Disney Princess

You Are Ariel!

Headstrong and fiesty. You have a mind of your own that's full of romantic dreams about the world around you. Exploring exotic places is your ultimate dream, and although you can be a little naive you'll realize that there is something to be gained from your family's wisdom.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

The funny thing is, The little Mermaid was always my favorite Disney movie! I guess I connected with Ariel on a subconscious level.

Happy 4th of July

We had a fantastic 4th of July. We were at home for most of the day, and did projects. I fixed my chicken fence, and mowed the lawn. Joe fixed his truck, the lawnmower, weed wacked, and fixed the slide. It was very hot, but we had to get ready for tomorrow's party.
Then we headed over to the Allred's house around 4pm. Allison Allred is Joe's first cousin. She and Aaron have 6 cute kids ranging from age 3-14.

William: 14Samuel: 12Emma: 10Jack: 8Olivia: 6Josie: 3

We hung out, and had a barbecue with the Morphis cousins too. Aaron made up a fun game "towel ball". He taped up a towel with almost a whole role of tape to make it into a ball. There were 2 teams, and it was kind of played like baseball. Except, the only objective was to get to the fence and back without getting tagged. Some more family gathered at their house. Families there: Morphis, Ashurst-McGee, Allred, Ashurst, and Liz & Earl. When it started to get dark, we all headed to the park. There was a large orchestra playing, and when it got completely dark there were some pretty good fireworks. Everyone seemed to love them. Except Sterling. Sterling has always been very sensitive to loud noise. We all walked back to the house, and kept the party going with a bonfire and smores. It's past midnight, and we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, so this is it for me, for now.

Close to home

As I read all my friends' blog, I realize that this year we mostly stay close to home. We haven't even gone camping once! It has a lot to do with our current location -TEXAS- where it's always hot, humid, bug infested, and flat. While living in Utah and Idaho we always enjoyed going to the mountains for some good camping, hiking, mountain biking etc. I think that's what I miss the most about the North West! I'm not saying that we are bored. To the contrary. We keep very busy. Between house renovations, adoption classes, farm work, and family, we have more to do than time to do it in. Last year we made many large trips, while this year we only have 1 planned, and it's not until the end of September. The one thing I would like to do while the kids are out of school is to go down to the beach for a weekend. Maybe we can do that when we have a free weekend (yeah right!) or when I can convince my husband to take a day or two off work (double yeah right)

Cousins Galore

This summer we will have many opportunities to get to know our extended family better. Joe's sister Angela will be here for at least 3 weeks. She has 5 kids, so our kids have many cousins to play with. This morning Angela came over with 4 of her kids and another (Allred) cousin. We had fun in the pool, and I was glad to have a couple extra pairs of floaties and life jackets. Then we made some quesadillas for lunch. It occurred to me that if I had 8 kids, I would have to make that much food for every meal!! I think I'll stick with 4 or 5. It was fun though, and now all the big kids have crashed to watch a movie. Angela is getting some work done, so it's all quiet in the house. (not that Angela is normally loud :).

Black eye

Sterling has a knack for getting black, swollen eyes. Usually his eye is big and puffy from a mosquito bite, but this time he has a genuine black eye. Here's an excerpt from Joe's blog:

"The kids were jumping on the trampoline over at my friend Tyson's house this afternoon (June 27th) while I installed a new lower radiator hose on the trusty(?) Metro which we had parked there on Friday. Suddenly Sterling started wailing like a stuck pig. Of course, he does this more frequently than we would prefer and has created his own little "sky is falling" situation so we merely yelled up to him that he needed to stop it forthwith. Usually, the wailing is a result of a group of children excluding him from their play or hurting his feelings or something. This time, had we only known, we would have gotten up there sooner.

After finishing the car, I walked up to the house to find that Sterling was under ice and when the ice was pulled back, his eye was almost completely swollen shut. Apparently he and Winter collided on the trampoline and he came off with the short end of the stick. Here's the result after an hour or so of ice. Notice how happy Sterling is. He was tough (after the initial wailing) but he certainly didn't want anyone thinking that he was pleased with the situation.

We have way too many pictures of Sterling with an overly swollen eye (usually from wasps.) If we keep up this rate, we are going to be able to compile a complete photo album of images of Sterling at all different ages with a swollen eye."

I took a picture the next day:
Then Joe took a picture on day 4.
"Sterling is looking fine - swelling gone, but a fantastic color. Luckily today was our homestudy where the adoption agency comes by to make sure we have a suitable home for a state-child. It is always nice to have some nice color in the kids eyes when they come by :rolleyes:"

This last picture is from today (day 5)I think Sterling was really lucky to get such a "pretty" black eye. The bruising is mostly above his eye, and if he was a girl, I would have just put make up on the other one.

Swimming

The whole family had a blast swimming today. I can tell that the kids are really getting used to the water. While a few weeks ago Sterling would just sit on the steps, he is now to the point that he jumps in the deep end. Ginger has figured out how to go down the slide by herself, and does this cute little prep before she runs and jumps into the water. I tried to capture some of this in this video. Winter is also getting better and better at swimming, and can now easily swim from one end of the pool to the other. Her and Joe like to race.

awkward questions

Today was the big day! We had our home study. Minnie, our adoption person... not our case worker, came to our house. The home study had 2 main parts. The home safety inspection, and the interviews. CPS requires a lot of safety regulations, so she had to make sure that we comply. Some things are down right silly, while most things make sense. For example, our medications need to be behind 2 sets of locks (silly) as do our guns (good). We are not allowed to have a trampoline on the premises, and need to put lids on the garbage cans at the end of our 300 feet driveway. That's like asking every person within a 2 block radius to keep lids on their cans. Ah well, we just laugh about it and follow the silly rules. Our home is safer for kids than it ever has. Oh yeah, you can't have dish soap on your counters! it has to be in a locked cabinet (don't mind that there's liquid soap sitting right there too, but that's allowed). After we walked around the house, we only have a couple of things we have to take care of. Joe needs to clean up some of his junk out in the yard -yippee!- and he has to keep his shop locked any time he doesn't use it.
Then we had interviews. The kind of questions we were asked included thing about our childhood, parents, siblings, discipline, and how we deal with problems. The awkward questions were thing like: how do you deal with frustration? How do you deal with love? what are the strengths and weaknesses in your marriage? What is your biggest weakness? And what about Joe's? I found it interesting that it was easy to answer the positive questions, especially about Joe and our marriage. We have a great marriage. Sure, we fight occasionally, but we resolve our differences quickly. I feel really lucky to have found someone that meshes to good with myself. But when you are in an interview like this, I don't want to only give positive answers, for the fear that she thinks I am omitting anything. So I end up giving some lame negative answer, something that really isn't that bad. It's also hard to explain things like, how do you deal with love, anger, depression, frustration, and disappointments. I don't usually assess myself like that, so it's hard to remember, and put into words. I just hope she doesn't think we are somehow unfit. There's this uncertainty. I'm pretty sure she likes us, but there's no way to know for sure until she says: yes, you can have a foster kid.
Now that the home study is out of the way, it's really weird to think that I did all I need/can do, and now all I can do is wait. Minnie told us she'll probably write up our home study by the end of July, and after that we'll officially be waiting for placement.