Last Couple of Weeks

Here is a list of 10 things I've done in the past couple of weeks...

1. Sew new pillows for the couch

2. Hang a wall full of pictures in the living room

3. Practice playing softball
4. Shop for a bicycle
5. Go to a butterfly exhibit

6. Steam clean the carpets
7. Take the couch apart to wash the covers and make it look new again
8. Dinner at friends' house
9. Have friends over for dinner
10. Go for a few trail runs

Here is what I haven't done in the past couple of weeks...

Our profile.

Ugh!!!!!

Next Steps

On Friday we were excited to see an email that said:

Your home study has been finalized and signed off on here in the Boise Office, you are ready for the next steps in your adoption journey, entering your program of choice.

That means we need to really get going on putting our profile together. This is the please-pick-us book of pictures and stories about us and the letters we write to our future birthmomma.

As I've mentioned before, this has been so hard to make headway on! I literally have two pages done. And by done I mean I only make a few changes to them each time I look at them. :o) I think the hard thing is making sure it is "us" and that our personalities and who we are show through. There are a few pages of instructions and required/recommended content that we need to include, but what I really wanted to start with was our relationship...no narrative, just pictures and what 12 pictures looks like; one for each year we've been together.

Jake and I have more pages to create and it is the perfect mother's day project to work on together!

xoxo

adoption is the new pregnant

Love this!

So thankful for my loving and supportive friends and family...

Lonesome Adoption?

I have to say that our adoption journey has been lonely at times. I say that not knowing if "lonely" is really the right word to describe it. I've never excelled at sharing my feelings so I think that contributes to the situation. I, of course, have the hubbs next to me every step of the way, but there is just still something that feels lonely. I know there are others out there who have experienced the same things and have been googling various blogs looking...looking for something/someone to connect with. I don't know if it is because there is so much about adoption that so many don't know (including me, I'm definitely a newbie) that makes me not know how to talk about it.

Today, there were two examples of this odd feeling where I would have loved to have someone to relate to. First, I was super excited to get a phone call from our Idaho caseworker asking a few confirmatory questions for our home study. She is wrapping up the last of the details of the paperwork and expects the home study to be reviewed, revised, and approved by the end of the week (yay!!!!). This phone call was seriously the highlight of my day. As a couple of my coworkers asked about it, they were trying to be enthusiastic for me, but I think they were wondering what I was so excited about. :) I'm sure from their perspective we've been working on this whole home study thing for months and thought the last home visit we had meant we were done. Well, it has been months....but we are still working on it.

After the phone call started to sink in and I started to realize what it means for the home study to be complete I went into panic planning mode. My first thought was what if we got another phone call right away with a baby waiting for us to pick them up. Next thought, I need to check our bank account. Seriously. Happy baby thoughts quickly dissolved into 'how are we going to pay for this?' thoughts. One thing I talk about less than my feelings is talking about money. Of course it will all work out, but that lonely isolated feeling crept in again. Who can we talk to this about? Do we ask our caseworker what other couples do, how they feel going through what we are going through?

Anywho (remember saying that like 10 years ago, old school I know) - now that is off of my chest, I feel better. Thank you blog for listening.

Next dilemma...what font to use in our profile...

I'm not joking!

I'm tentatively liking Magneto.

Except, I don't l*o*v*e how the numbers look as much as I like how letters look.

Stay tuned... 

5 Years 5 Random Acts of Kindness

So what do you do five years later...five years after getting the single most profound phone call of your life? Five years after learning what true agony is. For most, war is a distant and foreign thing. Not for me. War came into my home and changed my life forever.

I've spent the month of April this year similarly to the past few years. The change you feel in the air that shows a hint of spring changes something inside me. I sleep less. Significantly less; we are talking maybe a few hours a night. I find myself lost in thought often and contemplating things both big and small. I think about my entire childhood. I think about my family, my future children. I think about my faith. I think about my brother.

