tomorrow is the day!

I'm nervous!!!
In about 25 hours our social worker will be arriving at our home to judge us. Ha ha. I mean, I know she's not judging us, but she's kinda judging us. So I'm nervous. Really nervous. And my house is a wreck. I'm off tomorrow so that I can start the mammoth cleaning process bright and early -- at 5:25am when hubband leaves for work. That will give me over 12 hours of pure, unadulterated cleaning time.

I wonder what all I can get done in that time...

Two weeks ago when I thought our home visit was that week, I made this massive list of things to do. I should start check, check, checking things off that list as soon as possible. I have done most of our laundry today. Even though I'm not really sure that she'll even be checking our laundry room, and I'm sure she expects some laundry to be in there, I still think there should only be enough to look like I didn't do it all before she got here. Like, maybe I'll leave an undershirt, a pair of socks, and a couple of washcloths or something. Did I really just think that? Am I really staging my laundry room? I told you that I'm nervous.

I've wasted enough precious time blogging when I should be cleaning! Let the whirlwind begin!

yay yay yippie yay!

Christina and Me 02/07

This March marks the final "spring break" of my life. How exciting. My dear friend, Christina, is finishing her last semester of law school and so this is also her last spring break. We decided to combine our powers of fun and take a little trip together to commemorate our last attempt at sping breakdom. Her Aunt Spicy (no joke, not an undercover name) is a travel agent and was looking for a good deal for us to anywhere. This idea really excited me because I had no clue where we were going and for those of you who don't know yet,

I LOVE SURPRISES!!!!

Christina and Me again before a weekend shopping extravaganza 12/07

We are booking a cruise tomorrow! Yay! Neither of us have ever been on a cruise so we're very excited to go on this adventure. Also, one of the excursion choices is called "Race Fantastique" and has descriptors like "race", "secret code", and "awards ceremony". Who doesn't want to play that game?

In other news:

• I had a cousin pass away on Friday of last week. He was young and has a beautiful wife and two kids. It was definately a surprise and this hit our family really hard. Please be praying for them
• Our doctor appointments are this week. This marks our last paperwork for homestudy and dossier!
• Homestudy scheduled for next week. Yay!
• Hubband's hobby room is actually getting clean! I am so proud of hubband. It's already 100x better. Yay!

Here we are celebrating the capture of a highly ellusive bit of adoption paperwork. I had traveled to four different places! In three different cities! We celebrated with this huge piece of cake from The Chocolate Bar. Please notice how obscenly huge that cake is. And no, we didn't finish it. But we'll try harder next time.

Does anyone else notice how we always seem to kinda match? Funny.

Or how totally unflattering my shirt it?

"Hello, Donation pile? Meet this green shirt. "

news

Well, Monday morning I received a phone call from my mother that my aunt had died. While this seems so very sad, it is definately a huge blessing to both my aunt and the rest of my family. She has been very sick with arthritis and Alzheimers Disease for years. But now her body and her mind are both completely restored in the kingdom of God and she is happy to be with those who have gone before her.

Needless to say that Monday (and the following days) did not turn out as I had planned. Instead we made travel arrangements. I was really hoping that we'd be able to finish up our last minute stuff and house preparing for the Home Study visit, but alas, after a teary-eyed breakdown, I was forced to realize that it just wasn't meant to be.

My hubband is so very encouraging. He reminded me that this should be a happy time with as little stress as possible and that one week or two weeks would not put a kink in God's plan. The Lord is in charge of our adoption and He is certainly in charge of time! (Sometimes I really need to be reminded of this...)

We've rescheduled for the end of the month with our Social Worker which does change some things. For instance, we're not meeting my goal of March 1. Again, my timing doesn't matter so it's ok. We're still going to get our perfect baby so it's ok. Clearly I just need a refresher course in patience.

My dear blogbuddies, thank you so much for your encouragement and support over the last few days. I'll come back and read it again in a week or so. I'll need it again as I now thing with the extra time I'm going to try and finish 1-2 more projects around the house. Painting our bathroom and landscaping the front yard. I know, get real, right? I need something to keep me preoccupied.

If you've been around since the first posts, you know that our adoption is not a secret, but our timing is a surprise. We have planned to wait until the paperwork is in to let the cat out of the bag. A handful of friends know that we've started the process (we needed letters of rec. and prayers) but mostly, everyone just thinks we're going to start later this summer. Now that we're nearly finished with the paperwork, we're trying to come up with fun or inventive ways of telling our family and friends. I need some suggestions.

Gimmie all you got.

Hit me with your best shot!

ahhh! time is up!

So I got an email today stating that our home visit for the home study is this coming Thursday...Valentine's Day. Which means I have four days to get everything else done and the house ready and I'm a little bit in panic mode because I feel like there is still so much to do!!!

Our SW, Amanda, will come out to our house Thursday, take a week to write our homestudy, send it to AGCI for proofing, and then in another week's time have it finalized and done. Three weeks until our homestudy is completely complete!!!

I have so much to do! How in the world am I going to get it all done?

Eeek!