Home Study Update Time

I knew it was coming.

We received an email saying that we would need to update our home study.  I knew we would have to do it, as a home study is only valid for one year.  I have found that it is much easier to do the second time around!  Unlike our first home study, we do not have to do an actual home portion of the home study (at least we haven't been made aware of it yet).  We have to fill out updated financial information, get background checks done (I may be saying this prematurely, but I don't think we'll have a problem here.), and had to sign a bunch of papers.  It's pretty simple the second time around.  Hopefully we don't have to worry about a third time.

I pray that God gives me the patience for this.  I like to think that my patience has gotten better throughout this process, but then I have one of those days where I am anything but patient.

I saw this on a friend's adoption blog, and it really made me think today:  the ends justify the means.  So in a nutshell, I need to remember that in the end we won't remember how long we waited or how much the paperwork cost or how frustrated we got during the however many months.  What we will remember is that we have the most precious baby in the whole world.

Family Vacation 2012

Hi, are you all still with me?  We've really been busy and having lots of fun, so I haven't posted in, oh, six months.  Sorry about that.

I just had to post a few pictures from our family vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida to celebrate my parents' 40th anniversary!

We all had so much fun, and it went by way too fast.  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for a wonderful vacation.  We cannot wait to go back!

2011: A Recap

Somewhere during the holidays when I was reading about Christmas recaps on my favorite blogs, I realized that my blogging has been somewhat nonexistent.  So since I've given up on posting on a semi-regular basis, and (coincidentally) Brady and I don't do interesting things all of the time, I'll give you a (hopefully) short recap of 2011.

In January we saw our first big snowfall, and we had a LOT of fun sled riding down my little buddies' grandparents driveway.

February wasn't too interesting.  That is it wasn't interesting until the last day.  On February 28, a F2 tornado tore through our neighborhood.  Luckily it was on the other side and we had no damage, but it was certainly a scary night.  Instead of uploading some depressing photos of the damage, I will upload a picture of our Lab/German Shepherd mix, Buster.

March saw a little more (good) action.  The day after the awful tornado (luckily no one was injured), my best friend Lisa had her precious baby boy, Alex, and my cousin (and another one of my best friends) Shannon had her precious little Connor.  We visited them all the following weekend.  That same weekend we had our very first meeting with our adoption agency.  It was the first step in the process!  I did miss Kara's bridal shower, but she was more than happy that the adoption process was beginning for us.

Alex is on the left, and Connor is on the right.

In April we made our long-awaited trip to visit Jodi, Nathaniel, and Will in Arlington, VA.  Brady and I spent two days in Washington D.C. seeing the sights and spending time with the Rivers.  It was a great week.  (Here is the link to the first day.)  We also celebrated Easter with our families!

May was pretty eventful.  I first watched my nephew and godson, Trevor, make his First Holy Communion.  I cannot describe how proud I was of him.  We also celebrated Kara's bachelorette party!  (However, no photos of that event were posted.  You're welcome, girls.)  One of the coolest things we have ever gotten to do also happened in May.  We went to the Sugarland and Little Big Town show on May 5 as guests of Little Big Town.  It was pretty fun, and I don't think we'll ever forget it!  We also remembered Dean as May 6 would have been his 38th birthday.  And as if that wasn't enough excitement for one month, we attended the Chalk Walk.  It is one of my favorite events that the Jasper Arts Commission puts on, and I love seeing all of the art created on the sidewalks!

June was also full of excitement.  On June 3, Miss Kendall turned six and my Dad turned sixty-five!  We celebrated with a party for our favorite little princess!  June 4th saw my cousin Maurey marry a wonderful gal (and a great friend), Lori!  We had so much fun at the wedding that I wished we could have another reception for them a few months later.  However, the next Saturday, we witnessed the marriage of Brady's cousin, Kara marry a great guy, Matt.  We all stayed at the hotel, so we all had a blast.  I'm so glad we got to be a part of both of these marriages!

