Snoop, peace, and hard work

Some of you may be wondering, "Who or what is Snoop?" Well, Snoop Birdie Bird is the name of our new addition to our family. I decided to make an impulse buy at PetSmart and got a white and blue parakeet for Ben. An early Valentines Day present I suppose. Snoop has been a lot of fun to have in our home. He, or she, loves to chirp when we play music. My nieces and nephews just love the bird and ask to see Birdie Bird every time they come over. Snoop is certainly nice company to have around.

Even more exciting than the news of our bird is . . . dun du na na . . . our homestudy is finally done and we are just about ready to send our paperwork to USCIS. So, things are moving along. Our next goal is to get our dossier together. I am starting to get everything we need together. There is a lot to do and it is fairly confusing and needs to be done exactly right. I feel as though I am being driven to get everything done though. I sent a package to Ting Ting with clothes, a couple small books, a blanket, a teddy bear, and some headbands that I knitted. At times it is hard to let myself get really excited because getting Ting Ting seems so far away but I just have to have faith and let my excitement get me through all the hard work and confusion of the adoption process.

While we are waiting and working on adoption Ben and I are also making use of our time doing a few home projects as well. I stained the cabinets and toilet seats in two bathrooms. Yes, toilet seats. They are wooden toilet seats. Also, Ben and I finally, after 3 years, put up the door to our downstairs bathroom.

Ben and Snoop Birdie Bird!

Christmas and New Years!

It has been a crazy winter. After Ben and I got back from Nick and Julia's wedding it was just about time for Christmas. All of my siblings and their spouses and children were in town. My aunt Karen and her children, Danny and Kinsey, came from New York. We played lots of games. Anything from cards to long strategy board games. We had several different family parties. For part of my immediate family Christmas parties we had a talent show. It was great to see everyones different talents. One of the most exciting presents I got was a video of Ting Ting. She seems like such a happy child. In a week or two our homestudy should be done and ready to be sent for approval to USCIS while we continue working on getting all the documents gathered for the dossier. My parents just spent a week in the MTC for training. They leave for Japan tomorrow. I am excited for them. They will surely be missed but I know they will be doing marvelous things on their mission in Japan.

These are some pictures of the talent show my immediate family had at our Christmas party.

Nick and Julia's Marriage

Ben and I are currently in St. George for Ben's brother's wedding. It has been a great weekend. A great time to think about the covenants that Ben and I made at our own sealing and a time to think about the future sealing we are working towards with our own children.

Ben and I received our certification of completion for our adoption training. It's great to finally be finished with the adoption manual. It just about covered everything I learned in my Family Consumer Science classes.

The waiting game

So Ben and I both have our questions finished for our training. We are waiting for approval on our questions that will go in our homestudy. Then our homestudy will have to get finished and approved. Basically it is now a big waiting game. A good time to keep ourselves busy and enjoy our time together. I was able to babysit my neighbor's children the other day. I enjoyed reading to them and watching them. Ben and I also had a lot of fun delivering cinnamon rolls and Christmas cookies yesterday to a bunch of the ward members, may of whom are widows or elderly. We spent an average of about 45 minutes at each house. We even got to play Boggle with one of the widows. It was an all day affair delivering Christmas gifts. One of the ladies we delivered gifts to told us about her experience with infertility when she was younger. She said that she felt a special closeness to me when she found out about our infertility problems. That was a really neat experience to visit with and get to know the members of the ward.

Ben and are still working hard on getting all of the paperwork and information collected. We just about have everything done for the homestudy and were told that it would take possible to the middle of January to be completed. I just finished answering the questions to the manual. I learned so much from my reading. I think you could get a degree in family consumer science and human development from learning all the information in the packet because it is basically what I learned when I got my degree. There were some really great applications and important things to consider that were specifically geared toward international adoption in the manual that I really liked though. Things such as easing your child into public settings and new stimuli. After our homestudy is complete it will be sent to USCIS to be reviewed. It takes about 2 months for them to review and approve it I have heard. Then, it goes to three different agencies to be reviewed. Finally, it can go with the stuff for the dossier and be sent to China to be approved. Pretty much everything in the dossier will have to be notorized or certified.

Beginning again

I have decided that I am going to make my entries more journal like. They will be more my feelings and thoughts that I have during each week during the adoption process. Ben and I have recently started a new chapter in the adoption process. We are currently pursuing international adoption through a reputable company in Utah. Because the requirements for international adoption are a lot more strict we have to pretty much start the whole process over. The documents, homestudy, and background checks we have previously done for other adoption agencies will not work for international adoption. Through much deliberation and exploration of different options we both feel that this is the right decision for us right now. We are going to go through a special needs program with China. This means that the child will be either over 3 or have some type of special need. This can mean emotional if they are older and attached to family or others that have taken care of them, it can also mean something as minor as a skin pigmentation, a child who has been operated on for spina bifida, or something as major as HIV. We are now in the process of looking at profiles that are sent to us and deciding which child is right for us. There is certainly a lot to consider and research when looking at each profile. The more I see the more I realize how important it will be to be in tune with the spirit and to include the Lord in the decision. There are so many children and I don't know that I could make the decision without the support of others. As we work through all the mounds of paperwork and dive into the plethora of profiles I realize more and more how lucky I am to have support from family and friends that are willing to help with recommendations and encourage us in so many ways. One of the requirements for international adoption is 10 hours of education on adoption related topics. We are reading 2 manuals that are both over 100 pages long that we are required to study and answer questions on. It can seem overwhelming when learning about the risks to adoption, especially international adoption, and the lists of things to do, but I know that what we are doing is truly what God's eternal plan is about, families, and he will always provide a way for us to accomplish that plan.

Kind of as a side note, we also try not to get to overwhelmed and take small trips every once in a while and definitely have fun together and with family and friends. This last weekend we took a trip to San Francisco and enjoyed watching Anika get first all-around in her gymnastics meet, celebrating Ty's birthday, and going to Alcatraz on Halloween. By the way, we got ourselves an awesome prisoner cap there.

Outings of Plenty

Spending time with my nieces and nephews is always an adventure. Ben and I went to a dinosaur museum with my brother-in-law Eric, my niece McKell, my nephew Trey, and my niece Ramona. The exhibits were spectacular and there were a lot of fun things for the kids to do like digging for bones, a water play area, and interactive computer games. One of my favorite pictures we took was when I told McKell and Trey to act scared of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

This weekend Ben and I went to a Greek Festival. Our bank gave us free entrance tickets. We had souvlaki (grilled pork) gyros, stifado (a Greek stew) and Greek salad, all of which were very good. We bought some Greek bread and an oil and vinegar container. The dancers there were fun to watch and we visited the Greek Orthodox Church and admired the ornate stained glass that depicted Christ's life.