Turkey Day Post-Mortem

So, Thanksgiving ended up going fine, although hosting duties did stress me out a bit, as usual! We ended up with 16 adults and 4 little girls, counting us. Luckily between the kitchen, dining room and in front of the TV (for the football junkies), the house could handle it all. We had a nearly 19 pound turkey, and didn't have that many leftovers! Brian normally likes having a LOT of leftovers (the man can hoover turkey sandwiches), but we ended up being busy for a lot of the weekend, and then he left for work out of town on Monday. So, not many leftovers for him this year.

The day started off well, with Brian making his stuffing and getting the turkey in at 10 am. Dinner was supposed to be at 2. He put the turkey on to roast at 325 degrees. I told him about halfway through (or maybe even earlier) to crank it up to 350, but he didn't. Oh no, he waited until it was 1:30 and the timer hadn't popped yet! Too late!!! The other funny thing is that my cousins Cory and Kayla were coming from Lake Orion, and got totally lost. I think they ended up half way to South Lyon. Kayla didn't write down the directions properly, and they ended up going in the wrong direction. They finally turned back towards town and make it at about 1:30, when they should have been here about 12:30 or 1 probably. Silly college kids!

So, it's 2 o'clock and everyone is waiting around to eat. The timer on that damn turkey FINALLY popped at like 2:15, so we didn't eat until 2:30 and everyone was STARVING!! But it was worth it, as Brian makes delicious turkey. We also had mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, green bean casserole, squash, cranberry jelly, and rolls. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie, my mother's famous pumpkin cheesecake, and pumpkin roll (which was delicious). My cousin Kayla is currently a vegetarian (for the last couple years, actually) and the only thing she and Brian can agree on is my Mom's pumpkin cheesecake! They both said it was the best one she ever made!

Cory and Kayla ended up staying until about 9:30 that night, just hanging out. We made Kayla watch the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ha ha!) and she fell asleep in the chair! Then, the Wrath of Khan came on, so we just kept watching! It was funny. I'm glad they had a good time. All in all, we had a good time with the holiday too, even though it was a bit crazy!

Thanksgiving (aka Thanks-bitching)

Brian and I are hosting Thanksgiving (aka Thanks-bitching, Brian's word!) this year, our first major holiday hosting since Easter 2008. (My birthday party this year, while huge, doesn't count as a major holiday, unfortunately.) We're expecting at least 14 adults and 1 child, possibly a few more, as one of Brian's sisters has yet to tell us if her brood is coming. Rude. :(

Anyway, hosting major events stresses me out. Well, the preparation stresses me out, the actual hosting part is fun. Once all the food is done and eaten, I really enjoy myself. As for the preparation, we're right in the middle of it. I did the shopping today, and gosh, I do not miss working at Meijer on days like those, because pretty much everybody else was shopping at Meijer, too. I had to buy potatoes, squash, stuffing supplies, etc. I already have a green bean casserole from GFS (they have all sorts of pre-made sides, check it out!), frozen corn from the Schwan's Man, and I'm picking up our fresh 16-18 pound turkey from Middletown Market (the same place Brian gets his deer processed) on Tuesday. Other folks are kindly bringing cranberries, rolls, and delicious desserts. It should end up being fan-tastic. Thank god Brian does the turkey and stuffing, and does it well, and I can concentrate on the sides.

I expect the day to go well, as our families generally get along well. Dinner is at 2 pm, so it'll be all about getting up in the morning and getting the turkey going and peeling potatoes (not fun for me at all!). It's on days like these having a big ass dining room table rocks, because when it has the leaf in it, it seats 10 people, then 4-6 more can go around the kitchen table and some will probably just want to sit in front of the TV anyway. Thank god we have enough space!

So, now that you all know exactly what WE'LL be eating on T-day, I'm off to thinking about starting dinner for tonight! I hope you all have a great Thanks-bitching!

More Adoption Fun!

