Approved!!!

Here is our little Bug after her hair cut, in preparation for warm, sunny Florida. Hopefully, the weather tomorrow will hold out for us to get on our way...

Since the black fog has left our house (influenza A), we are a much happier bunch. Bug ended up getting two days of nasty fevers, and luckily, that was all for her. DH never had any symptoms....lucky guy! Needless to say, we are chomping at the bit for some sun, fun, beach drinks, sand castles, baseball and of course, MICKEY MOUSE!

We are officially APPROVED! I wasn't even thinking about it, but I went out to get the mail, and there it was--our foster care license! I called the agency to make sure and she verified that we are indeed approved and officially waiting now. According to the certificate, we were approved the same day we dropped off our updated profiles, which was February 20th. How exciting!! Now we can relax...

I will leave you with some pictures of Bug--this is a before picture (look how long her hair was!!)

Another before picture about a week ago:

Yucky Influenza A...

Here is a picture of the Bug at the indoor waterpark. Ignore the chunks of food on her face--this was taken post-lunch! Just her and I went about a week ago, and had such a fun time. Next time, Daddy promises to come along.

Last week was quite busy. We had one adoption class on Tuesday night, and then 5.5 hrs of class on Saturday. Rob's sister came (with her two daughters), to watch Bug and have an enjoyable weekend. They ended up staying an extra day due to some nasty weather. Unfortunately, Rob's brother-in-law had to stay home with our nephew because he couldn't keep his lunch down. We had a good time though, we just missed the boys! :-(

Our social worker called yesterday with the last round of changes to make to our profile, so we made them, and printed out 10 copies. Our online profile was submitted to them too, so hopefully that will be on our agency's website soon. Nothing left to do now, except wait for approval, and wait for a birthmom to choose us. Approval should be done by the end of this week.

On Monday of this week, I started coming down with what I thought was just bronchitis and a sinus infection (accompanied by nasty dizziness--I am a chronic bronchitis person, so that doesn't bother me). After a nasty nose swab at the hospital, and many phone calls, they verified I had "Influenza A". Did I mention this swab wasn't just a normal swab--it was a flexible swab that just didn't just go up your nose, it went "behind" your nose?? Ummmm, OUCH! The kind nurse made my nose bleed. :-( Anyway, I am actually feeling better, only because I am taking every drug I can to get rid of the symptoms. Tylenol Sinus for the face pain, motion sickness pill for the dizziness, inhaler for the bronchial issues, and lots of kleenex. After all that, I actually don't feel so bad! DH and Bug are on preventitive medicine to (hopefully) avoid getting this crappy flu. They have two more doses before they are out of the woods. If by Friday night, they show no symptoms, then they won't get it. That is what we are hoping for.

Anyway, because I just took my motion sickness pill, getting very sleepy....Here are some pictures from the weekend of Bug having fun with her cousins and Aunt:

Six Degrees from a disaster...

Ok, so next to our Bug, this is the cutest little baby. This is our nephew Killian. Look at those eyes!?! What a cutie...

Well, once again, we had a interesting weekend. We went to visit my side of the family. Upon arrival, we found no Grandma--She was in the hospital. Friday afternoon, the doctors concluded she suffered a TIA (transient ischemic attack), or in laymans terms--a mini-stroke. She had some scary episodes of confusion, and extremely high blood pressure at home (200ish/180ish), and my uncle took her into the ER. Eight hours later, she was finally admitted and stayed under close watch for two days. They did a CAT scan which was clear, and showed no bleeds, but they did find a blockage in an artery in her neck. They said (at her age-89) they weren't going to do surgery or anything for the blockage. She was released and got home just as we were leaving to head home. We are happy she is home and feeling better. Luckily, it was only a TIA and nothing more. Now we just have to make her behave herself--sometimes that isn't an easy task for a stubborn, old norweigan lady!

We enjoyed our visit to IA, although we didn't get to see much of Gr-Grandma, or Grandpa (he was working insane hours all weekend, and couldn't get out of it). Mommy and Bug are planning a two day visit during the week in the near future (since Gr-Grandma and Grandpa didn't get to see much of Bug). Bug loved running around playing hide and seek with her cousins, and of course kissing' on her baby cousin! We had a fun game night on Saturday (complete with strawberry margaritas, sans the rum for me! I am such a lightweight!! I made a batch of nada-margaritas for my nephew and I). We played this game called "Buzz"(trivia game-game show style, complete with buzzers), on the Playstation 3. After that we played "Apples to Apples". I was on a roll--I beat everyone out on both games!! I wanted to keep going, but everyone who drank the real margaritas were tired!! I guess they were the real lightweights!!