In July I did something I never thought I would do...twice.  I went camping over the Fourth of July with Brady, Autumn, and Nick and then again a few weeks later with Brady, my cousin, and her family.  Much to my surprise, I had a great time!  :)

We had our second, and this time all-day, adoption meeting in August.  It was very interesting, and I'm glad it is required by the state.  You can read a recap here.  We also celebrated Denise's birthday (I won't post how old she turned.  You're welcome.) with a trip to Chicago's Pizza in French Lick and then we went to the West Baden Dome to take some pictures.  It was a lot of fun.  I did not do a post about it, so here is a photo from that day that pretty much sums it up:

September brought a day that sometimes I would just like to skip over.  September 4th was the eight year anniversary of my brother Dean's accident that claimed his life.  I remembered him here.  I kind of took an unintentional blogging break because we were preparing for our home study!  We had a scrapbook to make, paperwork to fill out, cleaning to do (thanks for helping, Mom!), and nerves to settle.  We were nervous, but it turns out we were nervous for nothing.  It went great!  Oh, and how could I forget going to see Disney on Ice with Brady, Denise, Tony, and my little buddies.  It was a blast. 

I skipped blogging in October because, honestly, we didn't do anything all that exciting.  We just sort of relaxed since we did nothing but paperwork in the month of September.  But that wasn't saying there wasn't anything exciting happening!  On October 10, I started my new job at National Office Furniture as a Sales Coordinator.  That same week, on October 13, we were officially 'shelved' by the adoption agency, and that means birth mothers can see our book and, hopefully, pick us to parent their child!  As if that wasn't enough excitement, my little buddy Trevor turned nine.  Seriously.  Where did those nine years go?

I returned to blogging (well, I tried at least) in November.  We visited Jodi, Nathaniel, and Will in St. Louis, and we had a blast.  I recapped it here and here.  It was so much fun exploring the city and spending time with family.  The rest of November was spent preparing for Thanksgiving and Fischer family photos.  

We had a blast playing games at Mert and Kenny's house after our Thanksgiving dinner.  It is always fun getting together with the family!  

December came along too quickly!  We started the month off by riding the Polar Express in French Lick.  It was so much fun, and the kids had a blast!  

I highly suggest riding the Polar Express if you ever have a chance.  I cannot express how much fun it was.  

Since December came along so fast, it flew by as well.  The month was spent finishing Christmas shopping and spending time with family and friends.  I won't post a lot of photos from Christmas, but I will post my family photo from Christmas at my parent's house.  

It's still not the same without Dean, Hope, and Ben, but we make the best of it and we still have fun.  After all - it is what they would want us to do!  

Well, that's 2011 in a nutshell.  I'll try to do better with blogging in 2012.  My New Year's resolution was to make a weekly menu and stick to it, and in the second week of the year, so far so good!  (Ask me again in March if I am still doing that good!)  

Hitting Up the Brewery with Auts and Nick

As the previous post said, we didn't make it on Saturday night (a couple of weeks ago) to the Anheuser Busch Brewery for the tour with the Rivers.  We did make it on Sunday on the way home.  It was so much fun.  I'll post a few pictures from the tour.

  

 

It was a great day with Autumn and Nick.  We always have so much fun with them.

Well That Was a Long (Unintentional) Break

Long time, no see.  Sorry about that.  I know my three regulars will be disappointed.  :)

We have been so busy lately.  I've started a new job as a Sales Coordinator at National Office Furniture, we are OFFICIALLY ACTIVE with the adoption agency, and we've been having fun with family, friends, and traveling to St. Louis for the weekend to visit with Jodi, Nathaniel, and Will.

I can back it up a little bit though.  We had our home study visit on September 29.  We were both super nervous for this.  I mean, this lady was going to walk through our house and determine whether we would be fit parents or not.  Who wouldn't be nervous?  But it turns out the actual home portion of the home study is the easiest part.  You basically just talk to the social worker, and she reviews your information that we've already submitted.  We even got to see the letters of recommendation that were sent in on our behalf.  It choked me up a little bit to see what everyone had written about us, and how everyone wrote that we will be excellent parents.  The social worker left and finished our paperwork a couple of weeks later, so that officially made us active!  Woo hoo!

So after we were done with the home study, we took a break to do absolutely nothing!  We had worked on nothing but paperwork for a couple of months, so we were ready at that point!  We spent a lot of time with my little buddies, the rest of our families, celebrated Mason's (Brady's nephew) eleventh birthday and Trevor's ninth birthday.

Oh, and do you see Brady's hat?  We were also busy celebrating the St. Louis Cardinals World Series win!  I was so excited during game six that I may or may not have jumped off the couch...multiple times.  (Luckily Brady did not take any photos of that for me to show with you.)  At the end of game seven, I won't even make you guess whether or not I jumped off the couch. As a lifelong fan, I was SO excited to see them win the Fall Classic a second time.  (They also won in 2006.)  