April 23rd comes around every year as do the other Dale-days throughout the year. There are a lot of them. This I am thankful for. I, as does my entire family, think about my brother every single day. It is a blessing to have as many memories as we do. Dale-days bring about some memories that have gotten fuzzy and an opportunity to talk about them with loved ones.

This year one thing that is different is the focus on starting our family. Hours have been spent combing through pictures and writing and re-writing words to our future birthmomma. There are times I am completely overwhelmed with emotion as I think about the uncle my children will never know; the fun they would have had and the lessons they would have learned from my only brother. This is what I've been contemplating a lot about this month.

Dale made people smile.

So, this is where I got my idea. I want to make people smile and I want to do it for him.

From this year forward I want to spend April 23rd focusing on making people smile. For every year that passes I want to do that many random acts of kindness.

This year is 5 years so 5 random acts of kindness were incorporated into my day. I didn't really have a plan going into today, so I just went with it as things came to mind.

1. I bought a couple of people a cup of coffee. After snagging an iced tea at a local drive-thru I left extra money and instructions with the barista to use the money towards the next few coffee orders she got. As I drove away, she was smiling.
2. Jake and I met up for a beer and on my way to the table I stopped at the bar. I left money and instruction to cover the next customer's happy hour and a relatively large tip for the waitress. As I was explaining my idea to the waitress, she was smiling...and she was really smiling as she told her next customer that her order was taken care of. And for the customer, she was smiling.
3. I gave away some jeans (that I love, but will probably never fit into again) to some teenagers who happen to love clothes...especially free ones. As one of the teens was running out the door, she was smiling.
4. I made cookies and took them to a neighbor I hadn't met yet. After sitting around and chatting and getting to know each other a bit, she was smiling.
5. I ran out of time today, but I plan on taking some more of the cookies I made, some tea, a handmade card and an envelope with postage to another neighbor. I want to share a little treat with her to have while writing a note to a friend and sending it to them in the mail. I'm pretty sure this will make her smile.

Today was still a hard day and tears were shed, but smiles were shared today too. The war continues, but today I did my best to show some kindness on behalf of and in memory of my brother.

Love you little brother. Semper fi.

No Words

Seriously. I have none. For the letter I need to write to birthmommas. I always have words. Enough for at least 2 people. At least.

Our Agency gives us guidelines of things to include in our letters, (Jake and I each have to write one...and if I don't have words Jake for sure has less) but it still doesn't really help.

Maybe this situation calls for a throw back to college tactics. Maybe I need to start with an outline. And an extremely pressing deadline that I procrastinate towards until I almost run out of time. And a library (if I wasn't at the hospital I was on the 3rd floor of the BSU library in grad school). And coffee.

I thought that the easiest place to start would be with the pictures. I organized all the pictures we have printed by year and will go through the ones that are electronic next. If pictures are the easiest place to start I'm in trouble and this profile is going to take me months...and make me laugh and cry a lot.

And the background checks are in...

And they came back good to go! Imagine that. After resubmitting 23 pages of updated paperwork to one of our caseworkers following our last home visit from another caseworker the last of the paperwork is all done!

We were expecting to wait for this a bit longer, but are so happy that it is done. Last week we got letters in the mail requesting notarized releases of information for the state of Oregon to look up our names in a state of Idaho database. One last name check in one more database. As annoyed as I was to have to jump through one more hoop, considering we just had background checks completed in Idaho, there is a reason for all the database checking...it helps keep kiddos safe. It also helps that I was able to call one of my co-workers who happens to be a notary and get the notarized releases the same day we got them in the mail. I love small-town, small-hospital stuff like that.

So, what's next for us? The next (and last) step is to put together a profile that includes letters from us to birthmoms and pictures/stories showing who we are. The idea is to put together a little bit about us so that a mom can get enough of a sense for who we are that she wants to know more and hopefully wants us to parent the baby in her belly. Seriously...what do you say?

I'll post pages of our profile as I get them put together...so excited to be getting to this point. I can't wait to be waiting. Waiting to be chosen. Waiting for a call. Waiting for the airplane to take us who-knows-where. Waiting to bring our baby home. Waiting to be a family.