Meltdown

Rowan had a total meltdown last night.

The poor girl.

Having to say bye to her daddy again is hard.

She grabbed her daddy doll. Her picture frames of her daddy. And put in her new video he made for her while he was home on R&R.

My heart ached with her.

But she was able to find some comfort from the video. Until the end after all the stories were read. And he just talked to her. Then she lost it. Again. But I know that it's so great for her to be able to connect with her daddy even though he's not home.

Poor girl. She definitely slept well last night.

Phone meeting

I had my first phone meeting with our adoption specialist.

She's sounds amazing and super nice and understanding. so thankful for that.

the beginning of the phone call did not go how i imagined it to. she had this idea to refund our application fee and to reapply when bubba got back from afghanistan.

i did not like that idea. not at all.

so i asked her why this would be the case and that we didn't have any problem with them holding onto the money even if we needed to fill out an update application when he got back. i explained to her our intentions and why we applied when we did and that being as the process takes so long we were hoping to get some things done even though he was gone.

like the 11 pages of questions for our autobiography we have to complete. super long. to be honest some questions that i really don't feel like answering, but whatever it is, it will be worth it in the end.

as for this phone call. it ended well. she got permission from her supervisor for us to continue the process while he is deployed. YAY!

we have our first meeting scheduled. and it's at our home! I think this is a great idea because it's not going to be a formal homestudy review, but just so she can look at everything and let us know things that may need to be taken care of. which i can hopefully do while bubba is gone. another thing off the checklist and one less thing to do when he gets back.

things like the back pond (fencing it or filling it) i don't know what else. i will find out at the meeting.

i'm really wishing that bubba could be here. it's another thing that he will miss out on. it's a bummer. and these types of things stress me out. and i really feel like the process is better with him here.

but if we want this process to get going, then it's just another thing that we have to do. just another part of being in the military. boo.

the whole thing got me thinking. she will come here. and rowan will be here.

to tell her or not?

to this point we haven't told her. we openly talk about everything in front of her, but to honest she doesn't pay any attention to us. possibly because she doesn't even know what the words mean.

but that's ok with me. with us. talking to bubba about it, we don't know if we are ready to tell her. we were planning on telling her once we had an approved homestudy.

food for thought:

i found this link for anyone who needs some guidance one explaining adoption when you already have a child: http://www.threeyellowroses.com/2009/06/01/adopting-with-children-at-home/

so we are thinking. processing. reading. praying.

 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Welcome to Candyland!

Did you bring your sweet tooth?

We had such an amazing time at our daughter's 4th birthday party! I love putting together parties and I only wish that I could have made more of my ideas (with the help of Pinterest, of course) come to life.

but none-the-less we all had a great time, especially the birthday girl!

Welcome to Candyland!

I loved this entrance! I thought that it was so fun to decorate the front of the house. To be able to give all the party guests a a great big welcome of candyland!

I got the idea of the entrance to use the posterboard walkway and the balloons with cellophane from a Parents magazine that I read forever ago. Super cute.

This is the candy display I made. I had been working on it for.ev.er.

I had some other ideas planned, like hanging the characters from the candy associated with them. Like Princess Frostine to Sno Drops and Jolly to the Dots.

but no time.

I also made these awesome cupcakes. bubblegum and cotton candy.

uber sweet, but super delicious.

Have I mentioned that my husband is amazing? He built this fabulous lemonade stand for our daughter while he was home on r&r. he's amazing.

and i got to use it for the party. perfecto.

I saw these super cute pompoms on Pinterest and just knew that I had to make them for her party.

It was so easy and I will definitely be making them again for another party sometime.

I'm not going to lie.. they are still hanging in my dining room. Even though the party was over a week ago.

must take them down. they're just too cute.

I also made the bunting. our of burlap. easy peasy.

