Happiness Happens Day 2- Women!

Today I am happy because I have some amazing women in my life.  I have a wonderful mother, wonderful sisters, wonderful mother-in-law, and wonderful sister-in-laws. I have wonderful aunts, cousins, and great-aunts. I have some of the most incredible, caring friends in the entire world, women that I’ve known from high school, from college, from work, and some that I’ve just recently met.

All of my baby related stress has been completely lifted because of the amazing women who are answering my questions, calming my hysterics, giving advice, and making me laugh. I’m especially thankful for the ones who let me call at odd hours of the day or who listen to my crazy, sleep-deprived rants. My phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from colleagues and former roommates who are just checking in on me. I feel blessed!

I have even had the privilege of meeting several more amazing women in the past two weeks because of my time in the temple and at Girls Camp. My ward is full of amazing women and I’m glad that I’m getting to know them better too!

So here’s a special shout out to all of the phenomenal women in my life! And now I’m off to Rexburg for the night to have a little bit more “Girl Time".

Happiness Happens Day 1- OMS!

Today I am happy because I love my job! I spent the entire day at school getting ready to take maternity leave.

I have great colleagues, great administrators, great resources available to me; what’s not to be happy about?

Also, I have the first week of lesson plans done! I have the first month planned out for me, the first two weeks of lesson plans are “admin proof”, and one week of plans that are “sub proof”. Making progress and being productive also makes me happy.

Happy Happy Happy

Just for fun I looked up the month of August on Wikipedia. And I learned something great! August is a very positive month!

If we lived in Europe, this would be the month to take a holiday from work. In America it is Back to School Month; that’s exciting! Jamaican Independence is in August- I bet that’s a party! It’s also National Psoriasis Month, National Water Quality Month, National Goat Cheese Month (what?!), Good Vision Month, What Will Be Your Legacy Month, Win With Civility Month, and American Adventures Month.

Coolest of all, it is Happiness Happens Month! I didn’t know what this was so I looked it up. Guess what?! There is an entire group of people who call themselves “The Secret Society of Happy People”. NO JOKE! I’d never heard of them until just now, but they’re not trying too hard to remain secret. They have a whole website dedicated to commemorating the little things in life that make us happy!

I decided to join their secret society (membership is free! happy day!) and so I am now officially a Happiness Ambassador. I don’t have specific responsibilities, after all that could be stressful and stress is not happy, but I get to go around sharing happiness. So as a challenge to myself I am going to share one thing each day of the month that makes me happy.

I have a feeling that this is a good month for this project to occur, as I am overflowing with happiness these days. But I would encourage anyone who wants to join me in sharing happy thoughts. Because sometimes even when you’re not looking for it Happiness Happens!

Going Forward One Day at a Time

There are only about four weeks until Baby Girl is due! This is going to go by pretty quick, and I feel like we have so much to do in order to get ready.  I am feeling very overwhelmed with how much we don’t know about parenting and taking care of new babies. Yikes!

As far as the legalities of the adoption are concerned we are taking things one day at a time. The best case scenario is that 10 days after she is born, we will go to court, finalize the adoption, and move on as a family. The worst case scenario is that we’ll bring home a baby girl for 10 days or so, fall in love with her, and then her tribe will somehow prove that she must be raised with a Native American family. The most likely situation is somewhere in between.  We may have to fight for her a bit, but in the end we feel pretty good about getting to keep her. In fact, I’m refusing to even think about that worst case scenario.

I don’t want to jinx anything so I’m just taking it one day at a time. We know that we will get to bring a baby home from the hospital so that is what we are preparing for. I know I will fall in love with her and bond with her and not want to give her up, but I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m just focusing on being ready to be the best parent possible for the first 24 hours, and then the next 24 hours, and then the next 24 hours, and then...

Adoption Waiting

There probably won't be any news on the adoption until our little girl is born.  We are moving forward and if drama ends up ensuing in the future, you can be sure that you will read about it here. But right now we are very drama free. 

So in the meantime, I've been reading as much as I can about adoption and infant care. In so doing, I came across a link that I thought was interesting. I'm sharing it here if anyone is interested.

http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-truth-about-domestic-adoption_1374892.bc

We are very lucky that we have such supportive friends and family.  The people in this article don't remind me of any specific people in my life, but I thought I would post this just to give us all something to do while we wait.

:)

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.