Crib drama :)

Ok, so you might remember my old post about how the crib that I've really wanted since we were going through fertility treatments was sold out. I called the manufactuer and they could not confirm that any more would be made. So I picked out crib #2. I really liked it, but not as much. Would you believe it?? It had sold out TOO! At this point, I'm irritated. Can't the manufactuer just make more!?! So this past week, I logged over an hour on the world wide web looking for a similar crib. I found one ($100 more expensive then the two previous favs). I ordered it. Yay. It was nice to know it'd be on it's way soon. Well, a day later I was cruising online and found my originial favorite crib did become available again. So, without missing a beat, I ordred the crib I love and cancelled the order for the crib I like. :) I realized too that somehow (I must have pushed the wrong button) but I had put in TWO orders for the crib I liked. So, all at once, I currently have 3 cribs ordered. Ha! Any triplets up for adoption out there? Totally kidding..I don't think I'd have the strength...

So if you forgot, this is the crib I've loved for awhile that will be delivered in the next couple of weeks:



And now this is our reject, 2nd place, it's-cute-but-not-as-cute crib:



This kid will be stylin'. We'll be getting some paint samples soon for our chocolate colored walls. This is the best!! :)

Home Sweet Home

I love looking at other people's homes. I sell real estate to feed this need (only kidding). We just added some new landscaping that needs to fill in but this is our cozy pad:



We love sitting on our porch when it's not 96 degrees with 100% humidity (so we have about 10 full days of nice weather...gotta love Nebraska) :)



And our 4th of July front door hanger...



Lastly, our dog chilens' looking out the front door for someone to bring them treats... :)

A weekend of fun...

This last weekend was a busy one!! My friend Beck was in town from Tennessee so we headed down to the Farmer's Market with Stacy, Linda and her little man. Here is a quick picture we took:

If you get down to the Farmer's Market don't forget the delicious kettle corn and blueberry scones!

That night, we met Tom, Kristi, Justin, and Jailyn down at Old Chicago for some yummy grub. It was nice chance to catch up with good friends. We had to finish the night with Cold Stone of course! Here's a pic:


Sunday, we celebrated Father's Day first with Mark's Dad and then with my Dad. It was a day of eating. Not necessarily a bad thing. ;) It was great to spend time with the family even though we wish our missing sisters and brothers (on both sides) were there! I have to post a super cute picture of my brother Shaun with his son Shauny. My brother is a musician so I couldn't resist buying this shirt for my nephew. Too cute, huh?!?


On the adoption front....we will likely remain mostly in the dark until the baby is born. The birthparents are going back and forth between parenting or adopting. We continue to remain supportive no matter what and always try to remember they are going through a super hard time right now trying to make a decision that will affect them the rest of their lives.

We are looking forward to having the birthparents over to our house this weekend for some fajitas! Yum! The agency encourages us, as potential adoptive parents, to have the birthparents see our home the the possible future nursery for their baby. It should be a good time...we get along with them really well.

Our agency certainly keeps us busy! We are knee deep in paperwork and are needing to get some finger prints and physicals done ASAP. Time seriously gets away from us so quick! We both individually meet with our caseworker next week ifor our next step in this home study. We still have a ways to go but the progress is encouraging.

Tornados much?

If you live in the midwest, you expect there to storms often this time of year. For some reason, this year there seems to be extra crappy weather! In a 3 day span a couple weeks ago, we had 2 separate storms with high winds that damaged a lot of trees and some homes.

Tonight was a pretty typical humid June night. I was just finishing up a listing appointment (for those of my readers that don't know me out there in blog land, I'm a realtor) and it started raining. No big deal. I drove to my next appointment to show a home to 2 buyers that I had never met. We're walking through the house "new paint here, updated master suite here, kitchen needs work, yadda yadda." Then, the tornado sirens go off! What the heck!?! I guess there is usually a "buzz" of bad weather coming in town and I hadn't heard anything that day. Of course I worked from home today so who knows.

I pulled the radar on my Treo (thank you technology) and there was a huge bad blotch over Lincoln. Um, not good news. We headed down to the basement and all our phones starting ringing. Our families were making sure we were down in the basement and safe. So, for the next HOUR, we hung out in the basement peeking out the windows at the weird weather conditions. *Reminder* I didn't know these people before this appointment. They were super nice, though, so that helped. :)

As the sirens continued to sound, I called a good friend who happens to live next door and me and my two new clients ran over to her and her husband's basement to wait out the storm. Fortunately my friends are really chill and it wasn't weird at all to hang out in their basement with strangers. :)

The first chance things settled down I hydroplaned, I mean drove home. When I pulled up in my driveway the sirens went of AGAIN so we got our dog children and headed down to the basement. Mark watched the weather while I watched last week's episode of Men in Tree's on our mac. I missed last week's episode because there were weather bulletins interrupting the entire show. Go figure.

The other fun part to all these wonderful storms (ahem) is that we have 2 spots in our basement that are leaking water. The one spot kept me busy with a night of drying up puddles with all the towels we own. Hopefully we can make some changes by bracing our walls, re-grading our flower beds, etc to get the water to stop. If not, we'll have to have drain tile and a sump pump installed and we'd rather go to Vegas than waterproof our basement! ;)

Oh well, at least the night made for a good blog post to look back on.... :)

We're getting traction...

Mark and I finally met our caseworker this morning. I've been speaking to her for months on and off over the phone. We had a great 2 hour meeting that included some further counseling about adoption. One thing that stood out to me is that adoption is based on LOSS. Our loss of a conceiving a child, the birthmother's loss of a child and the child's loss of his or her birthmother. I really don't feel a huge loss of my fertility and I'm wondering if I should. Mark and I did close the door on conceiving for now but we don't feel like it's a dead dream all together. I'm only 26 years old and there is no reason we shouldn't be able to try again (with medical intervention I'm sure) in the future. Hopefully I'll be more educated on this subject after I read "Adoption After Infertility" which I just started.

The only really overwhelming thing about this morning was that she had both of us fill out a form regarding our future child. We had to fill this out separately which was hard because there were several things I wanted to talk to Mark about before answering. Some of the things addressed are what we'd be open to in regards to: different races, birthparents with mental illnesses, a history of drug and alcohol use or abuse, etc. We have a lot of research and soul searching to do before we fill out the form again to be placed in our file and used by the caseworkers to pull profiles for birth parents.

We'll have a busy couple of weeks with fingerprints, background checks, physicals, more paperwork and questionnaires to fill out, etc. We meet with our caseworker separately in two weeks.

The ball is rolling!!! :)

Here's a cute picture of my Sophie girl that brings a smile to my face: