Car Seat Safety Ratings

We’ve been shopping for baby things online, looking for just the right stuff. I was very interested in the Graco Snugride Travel Systems because my sister said they were the best, and I trust her completely.  She was right! Check this out!!

Adoption Update

Okay, this will teach me to try to keep things a secret. I tried to only tell our parents and siblings our news in an attempt to play our cards close to our chest with the new changes in our life. But let’s be honest: I’m not great with secrets. One thing led to another and today I found myself on the phone for over an hour, hoping I hadn’t forgotten to update someone in the know, which of course, I did. Anyway, the news has changed again, so instead of texting and calling everyone, again, I’m just going to blog about it.

Back story:

Last Tuesday the adoption agency, LDS family services, called and told us that we had been chosen by birthparents! I was ecstatic! Jake was appropriately cautious until he had all of the facts. They wanted to meet us in person this Monday!

I was so nervous Monday morning! I was up early pacing and stressing myself out. We met them in the LDS family services office on Monday morning. They were amazing. I haven’t met a nicer couple. Obviously for their privacy I won’t tell you anything about them, other than I think they’re great.  They are having a baby girl in August. We both really liked them. After we met with them, Jacob officially gave me permission to be excited so I went shopping! I got several little pink onesies and some diapers and bottles and little hats. It was fun. And my sister is helping me to make my own crib mobile.

So now to the update: The birth mother is Native American. There is a law that prevents Native Americans from adopting their babies to U.S. citizens. You can read a little about it here. So Tuesday afternoon we were told that she is not a registered member of the tribe so they can’t have an official say in her decisions.

However on Tuesday night we got another e-mail saying that she is considered an official member of the tribe because of her lineage and so they do have a say after all. Or at least, they’re going to try to have a say.  I don’t know what this means for the adoption. From reading the information on the link provided, I found several clauses that would definitely support our cause. I also found some that would not.

This, like most things, is completely out of my hands and no amount of fretting is going to help. But it is exciting, and it is very interesting, so I guess I’ll keep you posted.

Long Time- No Blog

It was pointed out to me this morning by my Number-One follower that I had not updated my blog in a while.  I asked him if he would like to take over the blogging responsibilities for a while, but he politely declined.

So. What’s been happening this summer? A million things! We’ve been working and playing hard all summer long. 

I have spent several hours each week in my classroom continuing to work on curriculum for next year.  The Common Core State Standards are coming and I plan to be ready for them! I also work with some great colleagues who have formed an impromptu/unpaid committee working to improve collaboration. It’s been super fun and I’m lucky to work with such awesome nerds.  My summer reading list has over 20 books on it and more are being added every day. I’m falling behind and drowning in things to read!

Jake has been busy working too. He went to Cambodia for most of the month of May, but then got to take two weeks off in June. Like me, however, time off just means working in civilian clothes. There’s always something that needs to be done.

Cambodian children

Eating tarantula

Tourist-ey

Recognize this sign? Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!

We’ve been doing a lot of work on our yard- maybe I’ll blog about that later- and I’m pretty happy with the way things are starting to look. If only we can survive this heat!

Jake’s brother and his family came to visit for a week in June. That kept us hopping! We love visiting with them and cuddling our favorite (read:only) nephew and niece. 

What’s a family reunion without some good shooting practice?

Time to CLEAN!

(This is secretly a blog post about procrastination…)

Yea for long weekends! Yea for company coming! Yea for the two of these things coinciding so well so that I have both time and motivation to clean my house!!

It is almost 9:00 on my Friday night and I am ready to scrub this house until it downright sparkles!!

I’ve got my army of help:

I’ve got a to-do list:

I’ve got my Pandora station blasting!

I’ve got reinforcements:

 

Now I just need to get off my laptop and get to work! 

(see… procrastination…)

Introspection

When was the last time you sat down with yourself, by yourself, and really inspected, analyzed, and evaluated your life?  When was the last time you allowed a second person to do it for you?

If it’s been a while, there’s probably a reason for that: it’s a very scary thing to do.  Who knows what you might discover?

For me, it was just last week. It surprised me on many levels. I was surprised that I needed to do any introspection in the first place and once I got started I was surprised by how hard it was to do. Mostly I was surprised by how good I felt afterwards.

