New Addition: Coming Soon! (edited on 1/23/11 for privacy)

(The country we're adopting from prefers that they remain anonymous until after finalization. For privacy reasons, I've gone through and edited things accordingly.)

Donald and I are thrilled to announce that we're adopting from eastern Europe! We've just started collecting documents and completing the mountains of paperwork, so we're still very early in the process. I debated for a while whether or not to go public now, or to wait... but ultimately I decided that there was NO way I could keep this much joy to myself. I stink at happy secrets.

So if, by chance, you've seen me bouncing around and full of smiles lately, you now know why!

We still have so much to accomplish, but the thought of our European angel coming home to us makes it all worth while. From start to finish, adoptions from this country usually take between 9-12 months. If that timeline holds true for us (things can easily change for the better, or for the worse) we should be bringing our kiddo home in early spring of 2011.

I've started a blog devoted to the progress of our adoption. You can find it at *blog removed*.

It will be heavy on technical aspects (forms, timelines, legalities, requirements, etc.), as I'm hoping to track things for the benefit of other families hoping to adopt.

All the warm and fuzzy bits will still be found here, though... so stay tuned!

We humbly ask that you keep us, and our baby, in your prayers. He or she has already spent too much of their life in an orphanage, and we're hoping to bring our "Little Winn" home as soon as humanly possible.

Bad Week, Good Week... Works For Me!

Last week was bad. Just terrible.

I accidentally answered one very important question wrong in an essay for one of my classes (similar to "2+2=5". Yup, one of those type of inexplicable mistakes), which brought my grade down from a hard-earned 4.0 to a 3.7.

One afternoon, in the hours between my normal morning shift and an evening shift I was covering for a co-worker... my car broke down. Yup, my 2008 Prius WOULDN'T start.

This wouldn't have been so catastrophic if I wasn't parked in the Steele Lake Park parking lot with my windows rolled down. I couldn't just leave it there. :-(

Thankfully, the dealership paid for the tow-truck and rental car, and my boss was nice about me being late. The next day, however, they couldn't find ANYTHING wrong with my vehicle. It was working just fine! I've decided that it's a temperamental hippie, hell-bent on making my life difficult.

Many other miserable things happened last week. Some self-created, some acts of God, and some just rotten luck. No more of which I'll continue to complain about here.

This week is different. This week is a glorious, bright shinning light of happiness and hope. This week, NOTHING can get me down. And I mean nothing.

I'll be blogging a little later about what makes this week so fantastic, so check back soon.

Ultimately, I've decided that bad weeks are necessary to balance out the really good ones. Life just wouldn't be fair of God allowed EVERY week to be as great as this one is cracking up to be.

THE DREADED SAG

It has always been difficult for me to lose OR gain weight. With exception to brief periods of time when I've made significant "effort" in either direction, I've been roughly the same size since 7th grade. It's party a curse, and partly a blessing. As a Junior Higher I was always one of the fat kids, but as time has passed, the natural progression of age has caught up with my peers, and I'm increasingly more average. I've come to accept my body's love for maintaining homeostasis, haha. Ultimately, I've decided that if my body really likes a certain weight THAT much, then that's where God must have intended me to be. Mostly, I

've embraced my slight chub, and (with exception to reasonable issues I have with my arms) have found an odd affection for my chunkier bits.

When Donald deploys, however, things change. I always lose weight, and without significant effort on my own part. When Donald was deployed 2 years ago, I dropped over 20 pounds. I actually went to the doctor about it, because it was so uncharacteristic of me, lol.

I just... eat less when he's not around. Food isn't as much fun without a cute husband to share it with, I guess.

It's important to note that the weight loss is ALWAYS temporary. When hubby comes back to town and wants Enchiladas made with cream cheese every few days, my hiney grows back.

So what's the bad part about me losing weight?

SAGGY-BUTT-JEANS

I can hardly justify buying a new wardrobe for temporary weight loss, especially when I tend to only like more expensive jeans. (I'd like to pause here to note how ironic this is. I am cheap. DIRT CHEAP. I do NOT throw down money on clothing... with the only exception being JEANS. And, naturally, the only item of clothing that REALLY won't fit a

fter dropping weight is - you guess it: JEANS. Go figure)

This time around I'm down by about 14 pounds. Nothing crazy, but just enough to cause the sag. I have a couple pairs of jeans (bought last deployment) that fit good, but my recent favorites are bagging and sagging.

