the check's in the mail

Finally, finally, after a very long time and a few emails to our social worker who is helping to nudge things along since they seem to be taking so long at the office, we got our invoice for our home study in the mail today. This is big, because apparently (and they failed to tell us this before hand so it could be a "surprise") they will not show your profile to anyone (and that includes online) until you pay for your home study. Which is fine, but they wouldn't send us the bill!!

Now we have it, Josh can call on Monday and (hopefully) pay over the phone, and we'll expect our profile book to be on the coffee table (or whatever they do with it) that afternoon. :)

bilingual

Brecken: I know what "dinner" is in Spanish.
Josh: Oh yeah? What?
Brecken: SUPPER!

Brecken: My knees are shivering.
Kara: They are?
Brecken: Yeah, that's Spanish for "they are cold".

my valentine

a smell

Brecken: Do you smell something funny in here?
Me: No... what does it smell like?
Brecken: Something in the microwave, maybe. Like deer poop or something.

(Don't ask me why he thinks we've ever had deer poop in our microwave!!!)

officially waiting

Our home study process is DONE! So excited. And it's a bit surreal!

We went to our SW's house in Laramie last night after Josh's game. We were supposed to meet with her at 7:00, but it took an hour longer to get there than we had thought, because of weather. Even though we left at 5:00, the 90 minute trip took so long we didn't get there until almost 7:30!

Last night's interviews were the one-on-one interviews where Donna asked us about our family growing up, what we liked to do, all those "personal" things. While one of us with her, the other one was in her downstairs living room with B playing with the toys she keeps on hand for her grandkids- Brecken thought that was great fun and wanted to stay the night there. :)

We stayed overnight at a hotel, then this morning got up and went to Kinkos to get our profile book printed and bound (holy expensive!!!) so we could drop them off with Donna. We signed our names on our "Dear Birthparents" letter, and we had Brecken sign his name on them all, too. Who can't resist a 4-year old's signature? ;)

This morning's interview was together as a family, about our parenting style, religion, stuff like that. It was only an hour long.

Brecken loves Donna- he keeps caling her "that grandma". I'm totally impressed with her too- love her. She gave us hugs before we left today and I thanked her so much for letting us invade her house on a weekend to get this done.

So. Now we wait. Hopefully not too long, but I'll try to get my head prepared for the long haul so I'm not disappointed.

too cold for comfort

Woke up to a temperature of 22 degrees below zero, with a 36 below zero wind chill. It was still 18 below zero when I came home from work. My poor car didn't like being outside all day- it sounded terrible when I started it to come home! I'm glad it started! It's supposed to be even colder tonight- it's going to make getting up tomorrow morning super hard!

I did the math, and at 5:00 tonight Honolulu was 20 degrees warmer outside in Honolulu than it is inside my house currently. And if you compare actual air temps, Honolulu was 98 degrees warmer. Where do I sign up for my plane tickets? (It has gotten colder- 25 degrees below zero right now!)