It began with one innocent question, a variation of the typical “how are you?”. It turned in to an incredibly personal, amazingly deep four-day- long conversation and late night soul searching. While I won’t get into the details (see above adjectives) I would like to write about the results.

For better or for worse I have come to realize the following:

• I have many blessings in my life.
• I have talents that need to be put to better use. And I have the resources to make that happen. 
• I am ready to start making some changes in my life.

Instead of passively waiting for life to come to me, and instead of making excuses for my lack of personal progress, I need to get up and DO.

I need to set goals. I need to accomplish said goals.  I need to serve others. I need to find and/or work on hobbies. I need to be busier. And not just busy for the sake of being busy- I need to be doing something worthwhile with my time.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to fill my time with projects just so that I can avoid further introspection (although that is tempting). I need to start asking myself if the abundant amount of free time in my life can be put to better use than NCIS marathons on USA.

If you’re thinking about trying an introspection of your own, I highly recommend it. But beware. The results might surprise you.

Scammed

As you know, we have been trying to adopt for about 6 1/2 months now.  Nothing has really happened until recently.  A few weeks ago, we put our profile on a public site called parentprofiles.com.  They are an adoption advertising site which we pay to help us get our name out to just the right birth mother for us. 

Well, on Sunday night I got an e-mail from a girl who said that she needed me to contact her immediately.  I e-mailed her back right away and asked her to tell us all about herself. Yea!! Someone had picked us!

Monday morning I got an e-mail back. Her name is Hayley. She is from Europe on a student visa working on her Masters Degree. She is married with two kids who are still in Europe, but she accidentally got pregnant here in the States. She is due in two weeks (with a baby girl) and would like us to take the baby and never under any circumstances let her family find out about it.

While I was still a little excited, I began to suspect a scam. I contacted our social worker at LDS Family Services, whom I am so thankful for.  He also suspected a scam, but encouraged us to stay in touch and see what happened. Meanwhile, he was going to look into the legalities of this international- not really international- adoption.

I continued to exchange e-mails with her throughout the day. She avoided some of my questions, at first refusing to get a lawyer, then agreeing to one if we paid for it, and didn’t want to tell me much about herself. Jake and I began to discuss the possibilities of this being real.  We went into our nursery and began looking around and assessing what we might need. We almost began to get hopeful. And we ordered a changing table.

Then this morning she e-mailed me. She sent a picture of herself, a very small, blurry ultrasound picture, and she said that she had found a lawyer. However, he was vacationing in Dubai and would only cut his vacation short if we wired him $6,500 up front. And there it was: the scam.  Luckily for us, our LDS family services counselor took over. He called up the lawyer, a guy who really exists and really does do adoptions. We learned that the lawyer was NOT in Dubai. He had never heard of this woman. His wife would never cut short a vacation to Dubai for less than $7,000.

Needless to say within a 24 hour period we went on a small emotional rollercoaster ride. We went from hoping that someone had picked us, to realizing that we were the victims of a predator. Someone who read our profile, knew of our past history with baby girls, and felt that we were prime targets of her (or his) scam.

Who does this? Who goes out looking for weaknesses of others and preys upon them? Who takes your hopes and dreams, and then twists them around to break your heart?

A lot of people. If you need some disturbing reading, search for adoption scams online. This is not uncommon. Many of them worse than our story because other couples pour their life savings into a dream that never comes true.  To (mis)quote a friend, “While there are lower levels [of hell] to which one can descend, trying to scam a loving family who is seeking to adopt a child is quite near the bottom.”

Tonight I am extra thankful for the people in my life who are so supportive of us, and who are looking out for Jacob and I.

Women in the Scriptures

While perusing Pinterest the other day I noticed a picture that looked like this:

I didn’t know what it was, but I was intrigued by the word CHALLENGE at the bottom.  The link took me to a site called womeninthescriptures.blogspot.com
I highly recommend that you check out this site. The challenge is this- read the scriptures and mark every section that refers to women in any way.  Keep a journal or notebook of thoughts, inspirations, and facts that you learn about the women.  I will be taking the full challenge this year. In an attempt to keep my resolution of being my best self I think that includes amping up my scripture study and this is a good motivating factor. I’m even starting in Genesis!!
**Note: The author of this website is LDS. She includes the Book of Mormon in the scriptural challenge. However, if you are not LDS but are interested, please join me in reading the King James Bible and finding out more about the women that are mentioned there. Scripture study is for all faiths! **
While you are perusing this wonderful site, I also recommend the post entitled “Infertility and the Scriptural Promise.” Click the title to go directly there.
Let me know if you decide to take the challenge too!

