something to drink and she said yes. As soon as I got up and went to the kitchen to get her drink the poor little think started projectile vomiting all over her new toys. She continued to throw up every 45 minutes all night long. The poor little bird just can’t catch a break! So needless to say the party ended pretty quickly (at least for us) not so much for Tanner and Nichole who was up with her all night….
