Adoption Update

I adore this quote.

So what's been happening on the adoption front here?

Well, we haven't got that big call yet unfortunately. I must admit, I thought there was a good chance we would get that call by now, but that's okay. Great things take time. I keep in touch with our worker as much as I can.. and probably more than she'd like.  She keeps reassuring me that things are happening and it could be soon or it could still be a while. Which, to be completely honest, it's a bit frustrating to hear the same thing with every call, but I know it's her job and she really can't tell me things even if she knows something is about to happen. I feel like I hang on to every word she says like I can decipher some clues as to what might be happening behind the scenes.  But alas, I'm no Sherlock Holmes. She has reassured me that our names are popping up frequently and on the last phone call she told me that she didn't think it would be too long. So here's to hoping for great news soon!

So, until we get that special phone call, I will just keep preparing the best way that I can.

Speaking of preparing...

I've been nesting like a crazy lady. Did I mention that? Oh yes, total crazy lady right here. To say it has it's complications is a total understatement because I so want to be completely prepared here but our very unique situation makes it nearly impossible. Do I need a crib? Maybe, maybe not. Diapers? Maybe, maybe not. Forget buying clothes because I have no clue what age, size, or gender our future kiddies will be or if we will adopt one or multiples. So any suggestions that is useful for this situation is welcomed! Seriously!

It took some major brainstorming, but alas, I've bought anything I can think of that I might need in any general circumstance. I've bought toddler/baby toothbrushes, toothpastes, thermometer, kid storage bowls, plates, hooded towels, baby wash, bath toys, sippy cups, etc. I've also been collecting LOADS of books over the last several months. A few friends/family have very generously gifted some really great books for our future kids as well which makes my heart melt! We will need to build a small library by the time we get that call and I'm pretty okay with that.

A not-so-small online haul of kiddie essentials. Lord help me.

We have also bought a few fun toys for the kids, but, again, its sort of hard to do because we don't know them yet or know what they will like. So we've bought things like megablocks, wooden puzzles, kid friendly art supplies, the cutest circus tent in the world, and the biggest thing is the giant kid kitchen. Which, we actually found second hand and got a wicked deal on. I'm very proud of that.  We've tried to think of things that we can use to play with them and engage with them.

Tobey checking out the kitchen.

No Tobey that is not your tent, but nice try.

Also, my mom and I handmade them blankets to have as their first gift to have before they move here. Something to keep them snuggly warm at night.

This is a perfect example of my crazy lady nesting ways. I just got it in my head one day that my kids needed handmade blankets for some reason and it became very important. So I called my mom and asked her if she would be up for making some blankets because she's got amazing sewing skills and I do not. She was excited to do it. I know making blankets take time so I decided to take it upon myself to give crocheting a blanket a try as well. Because why not?  First of all, I really didn't even know how to crochet other than my sad attempt at a not-so-good looking scarf in my college days. My skills were total crap. But with the help of YouTube and Google, I managed to work away at a couple blankets and complete them successfully. They look pretty cute if I do say so myself! I am very proud! Mom's blankets turned out awesome too!

Here are some pictures. The first two are the two I crocheted and the last two are the super soft blankets my momma made.

 

The cute edge :) And yes, I made this believe it or not!

Now to be completely honest, sometimes I feel a little weird that I have bought so much stuff for kids we don't even have yet.. or know and maybe that is a bit strange, but it's the only thing I can do right now to prepare to meet them. When I am able to get stuff for them, I feel this huge sense of gratification and it makes it feel real.. like it WILL happen because, honestly, it doesn't always feel that way. It really doesn't. One day it will be real though. We just don't know when that will be. One thing is for sure though and that is that those kid/s will be loved more than anything in the whole world.

So for now, I will keep preparing the best way that I can and wait for the day that it does become real and we have our little family.

Sending my love to all the future adoptive mamas out there!

Happy Birthday Mr. Matt

 

This blog post is dedicated to my amazing husband, Matt, without whom I would not be the person I am today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to you my wonderful husband!