Hi All! Sorry that I haven't been blogging much lately, and when I have it's been all adoption, all the time. But, between that and work, that's pretty much all we've been doing lately! Brian's travel has been all over the place, and now its hunting for him later this week, so I'll be flying solo again for a while!

I wanted to write and update what's been going on with the adoption, since everyone has been so kind, and so interested. A lot's been going on with it, and its all been going pretty well!

1) Today we had our home visit. That's when the home study social worker, (Kris in our case), comes to the house and checks it out. (Probably to make sure you're not lying about where you live!) We also went over a few last things. She loved the house and thought it was great, and will be a great place for kids. We told her that's pretty much why we had bought it! She stayed for about an hour and a half, and we had a nice visit. She is SUPER nice, and I would honestly recommend her and Adoption Associates in general for anyone who is interested. The process has been overall smooth so far, with a minor bump here and there, but that's to be expected.

2) We had our psychological evaluation last a week and a half ago, and actually got the reports (one for me and one for Brian) in the mail today. I was so nerve wracked about it, but the reports are good! We were "Recommended!" Yay!

3) We have one last thing to do for our required education, and that'll be done tomorrow. We're attending a seminar in Lansing on Attachment Disorder. It's sort of presenting a worse case scenario with an adoption, which I think is good. We need to be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best. Once that is done, we're done with classes, and then the home study can be complete!

4) Once the home study is complete, I can send that along with some other additional paperwork they asked for to USCIS (United Stated Citizenship and Immigration Service), ie, the Department of Homeland Security. Gotta despise federal bureaucracy, but they hold the power to award us visas to allow our children to come home with us when the time comes. Also, when the home study is done, we can complete the dossier paperwork (99% done already), get it notarized (I'll need to make an appointment at the bank, because it's about 3 copies of 8 different docs and will take a while), and then apostilled (which is the state seal, so I'll have to drive to Lansing). After that, OUR DOSSIER GOES TO RUSSIA! We had planned to have this paperwork done by the end of the year, and I think, barring major emergency, that we definitely will! Once everything is sent, we can start doing other things, like contacting an MD who's an adoption specialist (more on that in a later post), learning some Russian, getting rooms ready, gathering orphanage gifts, and working on yet more paperwork. It will be CONSTANT stuff to do until we're done, but we're almost over the first hurdle!

5) On a final note, our neighbors 3 doors down, Dawn and Rob, are in Russia RIGHT NOW meeting their daughter for the first time. And they just LOVE her and wish they could bring her home immediately, but obviously they have to wait just like we will. But, seeing her blog and how happy they are, for me, completely validates everything we are doing even more! I can't wait until that's us, but we have to be patient, because we could wait awhile!

Late October...Feels like November Still!

I haven't written in a while, and that's because not much has been going on, or rather, the same old, same old has been happening. Obviously, we're still plugging away with the adoption. We still hope to have the paperwork out by the end of year, but I think it'll be sooner. I think that's good--if you're going to have to wait in line a long time, you'd rather be at the front of the line than at the back, right?

Regarding the adoption, we've finished our educational classes except for a seminar we're going to attend, and Brian has a book to read called, "Parenting with Love and Logic." I guess its a pretty famous book that lots of people have read. And its a book not just for adoptive parents, but for all parents. I think a lot of that stuff is pure hooey, but I honestly really liked that one. It's not all touchy-feeling, befriend your children crap. It actually says that you're NOT supposed to be their friends, you're supposed to be their parents. Also, it really focuses on letting kids learn from their own mistakes, and not fixing their problems for them. Sounds about right to me. The seminar we're attending is on Attachment and Bonding and what sorts of attachment problems adoptive children can have. I'm sure it'll be scary, but enlightening. Of course, they're telling you the worst case scenarios, we must remember that.

