Everyone have a great weekend :)

Well, the time has come for our trip. We leave in eight hours (wow I should be in bed). I will hopefully have a lot of great pics when I get back. So excited b/c my BFF, Jen, and her hubby will be meeting us in the Quarter. Misty wish ya’ll could have come down. Ya’ll will be missed. Next year right?

BTW, I found the greatest online T shirt store for New Orleans shirts. I went to the Hansen’s snowball website (I plan on going both Fri and Sat- they invented the snowball and I must go pay homage to them ) They were advertising their shirt and linked to Dirty Coast. Hubby and I sat and laughed. Unfortunately, some of them you will not get if not from the region. So we plan on checking their store on Magazine out.

Again, everyone have a great weekend.  I plan to have one.

Protected: Adoption Update

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37 hours and counting til we leave :)

Can you tell I am excited. We leave for New Orleans bright and early Friday morning. (If I am this excited now, I will be unbearable in Dec when we go to Disney World.) I checked the weather and we can expect scattered showers all weekend long. That is ok. I won’t melt. We may actually welcome a shower to hopefully cool things off a bit. I plan on taking lots of pics with my new camera. It’s always fun to play tourist in you home town. It just makes it a bit easier to do when it is a tourist destination.

I have decided to start password protecting some posts but definitely not all. So if you want the password leave me a comment so I can get it to you.

Another shout out

Hubby has decided to start a blog. He is a philosophy instructor, so it most likely will not be a light and airy blog. He has had it for a few weeks but I have not linked to it yet b/c I only got through a few lines of his VERY long first post. G*d Love Him or “bless his heart”. I told him he had to make it a little more reader friendly or the only people who would read it was his fellow grad school buddies. Well, the most recent post is much easier to read. So here is a link to his view on life. He is a good writer and quite funny. I hope he lets that side of him come through.

Oh in case anyone forgot, next week at this time we will be in New Orleans. Jenn, you will get a kick out of this latest hubbyism. J and I were eating pizza tonight. Yet again hubby was talking about where to eat on next Friday. He asks me “where would be a good place to get pizza in New Orleans?” Again, I give him the are you kidding me look again. He is something else.

Shout out to my friend Jenn

There is a new blog in the blogesphere. Go check out my dear friend Jennifer’s blog – Living With No Regrets. I have sucked her into my blog world. HaHaHa.

Inching closer to the contract

I got an email last night from our home study social worker, and she was emailing the updated home study to CC last night. She said since it was just an update that she was talking to them over the phone instead of doing it face to face. She said that should be done by the end of this week. After that we should be able to sign the contract with CC.

I am sort of starting to nest. With the reality that a baby could happen at anytime, I need to have things clean and ready. This past weekend I went into the attic and brought down the baby swing, car seat and bathtub. Plan on spending the next few days giving them a good cleaning. I want to be able to put them in the nursery and forget about them. I am still picking up things from the store one at a time. I forgot how much stuff babies need. I don’t have that much and it has taken over the nursery. I hope to have the crib voucher this week and crib situation taken care of this weekend.

J and hubby have been going to the pool pretty regularly. J is big on associations. He associates pool time with his cousin. We usually go swimming at their house. Yesterday, J and hubby were at the pool and J was calling all of the little boys there his cousin’s name. He was also trying to talk to them (which is good that he is wanting to interact with peers) in “little einstein speak.” They really did not know how to take J, but hubby said they were nice to J. J has to be taught EVERYTHING. Most kids pick up social cues naturally. Not my J. This has me back thinking he is on the ASD spectrum. That is pretty typical of kiddos on the spectrum. It will be interesting to see how he does in the typical pre-K class in the fall. He is getting to an age that kids are not going to be as accepting of “different,” and we are really going to have to work with him to get him where he needs to be. When J was medically fragile, we knew what tangible things we had to do to keep him alive. I find this stage harder. What do you do to get your child where they need to be socially?

“The Greatest Show On Earth”

Guess where we spent our afternoon? The circus. Ringling Bros is in town, and we took J along with some friends to the show. He was good overall. When he was ready to go, he looked at hubby and said “time to go.” This was good b/c it avoided a meltdown in the show. He had a very small one just outside the gates. He is so tired this afternoon; I wasn’t surprised.

on the way in

before the show

horrible picture of me but proof I was there

too tired to walk to the car

I have some really cool pics but they made a big deal about not doing anything with the pics you took today so I won’t post them. Probably just being paranoid but last thing I want to do is a copyright infringement.