 

There aren't enough words I could say to describe how wonderful you truly are.

 

He is the first one to offer to help friends and family when they need it. He is kind, generous, extremely hardworking, loving, understanding, and absolutely brilliant with an incredible sense of humor. Oh does that man make me laugh. Friends & family, you know what I exactly mean.

 

So today I want to tell a couple short stories about the generosity of this man because he has never wanted credit for doing things for others. He has always said that's like celebrities donating to a cause and then telling the world how wonderful they are for doing that. He doesn't do things to selfishly make himself look good. He does them because he is genuinely a generous person who loves to help... however secretly it is.

 

When I first moved up here, I was having a hard time being away from friends and family. I was completely homesick. Matt, not even thinking twice, asked me what friend did I need to see to help with homesickness and he quickly booked a plane ticket for them to come up and visit. Just for me. Now that the years have gone by, there have been several more plane tickets bought for family/friends to visit us, but it was really his way of bringing home up to me. I can never really express how much that meant to me during those times. It just made me love him even more.

 

I will also never forget a few years ago, when there was a dark period in my family and my baby sister was supposed to head off to school in Maryland. Because of the things going on, no one knew how she was going to get there all the way from Indiana. Matt, not even budging, started pricing out rental cars for us (because we didn't trust my little car at that time) and we started to map out how we were going to swing this because we weren't going to let the things going on in our family stop my little sis from going to university. So we, or Matt actually, drove from Canada to Indiana to Maryland and back. Which is a very, very long trek, but in the end my sister made it to school and that's what mattered. Fortunately, by the time we reached Indiana, my parents decided to help too, so it all worked out. The fact that he was so quick to jump in to help make sure my little sister got to university is just a prime example of what a great guy he is. I can't thank him enough.

 

Lastly, I cannot even explain the depth of how supportive he has been throughout our very long and emotional journey to start our family. He has been my rock and pillar of strength. Always keeping his wonderful humor throughout the process and ready to do whatever it takes. He is going to be the best dad and our future children hit the jackpot for the father and role model they will have in their life. I can't express how much your love & support means to me. I love you to the moon babe!

 

He is probably going to kill me for posting some of the wonderful things he's done because he likes to do them secretly and selflessly without telling the world. But I think the world deserves to know what an amazing guy he is and just a few of the many generous things he does. It's just the tip of the iceberg in the great things he's done.

 

I love you and Happy Birthday Handsome!

 

Don't kill me for posting some goofy pictures hahaha!

 

 

Beautiful smile :)

Cute as a button.

 

Shower cap to protect all that hair.

 

Merry Christmas. Santa likes BBQ & Beer.

Ice skating with Tobey

 

 

Love you! Have a great day!

 

 

Matt and Krista's Epic Adventure Part 3: New Brunswick & PEI

 

Ok, bear with me. This is going to be a really long post. So go grab a cup of coffee, tea, whatever you like and then come back and join me.

 

After Salem, we knew we had a big of a trek to Prince Edward Island. So we planned to take 2 days to get there so that it wasn't crazy stressful to get there. We drove 8 hours through Vermont and Maine all the way to Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. A few hours after we left Salem, the scenery started to change. It looked more northern, more woodsy and green. Once we were into Maine, we started to see signs on the highway to beware of moose! Which, I must admit, got me a little excited! Then, once we crossed back into Canada into New Brunswick we noticed all the fences along the highway to keep the moose away from traffic. There must be a lot of them. I was hoping to spot one sometime while we were driving, but we never did get to see one unfortunately. We did spot a baby black bear though running along the highway all cute and bouncy-like. He was almost waving at traffic like "Welcome to Canada."  Momma bear must have been nearby.

 

 

Smallest border crossing ever. Only one lane. The other
was Nexus. It was great, no lineup!

 

Matt was super excited to get his Timmies again once we got back into Canada haha :)

 

 

Watch out for Moose!

 

 

 

A cool video of the scenery in New Brunswick. Watch until the end, there's a cool view :) This is one of my favorite videos of the trip.