Also, Brian is thrilled that he got his first deer with a bow. Yay Brian, good job honey! It was a small doe, and normally I think he would have let her go, but he really just wanted to get over that hurdle. We still have some meat left from last year (almost gone), so he gave the whole deer to his sister, Erin, who could really use the meat and will happily eat every last bit of it. So, its not going to waste, thankfully. He's also been looking into how to donate deer to food programs, but I don't know if he's figured it out yet.

Brian has also been very good about keeping up with his physical therapy at home work for his shoulders. His actual therapy is done, and now he has exercises to do at home that he'll probably have to do forever. He's being very compliant, I think. His strength is increasing like crazy and he's getting some guns on him from the weight work! Another gold star babe!

Other than that, I've just been working a lot again, which is good. Considering we have to pay $350 this Friday for a psych evaluation that will probably take 2 hours, I'll take every penny. That's another thing that kills me about this process--you'd think we were wanting to do espionage or something with as much stuff as the government is making us do. And, just to be clear, its not just us, its everybody that goes through this process. Seriously, Immigration people--go round up some illegals or terrorists or something and leave all us adoptive parents who just want to give kids good homes alone! :)

More later!

Early October...it feels like November

Oh my gosh, it went from summer to late fall, it seems. I hate this weather! It is so cold and rainy and crappy! I would love to have an Indian summer, since we had our first hard frost the other night, but since we never had a REAL summer to begin with, an Indian one is probably more than I can realistically expect. :)

Just an update on what's happening around here, after the great MSU victory over U of M. Brian's mother had her whole ankle reconstructed about 10 days ago--she's basically been walking around on a broken ankle for THIRTY years. Literally. She fell and broke it when my sister in law Jaimie was about a month or two old, and its never been taken care of properly. So, we've been trying to keep up with what's going on there, and being available if they need anything. I think she's already starting to feel a bit better, as she's been on her email quite a bit.

My work starts up again in earnest on Tuesday. I'll be working probably 4 days a week or so through Thanksgiving. With what an adoption costs, money is good, but I will be smoking busy! So, on days off and on weekends, we will be really busy with paperwork and educational classes. I'm actually sort of looking forward to the classes, most of you who know me well know that I've always loved school. So that'll be fun, I think. It's basically on line stuff, and one seminar on attachment that Brian wants to attend. We have 7 different units, for a minimum of 12 hours of classwork we have to do to meet the requirements. It shouldn't be a problem, its just a matter of sitting down and doing it! Hmmmm, maybe EVERYBODY that's wanting a baby or that is pregnant should have to take some damn parenting classes...

I also just want to say how lucky I feel that we have family and friends that are being so supportive of our decision to adopt. We truly have come to feel as though this is the route we're supposed to take to become parents. We will be saving two little lives in the process. To get back to the wonderful support we're getting, I'll sign off this blog entry with something Candace sent me recently. I hope its okay with her I'm posting it here. She sent me this picture with the caption of:

"Hi Miss Heather & Mr. Brian! I'm ready for my Russian friends to join me in my new ride!"

Adoption Journey!

So, many of you may already know this, but Brian and I have officially started on an adoption journey. We have begun the process to adopt from Russia! We are so excited about it, but also a little daunted, for reasons I'll discuss below. Anyway, we just decided that we'd had enough of trying to have a biological baby. Three miscarriages and fertility treatment since the beginning of the year with no results is enough. It's funny, with the fertility treatment, the more intervention they did, the less pregnant I seemed to get. And it just seemed like the treatment caused a whole other set of problems that needed further treatment, etc. Where does it end? At the end of July, shortly before we went up to the UP, we just decided, nope, no more. And it is a huge weight lifted off our shoulders.