So, when we leave for the weekend, we usually turn down the heat to about 60 to save money/energy, etc. I did this on our way out on Friday late afternoon. (for those unaware of the frigid weather in the midwest this weekend--the high today was 1 degree)Well, we unloaded the car into the house, and felt how cold it was in the house. I ran up and instantly turned up the thermostat, and checked the temperature. Any guesses?? It was 38 degrees in our house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE (insert some mild obsenities) IS GOING ON???? I turned up the heat, and of course the furnace didn't kick on. DH goes down and checks on the furnace, and realized (luckily) that Bug must have flipped the switch (while I was doing laundry late friday afternoon--it is right at her level), turning the furnace completely off.


Right now it is 8pm, and I still can't feel my toes. Our closet in our bedroom could serve as a meatlocker. Poor Bug didn't get her bath tonight, because our bathroom was also meatlocker temperature. Did I mention when we arrived home, I had to use the facilities?? When you drive for five hours without stopping, what is the first thing you do when you arrive at your destination?? Imagine how it felt having to sit on that ring!! Let's just say... the ring was flippin' cold. We actually got out the blowdryer to warm Bug's fingers and cheeks. She was so cold, and wouldn't let us wrap her in a huge blanket (without screaming constantly). It is up to 60 in here currently (at 8pm), and I am still shivering. Can you even imagine what we would have come back to if we would have stayed an extra day? Or even if we didn't come back till much later tonight?? Needless to say, DH slapped a huge piece of duct tape over the switch (of course in the "on" position!), so we won't have to worry about this happening again. That is, until Bug figures out how to take the duct tape off. So that is the story of how six more degrees could have been an immense diseaster for us...

Since I am chattering, and shivering so much, I will just leave you with some pictures from our intersting/fun/freezing weekend--(Captions: Bug with Great-Grandma at the hospital, Bug being bored at the hospital, keeping Bug happy at the hospital because she was bored, cousin Killian opening his early 1st Birthday gift, Bug and cousin Killian "playing" Buzz, Bug jammin' to some tunes on the way home, Mommy keeping Bug warm in the sub-zero temperatures at home!)

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Our furnace just kicked off (9:15pm)...it took exactly four hours to get our house up to 70 degrees. Praise God for furnaces!!

Our little Brewers Fan!!

Here is our little Bug, getting ready for baseball season....we can't wait!! In about three weeks we will be at a pre-season Twins VS Devil Rays game in Tampa. The warm weather will be a nice change from the yucky stuff we have been having here.

Speaking of yucky....as I type, we are in the process of getting 10-16 inches of snow. Yes, you read right. We should have about a foot of snow by early evening tonight. I have already snowblowed once today (my exercise, because I don't feel like going on the treadmill today!), and will do it once more as soon as it stops. This morning at 7am when I was out for the first round of snowblowing, we had approximately 5 inches. I would say, it has at least doubled, if not more. (thinking wonderful, warm, sunny Florida thoughts...)

Adoption Update: Because of the above mentioned snow blizzard we are having, our meeting that was supposed to be this morning at 8:30am, was re-scheduled to yesterday at 3:30pm. Our SW came to our house, and was here about two hours. She toured the house, and we just chatted about parenting in general, then parenting adoptive vs biological, then parenting multi-racial children. It was interesting, and we gained some insight. She gave us some references, then she was on her way. DONE!! Our next step is to wait for our second draft of the profile to come back with any changes, print our 10 copies and get them to the agency, and pay our fee. After the fee is paid, they will release our profile to birthmothers for consideration. Soooo, hopefully, God will bless us very soon with a little bundle. We are so excited just thinking about it....

That is about all for now--I will take some pictures of the yuck outside and post them tomorrow. Until I have to go out and snowblow again, I am going to go get my coffee, chocolate, a nice warm blankie, and a good book. More tomorrow...

Random thoughts...

Here is a picture of a precious little baby girl, Cheryl Ann born to my friend this week. She is healthy, so is Mom, and for that we are grateful! I got to hold a 4 hour old baby!!! I forgot how little they are, and Cheryl Ann was a whole pound more than Bug was when she was born!! Was Bug really that little at one time?! Yikes, time flies!!

Updates--my Ellen foot massager is currently up for bid on ebay...we will see if that will pay for my plane ticket to Vegas. Currently the bids are up to $205.50!!

Adoption update: We got our rough draft of our profile back to make changes. Our social worker was impressed with how few changes we needed to make. We just have to add pictures and have that ready when she does our home visit on Wednesday. After the home visit, we just have to wait for approval from BCS.

Well, Bug is doing quite well with her transition to her own toddler bed. Last night, though, she was out of bed playing. We never really checked on her till we went to bed. Well, the "playing" she was doing was emptying her sock drawer and putting all her socks into bed with her!! It was quite funny actually...

Bug got to have her first ice cream cone tonight for dessert. See picture below...
Here is a picture of her after we took it away, because she had eaten too much already... And here are a couple of cute pictures we took today... Look at those crazy curls!! This isn't a real good picture, but her hair is getting super curly!!