 

 

For my Game of Thrones fans, we saw signs for Kings Landing in New Brunswick ;)

 

 

We didn't get to do a lot in New Brunswick because we were only there for the night, but I would love to have seen the Bay of Fundy where they have the massive tides come and go. We did do Magnetic Hill though, where your car goes up a hill all by itself. It was pretty cool!

 

We grabbed a hotel for the night in Moncton, NB and the next day, we were only a few hours from Prince Edward Island!

 

To get to PEI, you either need to take a ferry or cross on Confederation Bridge, which is huge. It's almost 13km long.  We took the bridge. Not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous crossing this bad boy because of its sheer size. It was a pretty cool experience though! Once we got high up on the bridge you could get a good look at PEI and see what it's known for, that gorgeous red dirt. It's also known for the potatoes. In Canada, everyone knows that PEI is famous for growing potatoes.



Confederation Bridge



Finally driving onto PEI and seeing the red sandy beaches.



My husband is a lobster. Good lord, I just love him.

 

When we first crossed onto PEI, there was this sort of welcome village that was so clean, colorful, and almost resembled something out of Pleasantville. It was so stinking cute! So we had lunch and shopped. Matt had his first lobster roll there and was in heaven.

 

Here is a video of driving into our hotel. It was called The Rodd Crowbush Beach Resort. The hotel was awesome and I would highly recommend to anyone going to PEI. Matt surprised me with a cottage when I thought we had a hotel room. Heck, I was just as excited for a hotel room at a beach resort let alone a small cottage! What am I going to do with him? What a sweetheart.

 

 

 

 Here is a picture of the beach at the resort.

 

 

Here is a video of the beach at the hotel that I'm sure most of our friends and family have seen because we sent it to them when we got there to show them where we were on our trip! The resort was so neat that you could just call down to the front desk, then they will come pick you up in this 6 person golf cart and drive you down to the beach because it was a bit of a hike. Then, they will come back for you whenever you tell them too. I felt so spoiled like we were some fancy schmancy couple. It was great! They also told us that they would set up a fire on the beach at night at our request if we wanted too. How awesome.

 

 

 

Matt barbequing a pizza at our cottage.

Matt's fancy lobster dinner at the resort. They gave him a bib and all. I can't eat it because I'm allergic, but I must say I think I had just as much fun watching him devour it as he did eating it. It was whole lobster, shrimp, clams, mussels, potatoes, and corn on the cob all boiled together. It looked freaking awesome!

I don't know why but we got a kick out of this sign.

 

Driving around PEI. You can see the potato fields in the background. They were everywhere.

 

Lighthouse

Basin Head Beach - Where you can leap off that bridge into the water and it's know for it's singing sands.

Basin Head Beach

The bridge at Basin Head Beach that you can jump off of.

Here are a few short videos I took at Basin Head Beach. It was gorgeous there. Water was too cold to swim when we were there, but I guess it does get warmer in July and August. Also, I had heard about the "singing sands" there and when we first got there the sand was a bit wet because of the rain the night before so it wasn't making any noise. I was thinking the "singing sands" were a joke, but sure enough once the sun came out for a few hours, just walking on them you could hear more like a squeak sound that sounded really funny. Someone told Matt that I guess when it's really windy you can hear the "singing sands" from a distance. It was so cool. I could have stayed at that beach a long time.

 

Pretty Beach

 

Gorgeous Red Rocks on the Beach

 

 

 Singing Sands :)

 

 

 We loved Prince Edward Island. It's a place where you don't have to drive far to find a beach access. They are everywhere. The island is absolutely beautiful with the almost neon green landscape, the vibrant red dirt, rolling hills, the endless potato fields, and the deep blue ocean. Pictures and videos really don't do it justice.  I know we will go back one day.

 

I hope you enjoyed the photos and videos from our trip!

 



Matt & Krista's Epic Adventure Part 2: SALEM

 

I've been really excited to write these blog posts about our trip because we really did have such a great time and I wanted to share it with everyone and while seeing pictures posted on Facebook is neat, there is something more personal about sharing the stories and experiences in a blog post. So here we go!