So, I'll enjoy being skinny-ish (for me, haha), and my saggy-butted-pants will remain as such, at least through the end of this summer, lol.

Back in the Saddle

The past week has been all sorts of busy, but in a good way!

I was asked the Sunday before last to speak in sacrament meeting the following Sunday (which was this last Sunday, in case you weren't tracking). So in addition to subbing in the Sunbeams class(3 year olds, for all my beloved non-Mormons out there), I had my hands full preparing for Sunday. The subject was on how we can create Zion by being pure in heart. A fabulous topic, if you ask me. Researching the subject was really uplifting and inspiring.
I was up WAY too late Saturday, preparing. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I would have prepared better earlier in the week AND if I wasn't so busy Saturday afternoon.
After working Saturday morning (which I don't normally do), the rest of my daylight hours were spent completing my garden bed, and filling it with soil.

Unfortunately, the only pictures I have are ones taken with my Blackberry. I still haven't figured out how to operate Donald's new-fangled camera properly, and since my Katrina-proof camera (an Olympus Stylus - totally indestructible) is missing its' power cord, my phone's camera is what I've been relying on.

I finished screwing the two layers(built a few weeks ago) together with support pieces:


Next, I laid down a some week-blocker and put down a layer of big rocks, gathered from my yard (I needed to get rid of them somehow!). They weren't ALL the big rocks, but they were at least the BIGGEST ones I could gather before I started to go insane and then gave up. Trust me, folks... picking up rocks is torture.



Then... mom and I filled it up with dirt! Woot woot! Props to my mom, by the way. Without her fabulous truck and the use of her time and physical labor, I would have never completed this job in the time that I did.





In other news, school started back up again this week for me. I'm actually going to full time this quarter, but since one of my classes is online and another is a hybrid, I only have to drive up to school once a week. So far, so good. I'm absolutely loving it.

The only bad update to share is that I have some sort of rodent(s) living in my garage. I haven't seen it(them), but their "leavings" are everywhere. GAG! Critters? In my brand new house? I DON'T THINK SO, GUYS! It's bad enough that I've already found three spiders. I need to hang a "GROSS LITTLE CRITTERS NOT WELCOME" sign outside my front door, and then maybe they'll get the message.

Anyway, I've found it VERY difficult to find humane and EFFECTIVE forms of extermination. Poison? No way. I don't want to be sniffing around to find a stinky little dead mouse/rat-corpse after its long and painful death. Glue trays? I'd cry if one got caught. The same goes for those little traps that just catch them inside and then keep them there until they starve to death. They may be gross little vermin, but I DO have a soul.
Standard snap-down traps? Scary, but hopefully effective... because that's what I got.
I'm no bleeding-heart, but I still don't like to see any creature suffer. Even spiders, which I abhor above all of God's creations, I kill swiftly and as pain-free as possible.


Moving along...

Well, I was given an assignment in the ward. Nothing too time consuming, it appears. The Graham Stake is putting on a fine arts expo-thingy in June. I'll be the representative for our ward, which essentially just means that I go to the meetings, take notes, and pass on the information to our ward.

The Bishop also said he had a calling for me. Oh snap... everyone pray hard that it's something wicked cool, okay?


Um... what else...
Oh yeah, D.O.G., our 11-month-old Newfoundland puppy, almost outweighs me. He's less than 10 pounds behind me. I'll soon be able to say that I own a dog who weighs more than me. Don't ask me why, but that's always been my dream. I adore large beasts, which makes me like a female Hagrid. Just smaller and far better looking, I guess.

That's all for now, folks!

The Best Four Years

Yesterday was our 4th Anniversary....

Can I just say that I am one darn lucky woman?

I mean really, how could you NOT love that face?

The Same Old Stuff

Life is the same as usual.

Donald's still deployed to the middle east.

I'm working and going to school part time. The quarter ends on Monday. I couldn't be happier. I really hate drawing. A lot. I've actually turned out to be pretty good at it... I just find it to be tedious and pointless.

