It's officially Day 1

We just got a call from the domestic networking coordinator from our agency - we have been sent out to two agencies and are officially waiting! We still haven't received the last piece of mail that we were expecting from her, so she was calling to say that she hadn't sent it to us yet, but that it wasn't slowing us down. So, now we officially wait to be matched.

Holiday

During October each year, Ryan and I always go to the Burgess Christmas tree farm and tag our tree (so we don't have to when it is really cold). Ryan is standing with the tree I first liked and I am with the tree we eventually tagged. We are only planning to use the top 9 feet of the tree or so (we use the rest of the tree for decoration). We will cut the tree probably near the end of November. See the new Burgess Tree Farm website: http://www.burgesstreefarm.com/












In adoption news, we have been (somewhat impatiently) waiting for the last few weeks or so to receive another piece of paperwork from the agency so that our profiles can actually be shown to other agencies and families. Our home study has been approved, our home certification is complete and profiles were mailed to the agency a few weeks ago. I was finally able to talk with the person at the agency that will be sending out the paperwork, and she said that we should receive the paperwork either today or Monday, but that either way, our profiles will be sent out on Monday or Tuesday. That means, by Thanksgiving, we should be officially "waiting". I have been really anxious to get to this point as it seems to be the last leg to being picked. We will keep you posted!





Meanwhile, we have some friends very close to traveling to India to pick up their son, and it has been so fun to watch as they go through the process. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the passport process in India goes smoothly!

November 5

This weekend Kate and I went to Reny's and found a nice hunting scarf for Brinks. He doesn't seem to mind or notice that he is wearing it.

No news on the adoption front - we are waiting to receive a letter back from the agency with some paperwork for us to complete. We are getting anxious to start the waiting process!

Happy Halloween!

We carved pumpkins, bought candy, and turned the lights on tonight for Halloween. We actually got trick-or-treaters this year too! We just ran out of candy (don't worry, we shut off the lights and are pretending not to be home). Next year we will be more prepared!

Earlier tonight we took the dog for a walk and saw mobs of people in costume through town - it was fun to see all of the kids having so much fun! I am more used to driving from house to house for candy, not walking!

I decided to go a different direction this year with my carving - instead of triangles for eyes, I decided to go with circles and a snear. Pretty good, I think. Ryan's carving is more scary and less sarcastic than mine.

Before & After

Before:

After:

Time was running out before winter and we need to insulate the future master bedroom, so we hired someone to come in and sand and poly the wood floors. I am so pleased with how they came out! Coming soon - insulation and windows (before Christmas??? I hope so)! We are still trying to figure out where to put the (hopefully enormous) closets.

Fall

We finally had our adoption profiles printed and are ready to send them in as soon as we can get to the post office in the morning. We have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks rearranging and updating the photos and heading to staples to see how things come out when they are actually printed. It has been frustrating trying to get the pictures to come out looking anything like what is on the computer. But, as I said, we finally have something that we like. Cross another thing off the list!

In non-adoptiong related news, this morning Kate and I did the first annual grape harvest. There were a lot more than we expected and it was pretty easy picking!

Columbus Day

We decided to spend yesterday enjoying the changing leaves and headed to the coast for a day trip. We ended up in Belfast and had a really great time. We brought Brinkley with us and he had fun enjoying a new city! We bought this lantern at a store downtown and Ryan hung it in the dining room yesterday. We are really pleased with it - neither of us really liked what was hanging there before.

Last night we got a solid draft of our profile (for the birth mother) done and we plan to email to our agency for their review today. Things are preogressing right along, and we anticipate that we will be officially "waiting" in the next few weeks.

As a side note - in the picture you can see two beautiful bouquets of sunflowers in the bottom - Ryan has been keeping us in sunflowers from his garden for months! They have been very beautiful this summer.