Our Adoption Collage

For our adoption we need to do a collage for our portfolio. This is what I came up with. Hopefully they like it.
(to view it larger just click on the picture.)

Of all the days, why today?

Our home inspection for our Adoption was yesterday. On Monday and Tuesday I was stressing out about getting the house spotless. I wanted everything to be just perfect. On Monday I stretched the hose over to our pond to get it filled up and noticed there was some garbage in it that needed to be cleaned out and the pump looked like it needed to be cleaned. I decided to let Lee worry about the pond the next day so I went in the house and started cleaning. It was a good thing I decided to wait because on Tuesday evening Lee was working on getting the yard cleaned up and he got the pond cleaned out and turned the water on to begin filling it. About 15 minutes later he runs into the house and straight downstairs and I heard him yell something so I went downstairs to see what the problem was only to find water pouring into our bedroom through the window! Our hose bib had frozen and burst during the winter! Now, remember how I was going to fill the pond the day before? Well, if I had the water would have been running for at least an hour because I was upstairs cleaning. I never came downstairs so I would have not even known my house was flooding!!! That is a scary thought so I can't tell you how glad I am that didn't happen and the damage is not nearly what it would have been. We were even lucky enough to not have any drywall damage.

Anyway, we were able to move the bed over and suck up some water with the steam cleaner. The next morning my mom brought us a shop vac, which helped suck up some more water with a couple little heaters and a fan. They didn't work as well as we needed them to since our home inspection was that afternoon so we headed to Home Depot and rented some stronger fans. Once we got them going, all we could do was wait for everything to dry. It got to the point where we were running out of time. Our basement was a mess, the bedroom torn apart, we hadn't showered and our Case worker would be to our house in just over and hour. The corner of the carpet was still wet, but we had no choice but to get the room put back together and start cleaning up everything and getting ourselves ready. We got done by 3:30 and she showed up just after 4:00. What a stressful day! I'm really surprised I didn't have nervous breakdown. Everything went great with the home inspection and now we only have a few things left before we're officially approved. I was so happy to go bed last night and put that day behind us.

At first the water damage was only along the side of the bed.

It had spread further over night so we had to take the bed apart and pull the carpet further back.

Here it is with the fans underneath drying everything.
And here is the room put back together just in time for our home inspection.

Articles on Adoption

Here are some links to some great adoption articles that were in the February issues of the Ensign and the Friend magazines. I hope you enjoy them.

Ensign ~ Click Here

Friend ~ Click Here

Adoption Update

As most of you know, we submitted our adoption application back in September. We were told that it could take anywhere from 3-6 months to get our background checks done, so we have been patiently waiting and working on our online profile along with attending the required classes. I figured since it's been just over 5 months, I would call the agency to see if they had heard anything about our background checks. Well, come to find out, they got Lee's back at the end of September and mine came back in the beginning of October. Nobody told us! Our case worker was supposed to call us but never did. I was a little upset about that, but there is really no sense in being upset when nothing can be done about it. All we can do is continue to move forward. We have some documents that we need to submit, then once the agency has received everything, we can continue on with our intake interviews and hopefully start our home study soon after that. We will continue to keep you all posted as we move forward. Thanks to everyone for your love and support as Lee and I strive to have our family. We love you all!

Engagement Pictures

These are my friends engagement pictures. I'm happy with the way they turned out, and I hope they are too! You can see more on my photography blog here.

My Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

This year for the Super Bowl we went up to my parent's house and spent the day eating more than we should, and watching the game. It was a great game, and even though I wanted the Cardinals to win, we all still had a great time. Here are a few of my favorite commercials!