In case you are wondering, here is a brief outline of the process, which is why we feel daunted. There are 3 different sets of paperwork to do. The home study, the dossier, and the USCIS paperwork. The home study is working with a social worker here, having meetings with her, and doing an educational component. We can hopefully get that done in about 2 months. The home study goes in both the dossier, which is the file that gets sent to Russia, and the USCIS paperwork (USCIS is the United States Custom and Immigration). The dossier literally consists of about 20 different documents, like original birth certificates, marriages license, the deed to our house, fingerprint checks, etc that we have to gather, have notarized and some state sealed in Lansing. I am going to be doing A LOT of running around. And the customs paperwork is sort of similar, some the same info, with some additional documents. Yikes!

After all that paperwork is done, our dossier is submitted to Russia to be translated and registered in a region. Then, the waiting begins. We could wait a year for a referral for a child or children (we are thinking of adopting 2 kids at once) that match your criteria as far as age, gender, etc. We hopefully will not wait that long! A referral includes some medical information, and perhaps a photos. Before deciding anything, you take that medical to a doctor who specializes in this stuff, and they give you an assessment whether they think the child has serious health issues. Then you decide if you want to accept the referral. Quickly after that, you travel to Russia for the first time to meet the child. You meet the child at the orphanage, and decide for good if you want them. If you do, you fly home after a week, and wait for a court date in Russia 2-3 months in the future. Then, you go back, have your court hearing, and the kids are yours after a waiting period. You can then go to the Embassy in Moscow, and you get permission from the US government to come home, and paperwork making the kids American citizens. Then, you are home with your child!

So, Brian and I will be making at least 2 trips to Russia in the next year or two. We are kind of hoping we can be done and home by next Christmas, but that's just sort of something we have in our head, nothing is set in stone with any of this. This is clearly not an easy or quick process, but like I said, we are so excited! For those of you to whom we've already told this, thanks for your support and enthusiasm. We appreciate it, and we're going to need your support in the coming months so we don't get discouraged!

Back to School...I Wish

So, it's September, and all the kids (college and younger!) are back in school. I cannot believe how quickly this non-summer summer we had passed. It's completely ridiculous. It's only September 10, and the leaves on the trees are already starting to turn colors. Ugh. I am so not ready for fall. Not that fall is bad, but fall leads to winter, which leads to snow and cold...you see where I'm going with this.

Anyway, back to "back to school." This time of year always makes me nostalgic for school days. It's been 5 years since I graduated law school, but I still feel like I should be going back to school this time of year. I honestly just love school; I'm such a nerd to the core. I love buying school supplies--the pens, pencils, paper and notebooks. Once I hit college and law school, I loved going to the bookstore and buying all my books for class, and all the highlighters and paper flags I would ever need (although I didn't like the bill!). I loved organizing my notebooks for class--in law school I had a very organized system, consisting of a huge 3 ring binder in which I kept all my notes for classes, organized chronologically, i.e., the first class I had Monday morning was first in the book, the second class of the week was next, and on down. At the time, I was very proud of this system, but now I realize it was dangerous--what if I lost that notebook and all my notes were gone? That would have been deadly.

Buying supplies and organizing was just one reason to love back to school--the other reason truly was the school part. I LOVE going and sitting in class (I always went to the front left of the classroom--I still do even when doing my exercise classes). I LOVE listening, taking notes, and raising my hand to talk, even if I am a bit like Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter." ("Oooh-oooh-oooooh!" while raising hand vigorously.) Or, to give another example for those not familiar with "Welcome Back Kotter," see also Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. (God, I see so much of myself in that character!) I am such a nerd to the core, and truly in my heart, feel like school is the thing in the world I'm best at. I've never been as good at any job as I am at attending school. Unfortunately, being a professional student does the opposite of providing a pay check, but if I had the money, the first thing I'd do is enroll in classes again. I'd get a Masters in something like Political Science (my undergrad major) or even in English Lit (my minor). And when that was done, I'd move on to something else!

I know I'm probably nuts, and most of you reading this could not be more glad to not have to go to class. So, if any of my readers out there ARE actually going back to class, enjoy it and know there's at least one person who'd love to trade places with you. :)