Again, my husband is amazing. while he was in afghanistan he asked the lady who makes the maps if she could blow up some candyland images.

and she did. on her own time. SOOO nice. I love it when people are nice.

and the hubby carried them in a cardboard tube all the way home. did i mention that he was traveling from afghanistan and it takes a week! i know. amazing.

so we played pin the lollipop on lolly.

we cut out some crown strips from brown paper bags and some of the kiddos made crowns.

they turned out so cute!

rainbow bowling.

idea from pinterest.

my cake.

i decided last minute to make a cake to look like the board game.

i had been debating what i was going to do for her cake being as she wanted a cake and cupcakes because that's what i did for her party last year.

i know. expectations. geez.

people tell me i do it to myself.

don't mind the craziness.

i took this picture after the party was over.

i realized i had forgotten to take a picture of my trees and flowers.

i felt i needed to because i spent so much time on them.

so i had my gumball tree and my lollipop tree.

and the gumball flowers of course.

birthday girl.

she thinks she's pretty cool now that's a big 4 year old and all.

we also had a pinata and did a licorice game. super fun party. would do it over again in a second.

happy birthday to my baby girl, miss rowan!

Application

My husband came home for his 2 week R&R. It was awesome.

The time went so quickly and it felt like a whirlwind. Honestly, the fastest 2 weeks of my life.

We had our roof stripped and redone. We also had company and of course our daughter's 4th birthday party!

But we ALSO got our application completed! YES! FINALLY!

We had been trying to complete the application through the computer.

you know. the annoying scanning all the documents. ok you print it, sign it and scan it back to me.

and then i will print it and sign it.

well between the army's plans and what not it didn't happen.

so we got it completed while he was home.

happy dance!

i couldn't help it.

We got the exciting news that our application had been accepted on April 18th!



Information Meetings

So this is like 2 months late, but I'm just now getting around to it. go figure.

Bubba and I have both known since before we even knew each other that adoption would be a part of our lives. And I feel that is part of the reason that God brought us together. It makes me smile just thinking about it. :)

So we had both known after we were married that there would be a day that we would adopt. Well, after having Rowan and knowing that we loved being parents. And rowan endlessly asking for a brother or sister, haha, we officially decided that we would explore our options and had decided to start the process. Exploring agencies.

Then. Doomsday. Stupid army. He got orders for a deployment. It devastated me. I felt that our life was going so well. our marriage. our daughter. our house. family. everything. we had it all.

There was a lot of debating on what to do. Hoping he wouldn't have to go or that he would break his leg. or fall off the roof. ha.

But no. He went. He left. And we decided to just go on with the process anyways. determined. So we did and are.

I attended two different agency's informational meetings for adoption. alone. But of course that's only because Bubba is gone, deployed to Afghanistan. So I went to Agency A first. The agency that we had our eye on.. the one that we thought could be a good match.

I was alone. There was one other person there who was also alone. Everyone else had their significant other. And I was confident to go by myself, but I was aching for Bubba to be there, to share our first major step in our decision.

I signed in, grabbed my packet and found a chair. The room was packed and people looked happy, eager, excited. However some did look a bit worried or concerned. Very informative meeting with a slideshow and handouts and a wonderful lady who just seemed like she believed in the whole process. And she was HONEST. that is something that I think is so important during this process.

I enjoyed the meeting. It gave me a sense of inspiration, dare I say? It was this feeling overcame me, more than I've ever experienced during the whole thought process of deciding to adopt. They brought in a guest speaker, someone who had adopted through the agency. She was great. She was everyday. She was real.

After that meeting if there was any doubt left in my mind about adoption, it was gone. I knew that this is what we are meant to do. I only wish that Bubba could have shared that with me.

But it wasn't just me. As I drove back from Seattle I was thinking the whole way " Why doesn't everyone do this??" Imagine if everyone adopted just ONE child.

Then I went to another agency's meeting, Agency B. A LOT different than the first meeting. This meeting was much smaller. In a library room with about 8-10 people. The representative from the agency just sat at a small table and talked. No hand outs, no slideshow, no guest speakers. I didn't feel comfortable with the way that everything was presented. She often forgot what she was talking about or would forget something and go back to the topice that had been discussed 10 minutes before.

I was surprised because Agency B was the agency that I originally wanted to go with. I was certain it would be the agency for us. But for financial reasons we knew that we couldn't afford it.

After going to both I knew right away that there was no question. Agency A was the one for us. The one that made us feel comfortable, didn't discriminate and just felt right.

So that's what we decided. Agency A.