On Resolutions

  In 2013 I resolve to be . . . myself. I resolve to be my best self. I have always liked the quote by Marianne Williamson about people being afraid of their best selves. You can read the entire quote here.
  I have been thinking about my infertility a lot lately. I finally had to come to the conclusion that my life is not supposed to be centered around motherhood. It should be centered around the other aspects of my life. I am going to focus on being a wife, being a sister, being a daughter, being a neighbor, being a ward member, being a teacher, and being a friend. I know many people who have become bitter about the blessings that life didn’t give them. Therefore, my first new years resolution is to magnify the blessings that I have been given by being my best self. Hopefully I will discover new talents, make new friends, and  positively affect my little piece of the world. 
  I have also spent a lot of time pondering President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s October 2012 General Conference talk Of Regrets and Resolutions.  The entire text is wonderful but my favorite portion is under the subtitle “I Wish I Had Let Myself Be Happier.” He says,

Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey. I don’t go cycling with my wife because I’m excited about finishing. I go because the experience of being with her is sweet and enjoyable.
Doesn’t it seem foolish to spoil sweet and joyful experiences because we are constantly anticipating the moment when they will end?

[…]
We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time! Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. “This is the day which the Lord hath made … ,” the Psalmist wrote. “Rejoice and be glad in it.”

  I adopted this motto back in October. It made crummy days not so crummy and I was able to enjoy the Christmas season because I made a point of not rushing through December in an attempt to get to the 25th as fast as possible. So far, it seems like a pretty good resolution to continue into the new year.
  So my resolutions for 2013 are to find joy in the journey of my life, to appreciate each day, and to learn something new about myself. Wish me luck!

Biking the Hiawatha Trail

I have lots of things to post about but I’ll start with a little trip to the past before I get too far ahead of myself. More posts to come this week! I promise!
This summer, Jake and I biked the Hiawatha Trail in Northern Idaho.  It was an amazing experience and one that I would do over and over again. Normally I prefer to tell stories with words, but in this case I think the pictures would be better, although even they won’t do justice to the view!
We camped near Salmon, ID on our way up to the trail. It snowed on us, but my husband is such a trooper, and braved the cold to keep me warm.


The trail begins here in Montana and winds through a two mile long tunnel through the mountain.

It was cold, and damp, and darker than dark, but we survived and came out safely on the other side in Idaho!

The view that greeted us on the other side was amazing! It is absolutely breathtaking!

We made friends and shared our lunch with them. 

This little guy wasn’t a very polite diner. He stole my mayonnaise packet and hid it under the rock.

The bike trail followed an old railroad trail. It wound through the mountains high above the treetops, streams, and valleys.

Come visit Idaho! It is amazing!!

Hi… I’m back.

I didn’t mean to disappear from the blogging world, it just kind of happened. After my last post, life got complicated and keeping up on my journal didn’t make the cut in my priorities.  Sorry.

Anyway, enough with excuses. 

Tonight is Thanksgiving Eve. I am sitting in my kitchen, smelling homemade chicken noodle soup and snacking on chocolate chips. I was watching MI-5 on Netflix and contemplating making cookies with the chocolate chips, but then my internet crashed so I decided to blog instead. (I’ll post this when the wireless comes back up.)

A lot has not happened here since I last posted. School started so I went back to work. Jake has been working in Pocatello, but was transferred home just this week. Starting Monday, I have my husband back. : )  It’s pretty much the same ol’ thing as always.

Tomorrow we are going to my mom’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. Friday I am cooking dinner for the missionaries and having some family over too. That’s the reason for the soup. I thought I’d do a test run before I have to cook it for company in two days. Saturday is a second Thanksgiving type dinner with the in-laws and out of town family.  Sunday is a day of rest, thankfully.

I love this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season and Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday.  I have a lot to be thankful for this year and I have made a point of thanking my Father in Heaven daily for the blessings in my life.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I am back. I’ll try to write a few “catch-up posts” in the next few days, if anyone is interested. And, as always, we’re still hoping to adopt so please keep your ears open for us.  Thanks!