 

Our first major stop on our roadtrip was Salem, MA.

 

I was always fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials, so this was a place I had wanted to go for a very long time. So much history is here.

 

Now getting to Salem was not so straight forward. Being so close to Boston, traffic was horrendous about an hour from it. (I'm a country girl, traffic is not my favorite.) Also, we were lucky to have GPS with us because  since Salem is such an old town and streets were built pretty narrow (I'm talking our side mirrors were a few inches from the parked cars on the side of the street), everything is one-way. So it got interesting, but I just took it all in and loved every minute.

 

 I googled the best places to stay in Salem and the hotels were booked seeing as it was last minute and all (well there weren't many hotels in Salem), but there were several B&Bs. The top rated one on Trip Advisor was Morning Glory so we decided to give it a try.  It was such a charming place to stay. The owner who ran it put so much work and effort into the place and you could really tell. From the  Ferrero Rocher chocolates left on our table, the amazing breakfast with pancakes, berries, walnuts, & maple syrup (which were delicious), to the way the host printed us off directions when we left for the easiest way out of town (still complicated haha.) He really thought of everything to make your stay memorable. The location was great too! There were lots of places within walking distance, which is great! There was even a rooftop deck to  sit on that had an amazing view. We sat up there at night during the sunsets with a  few drinks and watched as the night sky came.

 

Salem was certainly a magical place. The waterfront town was filled with so many old New England style houses, buildings, history, and yes, even real modern day witches. Driving through the small downtown area, some people were dressed in spooky costumes and you could see people from all walks of life. Several museums were there, and by museum I mean reinactment more like a theatre show. We made that mistake thinking "The Witch Museum" was an artifact type museum. 

 

 

Here are some pictures of Morning Glory.

 

 

 

Rooftop deck

 

Here is a quick video of the rooftop deck. You can see how close together the old houses are and how cool they look. Also how rooftop decks are a bit of a thing which is neat. Don't mind my camera skills, I never promised I  had talent in the video department! Also love Matt's nice reaction; you can really tell I had been taking pictures all day haha!

 

 

 

 

This is the Friendship of Salem - 5 minute walk from our B&B. Tours were free I believe.

 

 

Right around the corner from our B&B was a few bars, restaurant, and ice cream shop. This was the "Pig's Eye" which was a bar/restaurant that had anything pig related decorated everywhere. It was next door to the "Witch's Brew" which was an awesome restaurant that sadly I didn't get any pics of! Cool name though and great food though.

 

 

Matt was super excited to get his chocolate ice cream cones both days at Captain Dusty's while we were there because it was conveniently located around the corner from the B&B.

 

Essex Street Pedestrian Mall which was loaded with gift shops, restaurants, reinactments of the witch trials, and even real witch stores to buy magic candles & spells (which I totally did because "when in Salem..")

 

Here is a picture of a magic pregnancy candle I bought at a witch shop called Omen. Sounds spooky! I figured it wouldn't hurt to try magic candle at this point. The witch shops were really interesting and smelled like really strong incense.

 

 

 

This was the liquor store in Salem. Awesome name. And yes we did have to buy liquor from a store called Bunghole Liquors. It totally happened.

 

This is the Witch House. This is the only building in Salem with actual ties to the witch trials. It was the house of one of the judges, Jonathan Corwin, and we were told that he took depositions for the trial in the house. We took a tour. It was so neat to see everything. The house is from the 1600s and was considered a mansion in those days.

 

 

Copies of documents from the Witch Trials.

 

Fireplace in the house. There were two huge walk in fireplaces on each level.

 

Here is a quick video of some of the neat architecture on a side street in Salem. One of the few wide streets in Salem. I loved how the houses looked! I wish I took more pictures of it and again I apologize for my camera skills  - I was too busy looking myself!

 

 

 

We had a pretty nice time in Salem and I would love to go back in the fall sometime because I bet its beautiful. Side note : I had the best Mexican food in Salem at a place called The Howling Wolf. If you ever go it's a must!