I took these pics with my new amazing camera. I had the absolute worst camera before. It had such a lag time J was never in focus or even in the picture when the picture would actually take. I like my new one sooooo much better. It is still a challenge to get J to stay still for a picture but it was vastly better.

And more good news to go around

Upon reading Amanda’s blog, I saw that another of my IA agency PAP’s is in Korea right now picking up their little girl. Check out Elizabeth’s blog. It does not seem like she is going to post pictures though. I am so excited for the both of them. But being human, I have a smidge of jealousy mixed in there. Not much but it is there. And the second guessing kicks in. Did we make the wrong choice for a second time? Should we have looked further at other options in international adoption? I guess I could ask what ifs forever. I feel confident in CC. I just really wish they were not so slow. I hope to hear from them next week sometime.

A co-worker is giving me her crib that they no longer need. This makes it to where my mom does not need to go out and buy one. I hope it is not one of the one’s recalled. Guess I will find out tomorrow. Our crib was recalled. I took it apart last night and sent off the hardware so we could get a voucher for a new one. I called the customer service number today and got a complete jacka$$. First off, the envelope they sent us to mail the screws back in is just a manilla envelope. Before I even was able to take it to UPS, there were already multiple holes in the thing. I asked the cust svc person what would happen if when it got to them it was all torn up. His reply “Well, I just don’t know.” WOW. Then to the real reason I called, I told him I called last week and a supervisor was supposed to call me back but did not. I retold him the situation of me purchasing the replacement part of the crib that is now being recalled. His response to me was that he was very sorry and he would expedite my voucher when they received the hardware. I told him that I would be appreciative of that but that is not what I am talking about. I asked him about being reimbursed for my expenses for purchasing the part that is now being recalled. I did not feel I should have to come out of pocket for something that is now recalled. He again said he was sorry and he would expedite my voucher. So again, I asked him if he understood what I was asking for. He said yes but he was not at liberty to anything for me and I was out of luck. I then ask to speak to the supervisor. Of course he in turn tells me he is the supervisor. Yeah right. I ask him “Do you not have a boss.” He said he did but would not transfer me to them. How annoying! Am I overreacting? I do tend to do that from time to time. Am I ridiculous in wanting to be reimbursed for my expense. It was about $60. Even with the rising prices of everything, I could have fun with $60.

More good news to go around

Amanda – Pursuit of Poppy (PAP from our International Agency) switched to a Korean adoption, and Poppy became part of their family today. No pictures posted yet. Can’t wait to see that happy family. Congratulations Amanda.

**update – go check out Poppy. She is so darn cute.

NOLA – 2 weeks and counting

Can I just tell you how excited I am getting and I still am two weeks out from our trip. One on my fav shows, Throwdown w/ Bobby Flay, was doing a gumbo throwdown. Hubby and I were drooling. Again this will a revolve around food. As the intro to the show they were showing all the different types of food. YUM! Those who know hubby know he is ALWAYS talking about food or what his next meal will be. (Can take a boy out of culinary school but you can’t take the culinary school out of the boy – do I have all of you jealous now? he is an amazing cook and I don’t cook – great combo) I think we will be talking about food for the next two weeks. He is trying to get me to pin down where we are having every meal. He is so weird though. He was wanting us to discuss where were going to have lunch on Fri – the drive in? So, he asks if we could stop in Baton Rouge for lunch. That in and of itself is not a bad thing but he wanted to go to Brewbachers (a sandwich shop). Jenn, can you believe it? I looked at him and asked him if he was nuts. I told him I could hold out and wait the 1 extra hour to have a much better meal. I know I am not making much sense to a lot of people. So let me explain, it would be like wanting a steak and settling for Outback when Ruth’s Chris was just 45 min further.

As far as a home study update, I emailed the social worker for a status. She emailed back that she should be done in the next few days. I am hoping she will be bringing it to CC next week. If we could get everything signed sealed and delivered (so to speak) by the end of the month, I would be a happy camper.