Our House

So...we have been pretty quiet lately. How about a blog post about some of the things we've been doing to keep busy?!

Hooray! I knew you guys would like that idea!

The last time we wrote was in February, so we have quite a bit of ground to cover. Drew has been really busy with work this spring, but it has finally slowed down! This means that I can really get back to menu planning and making dinner again. And it also means that we're catching up on projects in and around the house.

Drew's mom brought us a sweet gift when they came through at the end of February. We now have the majority of Drew's childhood books and stuffed animals all set up in Little Man's room. We just love books and reading, so it was really fun to go through everything and see what we shared in common.

These photos don't even show all of the books!

The crates under the chair are filled with stuffed animals as well.

Drew was in a wedding at the very beginning of March. We were so happy to celebrate with our friends as they begin their marriage! It was a beautiful and fun evening!

I started nannying at our house. It has really been SO much fun! Plus, Drew likes how much cleaner the house is these days! This also means that I have more time for crafting and projects.

I finally started getting into my artisan bread book! I received the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, for Christmas. I really wanted to try it, but was intimidated by the process: Yeast. Rising Dough. Kneading. Rolling Pins. Once I started into the book though, I realized that I really can make bread! I decided to start with the Challah dough, and my friend Erica came over this past Friday and helped me turn it into Caramel Sticky Buns. We had fun, and the sticky buns were delicious! You should all get this book!

And now, for our most recent project. We found this fabric at Ikea and thought it was really fun. I cut it into strips, and Drew and I stabled the fabric over each drawer front on the unfinished dresser in Little Man's room. I am really glad it turned out so well! Now we just have to decide about painting or replacing the knobs...

That pretty much wraps up what you missed. No new news on our journey to bring Little Man home, and we're still praying about God's plan for this time of waiting. Our church is planning an adoption Sunday for the 21st, and Drew and I will be participating in a short video that will be played during the services. We've got our fingers crossed that we will come across much more eloquent than we actually are! Other than that, we're trying to take advantage of the sunny days, when they come, and working to get our yard ready for spring.

Sherlock is excited about the nicer weather ahead.

Although, he doesn't seem to mind the rainy days TOO much...

The Whirlwind

Well, it has definitely been a whirlwind couple of days! We spent Wednesday getting all of the remaining supplies together and then packed up and drove down to visit family for Thanksgiving. We stayed through the celebration and left town around 6pm to head back home. We gathered and packed most of our stuff that night, and then spent Friday putting the last remaining items together. Oh, and Drew also had to do some work and I sewed a little blanket for Little Man. We doubt he will get to keep it, but we figure it's worth a shot. I used a little fleece blanket I got from the dollar store for, big surprise, $1, and paired it with some scrap fabric I received from my Grandmother last Christmas.

Ain't no party like a dachshund party!

I am so grateful for all of these people!

Our flight didn't leave until Friday evening, so we had plenty of time to make it up to the airport stress free. We also had to say our goodbyes to Sherlock. Drew's mom and her husband took us to get dinner and then dropped us off at the airport. Before we knew it, we were check in and waiting for our flight to visit Little Man!

The flights were really smooth. The first flight was pretty short. Drew stayed awake the whole time and I dozed for most of it. The second flight was the long leg, and they did a great job. Granted, some of our enthusiasm may be due to the fact that we had 3 seats to ourselves. Lots of people had the whole middle row to themselves and managed to lay across all three seats. From what we have heard, we think the service was pretty typical. On these international flights, they are constantly offering beverage service. They also served us two meals (a really late night dinner and breakfast). We both had bibimbap for dinner and pancakes for breakfast. The meals were pretty good considering it's airplane food. The last leg of our flight was equally as uneventful as the first. We landed and collected our baggage without trouble in Little Man's country, and we were then picked up by our facilitator and translator.

These two ladies were really nice, and talked to us the whole way in to the hotel. They dropped us off at the hotel, made sure we were situated, and made plans to pick us up the next morning at 10:30. After they left, we found our room and settled in a little. We were really tried, but it was still mid-afternoon, so we opted for a walk to help keep us occupied. We walked down to the beach, which is less than half a mile from our hotel. There were lots of other people milling around at the beach, including a dog in a snow suit!!

After the beach we looped around to the market to pick up water and a couple snacks. Once we were back in our room we spent a couple more hours unpacking, organizing all of our donations and gifts, and then figured out how to find the tv channels in English. It was finally 6 o'clock, and we opted to have our first meal in country at the hotel restaurant. The prices weren't bad and adopting families also get 20% off at the restaurant. We finished our meal and then came back and crashed from 7:30 pm until 8:00 am!

This Week

So, I had this post pretty much ready to go, but then yesterday afternoon was a bit rough. Don't worry! Everything will work out. We just got some news of a slight delay with our training, and this mama does NOT like more time being put between her and her son! We talked through all of our options though, and I know we are going to be just fine. After Drew got home and talked me down, the rest of the evening was actually fairly relaxing. So anyways, that was just a little look at the emotions that come along with this process, and we will now move on to other news.

After the garage sale, Drew put several of the remaining large items on Craigslist. We had to sell off enough of the items on Monday and Tuesday to be able to return one of the box trailers on Wednesday morning. We managed to empty the trailer on time and made about $340 dollars. Not too shabby. For the most part, we just listed the furniture at the same price marked during the garage sale.

We still have several items to go, but it's nice to see progress. Once everything is out of the bonus room, we will finally get to set up Little Man's new room. The plan is to move the guest room out of the second bedroom and create a guest/game room in the bonus room. This may just be a paper pregnancy, but I have been dying to get his room all set up for him! The nesting bug has definitely hit our home.

This weekend, the plan was to meet with a family friend to try to get our required face-to-face training out of the way. She is a licensed social worker and had generously offered to put something together for us to cover this new requirement. It turns out, however, that we are going to have to wait for a different scheduled training that our agency has selected. We are not super happy about this (thus my emotional breakdown yesterday), but we will do whatever it takes. These hours are the last big item we need before we can submit to get our first trip dates. And you know what that means...we finally get to meet our Little Man!! Drew and I both cannot wait for that day to come!

And what's a post without pictures?

Seriously. How cute was he as a puppy?!

Productive Saturday

We had a very productive day on Saturday. We woke up early, as always, and started off the day by taking a family bike ride. This is always our furry family member's favorite part of the day. I was also excited for the ride because it was my second with my "clipless" pedals and it went really well. (I disagree with the term for describing this type of bike pedal, but that's a post for another day.)

After our bike ride, I wrapped up my first art project for Little Man's room, which just needed a coat of varnish. Drew then went to get his hair cut while I cleaned out/organized the hall closet and tidied up our room. Our next project was shifting the furniture in the front room to make way for our bookcase. As I attempted to fit all of our books on the shelves, Drew started sorting through the storage in the garage.  After a brief lunch break, we worked a little more in the garage, and wrapped up the first session with a pretty significant pile started for our future garage sale. We feel like we've made significant progress today toward being ready for our Home Study visit!

It looks full, but trust me - it's much better now.



We got a bigger bookshelf, and we still had to box up books for the attic...

Sherlock was helping me check out the boxes of stuff gathered for the yard sale.

After some resting, we worked up a grocery list and menu plan for the week and headed over to HEB. Our final project for the day (as set forth by Drew) was to start on Sherlock's second hair cut of the summer. With only half of his hair shaved, he looks really funny right now, but he is well on his way to a "cool" new haircut.

It feels so good to be making progress and to feel as though we are actually in control of something during this process!