Next quarter I'm going full time. We'll see how that goes with work and commuting.

I mailed out our tax return without a very vital home document to verify our eligibility for the home buyers tax credit... so my furniture-buying shopping spree has been dramatically delayed.

The website for making claims for damaged household goods (from when we moved) was down for several days. I drove to Fort Lewis trying to make a claim for the thousands of dollars worth of damage. Donald was gone and couldn't help. I filled out some paperwork. Apparently I didn't fill out all the right paperwork. Long story short... I didn't get our claim submitted in time. We won't see a dime.

I went to the ComiCon in Seattle today. It was fun. That's a happy change.

...until I deleted EVERY picture on the camera (by accident). Nearly a full Gigabyte worth of pictures from the last several months - gone. Then the printers at ComiCon weren't working right, and we didn't get copies of our picture with LEONARD freakin NIMOY so I have to drive up to Seattle tomorrow after church (over an hour) to pick them up.

When I came home and started uploading the few pictures we took AFTER the catastrophe, I then managed to...

delete my ENTIRE iPhoto library. ALL the pictures I had on my computer are GONE. FOREVER... because I apparently didn't have the Time Machine set up right. How I deleted the entire library, I have NO FREAKIN IDEA.

It's Girl Scout cookie season, and I have a clinical addiction to Thin Mints.

I'm dieting. The Thin Mints complicate this.

We still have no kids.

I'm still commuting 15 hours a week, not including time spent for leisure and errands.

Mom helped me build raised garden beds last week, but I haven't had the time/ability to go get soil.

...so my seedlings for the early crop stunted in their trays.

I've gotten pale.

My car did the opposite of breaking down this week. It decided NOT to turn off and I missed a day of work (after already missing two days the same week because I was sick) because I had to take it to the dealership.

So I called in sick/absent to work for the first time EVER... and then TWICE MORE... in the same week.

I hate going to church alone in our new ward... so I don't. I've only decided to go tomorrow because I need to turn in tithing. That's the only excuse/motivation I've found to keep me going every month or so.

I'm staying mindlessly busy until Donald comes back, and I've been decently productive. I'm not depressed, but I'm sure the heck not happy.

But we're both well fed, clothed, sheltered and completely in love with each other.

So all in all, I'd say that our life lately has been good.

...enough ...ish.

Foster-Adoption? Think Again...

I was told by TWO different social workers at DSHS, both in the foster parenting 0ffice/department that there are, and I QUOTE,

"no children available for adoption"

No, I'm not kidding.

According to both women, whose numbers I got from the Foster-Adoption page of the DSHS website, there are no children (other than teenagers) available at all in the entire state of Washington. Not even special needs. They said that "Foster care isn't for adopting. The purpose of foster care is reunification with natural parents."
"Yes," I very sweetly responded, "and I completely agree. But some children, for whatever reasons, aren't reunited, and parental rights are terminated and they become eligible for adoption, right?"
Their response? It was long, political, condescending, and full of misinformation and blatant lies.
I'll spare you all the details (because frankly, I was too flabbergasted to remember them all), but both women (whom I spoke to separately) turned me away and told me to call a private agency for designated infant or international adoption.

I couldn't believe what they were telling me. Had the millions of "waiting children" in our country fled the State of Washington, or was I just being flat-out LIED to??

After talking to another foster-adoptive parenting and doing some online research, their rejection and dishonest bull-jive makes a bit more sense. It's all a bunch of garbage politics, and it's outraging.

Maybe I'll have the energy to blog it all another day, but right now I don't. I'm just too drained.

But yeah, if ever you feel like pointing fingers at people who spend oodles of cash going overseas to adopt, rather than "helping the kids here at home", you now know who to blame. The freakin' Washington social workers themselves, who apparently view hopeful adoptive parents as desperate baby-snatchers.

A Note On Family

Last weekend I flew down to Arizona to visit Donald for a few days before he deploys. I flew in to Tucson at around 6pm-ish, at which point we immediately hopped in the car and made the long drive up to Gilbert. What's in Gilbert, you ask? Well, my Dad, Brother, and insanely cool Step-mother reside there.
Woah, woah... what? Katrina has a Dad??? I mean, basic human biology obviously requires some sort of paternal parentage, but most people never knew the guy existed (due to no fault of his own. The poor guy didn't find out about me until just before my 14th birthday).
Well, I do. His name is Sean, and he looks like me.