 

After 2 nights in Salem, we were back on the road! Next stop, Moncton, New Brunswick, then PEI!

Matt and Krista's Epic Adventure Part 1 : Planning

So Matt and I went on a little trip.. okay not so little trip. Before I dive into the actual trip, let me tell you all about our crazy vacation planning. We had said for years we wanted to do a big vacation, like national lampoon style, before we had kids. Now years came and went, no huge vacation or kids either, but now that we know we could be adopting anytime, it's crunch time. Also, everything I've read about adopting, and believe me when I say I've read A LOT, says to take that one last vacation just the two of you because your life is about to get crazy and you will wish you had. So we decided that was something we really wanted to make an effort to do.

Well, now that we own & operate our own company (it's still relatively new), summer is definitely our busiest time and you know that old saying "you gotta bail hay while the sun shines?" So needless to say, we've been working really hard and been very busy this summer so far and that's great for business! However, it leaves little time for downtime. I know I know, first world problems, but this was something really important to us to do before our next epic adventure, having kids.

One day, Matt came to me and said that he had a week that might be free at the end of June for a possible trip. The only problem? That week he mentioned was the following week. How do I plan an epic adventure in a week.. last minute?!? This might be a bit of a challenge, but you better believe I was going to find us something great!

So off I went hunting for a vacation. Last minute deals, last minute cruises, pretty much anything I could find within a reasonable budget.  After several days of hunting, calling places, and I was pretty well defeated so we had to think outside the box. We wanted to do something we had never done before and go places we had never seen before. Why not take an epic roadtrip? We decided to head out to the east coast. Neither of us had been there before. We wanted to drive as far as Prince Edward Island, which is pretty dang far and it's supposed to be absolutely beautiful. I had always wanted to see Salem, MA as I was just fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials so that became a stop as well. So we booked a few places, packed up our minivan and away we went!


Matt and Krista's Roadtrip 2014: Off to PEI!

Story Of Our Playset

A few months ago, Matt was on a job doing some excavating for a nice family in town and they got talking about us and how we were going through the adoption process. He said that they were so interested, supportive of adoption, and explained how they had one child who was getting too old for the playset that they had in their yard. So, after hearing about our plans to adopt they kindly offered to give us the playset for free if we would like it.

Now, funny thing was, that week I was hunting high and low for something similar to put in our backyard just to be ready for when we have kids and Matt knew it. He told them, "Wow, thank you! You just made my wife's day!" He text me a picture of this cute playset and I was ecstatic!

So a few weeks later, a group of friends helped us take apart and move this playset to our house. Matt put it back together and I ended up giving the nice family that so sweetly gave us the playset  a discount on the work we did there because those kind acts don't go unnoticed by us and I wanted to do a little something in return.

It's kind acts like this that really move me. When we first started the process, classes educated us on how some people don't understand adoption, may tell your children that we aren't their "real" parents, and that there would be obstacles. And while I'm sure that there will be hurdles and times that people will get under my skin, throughout this whole process so far we've been met with nothing but love and support for adoption.  From our customers donating a beautiful playset to even the regular lady at the grocery store checkout asking us if we've heard anything yet, we have only received kindness and for that I am extremely grateful.  You guys melt my heart!

So I just wanted to share this lovely story with everyone because it makes me so happy and thankful for all the support we have received!! I have nothing but gratitude :)

Here are some pictures of the awesome playset :) (Taken a few months ago.)

 

 Matt putting it back together

 

 

Tobey was curious too!

 

Matt trying out the rock wall haha.

 

 

 I was really trying to get Tobey to go down the slide and this was his look like "Mom, you won't be happy until I go down this silly slide will you?"

 

 

 

 

 

Tobey giving the slide a go!

 

 

 

 

Tobey and his "cousin" Andy trying out the slide :)

 

 

 

We love and it and can't wait to share it with our future family! But until then, Tobey is making good use of the slide :)

 

 

XO