Referrals

Today is going to be one memorable day for some waiting families! It looks like referral calls will be made today for those families who were logged in during the timeframe of 12/20/05 - 12/27/05. Soon there will be another group of babies placed with their forever families. I just know the angels in heaven rejoice on days like that!

Previously we could find the status of referrals on the CCAA website, but a while back they moved that box to only be accessible to adoption agencies. An agency in Belgium has reported that the little box now has:

"The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before October 31, 2006. The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before December 27, 2005. "

15,300 days old today

http://thepioneerwoman.com

In honor of turning 15,300 days old today, I wanted to share my favorite blog these days. It's written by a lady who grew up in the city (she refers to it as 'growing up on the golf course'), moved off to California for college and then found herself back in Oklahoma and married to a genuine rancher. A friend of mine from Oklahoma shared the link with me a few weeks ago and said that the "pioneer woman" reminded him somewhat of me. I'm not so sure I see the connection but oh my, she is so funny and is certainly a gifted story teller.

After my buddy sent me the link, I spent my off time reading through her old blog posts and was quickly hooked. One of the main reasons it cracks me up is that I grew up in the country (no where near the type of ranch they live on), but we did have horses, some cattle and a few rather odd type animals - a few goats here and there and a couple of pet raccoons. I've ridden more than my share of horses and have dents in my legs to prove that I once ran barrels (a rodeo term). At one time I could rope a calf with the best of 'em and have hauled more hay than I care to remember.

It's just funny the contrast of hearing a "city girl" talk about country life vs a "country girl" now living in the city. This "was country - now city girl" now refuses to have an animal that she's going to have to take care of. I have jokingly told my better half that I never want to own anything that we have to make arrangements for when we want to go on vacation. Unless you've fed horses and cows in the middle of the winter and broken the ice in the water buckets so they can drink, you'll never appreciate being able to go on vacation & not having to worry about someone feeding everything correctly! We can lay our bee-hinds on the beach and not have a worry in the world for any ol' horse.

The downside though, is that I can read through her blog and for a moment or two I swear I can smell the aroma (now, my children would call that an odor), of sweaty horses and hay, and I can just imagine the fresh air and sunshine and it makes me terribly, terribly homesick.

Several years ago I took Ryan to Nashville for a horse show type thing - it was more of a play/opera/cirqe de solei type thing set to horseback. I was all excited and couldn't wait for Ryan to enjoy watching the horses. The entry way took you through the stable area and then to your seats. When we walked in, the smell of horses, hay and leather was impenetrable and I was in heaven! We hadn't taken more than two steps in when Ryan said "oh man, it STINKS in here" and I was quickly brought back to reality. Maybe we should move back to Oklahoma so our children will know what a sweaty horse smells like!

Big Girl Bed!!!

From time to time we have asked Emma when she was going to move from her toddler bed to her "big girl bed" and the standard answer has been "When I'm 4". She really surprised me last night when after her bath and rocking time she leaned over and laid her head on it and told me that she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed! I didn't waste any time pulling back those covers for her!!! Of course this was a picture taking moment :-)

She looks SO sweet when she's sleeping.

Ryan's Birthday Day Out

I got sidetracked yesterday before I finished the post ... but anyway, as I was saying - every year I celebrate Ryan's birthday with a special day out & let him decide the agenda for the day. Within reason of course.

This year we started out our day with a snack at Panera Bread (he is SO my child), off to a sports store to buy a Carson Palmer jersey, an hour or so at Border's (I've never met a child that loves a book store as much as he does), lunch at Penn Station, a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy a cap organizer for his room and then off to see the new Veggie Tales movie. I was worn out at the end of the day!

The only downside to the day was that Emma was scared during the movie and asked every other minute when it was going to be over. There is definitely a down side to not parking your child in front of a tv! We had tried to watch "Finding Nemo" not too long ago and it scared her so much that she was crying the most pitiful of cries. Bless her little bones.

More Birthday Stuff

Since Ryan's birthday always falls close to the MLK holiday, I always take him out for the day & let him pick and choose where we go and what we do. It's been funny over the past years to see what his choices would be and to find out the things that are important to him. One year I remember him asking to go out and eat "chicken fried steak", not that I ever remember him having it prior to that and especially considering he used to not like mashed potatoes - but nonetheless, that's what he wanted and that's what we had! Another year he wanted to go to the dollar store.

One year we went to the science museum and for a ride on the trolley. There's a funny story there. I think he had just turned 4 and riding the trolley was the main thing for the day. We caught one downtown and had only gone a few blocks when I could tell he was getting restless. It was my first time to ride it too, but at least I knew that trolleys start and stop, they let people on - they let people off. Well, it was a blistry cold, cold day and we were in a diverse group of people with some of them looking like they may be homeless. Anyway, we're riding along and as I said - Ryan is getting restless. About the 4th stop or so, he says in his really loud voice "THESE PEOPLE ARE WASTING MY TIME". Needless to say, we got off at the next stop and walked back to the museum.

Soccer

Emma has been telling us that she wants to play soccer this year. The other night she asked us "where's my soccer glove?"! I'm thinking we may need to hold off on signing her up and just go with t-ball since we have bought her a really cute pink t-ball glove.

Kids are so darn funny ...

Double Digits - Ryan turned 10!

(We had Ryan's party at an indoor water park - in case you're wondering why the swimsuits in the middle of January).

My sweet, snuggly, big ol' boy turned 10 yesterday! I can't help but think about how quickly these past ten years have gone and can only imagine that he will be 16 in the blink of an eye. Bless his little bones, starting on Sunday he had to hear the stories and timeline of the events leading up to his birth 10 years ago. Some of the details he seemed interested in and some he didn't!

Around noon on the 20th - my water broke at work, in the break room nonetheless. I had an appointment with my doctor anyway so I was going to drive myself. Someone had already called Brian and had told me that no, I wasn't driving anywhere. I can remember thinking 'hey, wait a minute - I'm in control here'! Somewhere I had read that typically your water has to be broken for you so I had assumed that I would fall in line with the statistics and hadn't thought to prepare for that part of all this.

A co-worker drove me to my appointment where Brian was waiting for me. The doctor told me to go on to the hospital but it was a week or so before I was due so a bag was not packed. We drove to the house to pack a bag and I was taking my sweet time. I can remember Brian fussing at me to hurry up, that all of my stalling wasn't going to slow the process down. My main problem though was that I wanted to change clothes but apparently I was behind on laundry and I didn't have an "outfit" that matched. For some reason, he had absolutely no sympathy for that problem. "But I can't go to the hospital not matching" fell on deaf ears. My reasoning was that we had plenty of time, statistically speaking labor lasts 12 hours - we had plenty of time. Brian wasn't buying it so off to the hospital we went. Sure enough though, he wasn't born until after midnight so I technically did have time to do that load of laundry.

Anyway, it was kind of fun running through all those stories with him and Emma seemed to enjoy them as well. She really likes to hear me talking about Ryan kicking me back when he was still in the womb and I was at work, deep in thought working on a problem and it scaring the bejabbers out of me. Not sure why, but both of them think that is pretty funny. I suppose the way I sat when I was pregnant with him, with my belly right up to the desk bothered him or something but he would kick at the pressure.

So now 10 years later, here we are - he's up to my chin and still tries to sit in my lap even though he outgrew it several years ago. I don't discourage it though as I'm sure that all too soon he will realize he's too old for that. He's my little lovebug no matter how old he gets!