I first met him when I was 14, and he seemed like a cool enough guy. If nothing else, he was a fantastic sport about my existence. I mena, not many people would just... well, accept the fact that they suddenly have a teenage daughter.

His dad, my Grandpa-Jerry, was a very special person to me. We emailed almost daily after he found out about me, and I'm sure he'd still be a huge part in my life if he hadn't passed away a few short months after we met.

The shock and chaos of his sudden death essentially dissolved the ties I had with his side of the family.

10 years went by. We exchanged Birthday and Christmas cards for a few years, sent pictures here and there, but nothing too significant. Both of our lives were already on different paths, and I don't think either side ever expected anything beyond what we each were giving.

And then we met up last Thursday night.
We hung out, ate good food, played pool, reminisced about what could have been, and had a much better time than I imagined we would. Honestly, I hadn't expected anything more than an awkward and quiet dinner. It definitely turned out a lot better than planned.













I guess we know now where I get those small, deep-set eyes from!


He showed me some pictures of his side of the family, which was a first for me. Having not taking after my mom's side of the family for... well, much of ANYTHING, it was humbling to look into the photographed eyes of people who LOOKED LIKE ME.

I don't look dramatically different from the family I was raised with. I mean, we're all white. We blend. But still. Thanks to my Grandma, everyone on my mom's side was blessed with dainty and feminine features, paired with huge blue eyes.
I have neither. I do, however, have just about everything my dad's side is known for.

If nothing else, this experience gave me a small sliver of understanding and a tiny glimpse into the lives of my future children.
For the longest time I've tried to tell myself that when Donald and I start our family through adoption, nothing from their past would be of significance. I'll be their mother - their entire world - and genetics wouldn't count for a thing. They'd be raised in such love that their biological parents wouldn't matter at all, and it would be as if I had carried them for 9 months myself. I'd be their ONLY mother, they'd never ask questions, and I WOULDN'T HAVE TO SHARE THEM.
Right?
Sorta.
Yes to all the parts about love, being their real mom, and all that other mushy stuff.
Not so much on the part about not having to share

I don't even have my kids yet, but I'm already so attached to the idea of them being completely mine. It's a reasonable expectation, and how God intends things to be, in the ideal setting. But lucky for me, and for my future children, our situations aren't ideal in the traditional sense. Sometimes life's unexpected bumps require that our standards change a bit. And so they are.

Though I know that my kids WILL be mine (at some point, eventually, when the time is right), I'll have to always remember that a small part of their hearts will always be with their first parents, and that's okay. I wasn't raised by my dad. He's a fantastic guy and I love him, but he's not my "daddy". There's something to be said for biology. It's a powerful thing. I knew nothing about my father's side of the family until middle school, yet a day will never go by that I don't think about them, and I wish that I could have known them better.
After looking into the eyes of those pictures last week, I think I'll have a better idea of where my kids are coming from when they start showing interest in their biological family.

Iraq, Aruba, and a Quote From a Democrat

Who would have thought that a democrat would be the author of my new favorite quote?

"Do not pray for easier lives. Pray to be stronger men." -John F. Kennedy





Donald's deploying to Iraq again. He was supposed to be coming home at the end of this month, but instead he's shipping out. It's not entirely bad news, though. It's a MUCH shorter deployment than last time, and he'll be back this summer... at which point we'll be going to Aruba, or somewhere else that's equally tropical and fantastic.

Impressed With Myself

I'm very impressed with myself. I did some math today. Since Donald and I were married, we have been apart for 25.75 months due to deployments and training. We've been together for only 20.25. Alas, yet another reason to be impressed with myself (the first reason was for the math I willingly did!). The alternative to immense pride is to be a miserable wreck, which I've been fighting against a lot lately!

I honestly don't know how missionary wives in the 18- and 1900's did it. Kissing their husbands goodbye for years at a time without phones, USPS, and the INTERNET?
Can I get an "amen" for the INTERNET?!? I could NOT be an Army wife without it. I'm forever indebted to Al Gore for the sanity it has provided me.