The first weekend of November was spent in my favorite city, St. Louis.  We wanted to visit the Rivers, so Brady, Autumn, Nick, and I packed our bags and headed there for the weekend.  We had so much fun.  It was a much needed weekend away.  

We visited the Arch.  

The Arch is seriously one of my favorite things in the world.  I think it is so pretty.

We also had lunch at Fitz's.  Brady and I fell in love with their root beer, so we bought a four pack.  We also bought a four pack of orange cream soda.  I could drink that every day.

We wanted to hit up the Anheuser Busch Brewery yet on Saturday evening with the Rivers, but we missed the last tour.  So we decided we would do that on Sunday before we left for Indiana.  We enjoyed dinner from Cheese-ology and the ladies watched a little TV while the guys sat around the fire pit.  The next morning Nathaniel made a delicious breakfast, and we departed for the Brewery.  I'll post about that shortly!

Miss You, Big Brother

On September 4, 2003 the world lost a great man.  That man would be my brother, Dean. 

Instead of telling you all about what happened that day, I am going to tell you some of my favorite memories of my favorite big brother. 

• I don’t remember how old I was when he bought his first horse, but I remember falling in love with her immediately.  He would occasionally take me riding, and I remember one Saturday or Sunday he took me riding all day long.  It was the next morning that I realized why, in western movies, cowboys always walk bow legged. 
•   Along with the family, Dean was a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan.  We never really went on vacations when I was younger, but I remember going to many Cardinals games.  One game sticks out in particular.  Denise and I were riding with Mom and Dad in their car, and Dean and two of his buddies were riding in Dean’s beloved truck.  We had to stop so Dean could get gas (and we could use the restroom) not too far from St. Louis.  The worker offered us some tickets, and I think Dean and his buddies bought them.  Dad thought he would still be able to get good tickets at the gate.  Well we got to the game and guess who was in standing room only…us.  Mom had brought the binoculars along, so I would look through them and see Ozzie Smith (my all-time favorite player) do his famous round-off back handsprings.  We saw a family leave, so we quickly took their seats.  Keep in mind that when we went to this game, Dean was under the legal drinking age of 21.  ALL of the beer vendors had large buttons on that said something to the effect of “Under 21?  We card!”  Mom was looking through the binoculars and found Dean and his buddies…buying beer.  Guess Busch Stadium needed to work on the whole carding thing. 
• Keeping with the Cardinals theme, in 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were in the middle of their home run race.  They were trying to break the record of 61 home runs hit in a single season.  It was September 8, 1998 when McGwire hit number 62 breaking Roger Maris’s record.  I think every Cardinals fan can tell you where they watched it.  Mom, Dad, Denise, and I were upstairs in the kitchen (don’t ask why we were sitting around the 13” TV rather than the larger one in the living room), and Dean had just gone downstairs to take a shower.  He went down right as the game went to commercial with McGwire due up in the next inning.  Long story short, McGwire got up to bat and hit #62.  It was a great day to be a Cards fan.  But where was Dean?  Downstairs in the shower.  We yelled, “He did it!” down the staircase and we were told to shut the door so that he could run over to his TV and watch the replay.  We all still laugh so hard when we think of this moment.  It could be my favorite Dean moment ever. 
• Dean only got to know Trevor for the first ten months of Trevor’s life.  In those short ten months, I don’t think anyone loved a child more.  When we would all be around, Dean would practically scoop Trevor out of our arms.  There aren’t very many photos of the two together, but this is the one I always think of.  Dean trying to comfort a crying Trevor.  It is too sweet. 

•  Dean had a habit of trying to annoy me.  I know, a big brother trying to annoy his little sister…unheard of!  Anyway, he sometimes got stuck driving me places and would make up little parodies to songs.  The one I remember the most is Tanya Tucker’s “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane.”  This song was popular when I was younger.  It goes something like this:  Like two sparrows in a hurricane/Trying to find their way.  What Dean would sing was:  Like four cardinals in a tornado/ trying to hide from you.  Nice, Dean. 
• Denise, my older sister, got married the summer before I was in ninth grade.  It is a Dubois County tradition to stop at a bar, to get beverages of course, before going to the reception.  We stopped at The Shamrock and got some drinks.  I had my very first strawberry daiquiri wine cooler that afternoon.  I was just sipping on it and enjoying the ride over.  As we were pulling into the reception, Dean noticed I had quite a bit of my wine cooler in my mug yet.  He told me I needed to drink it because Mom would get mad if she saw that I had it.  So what’s a fourteen year old to do when her big brother is telling her to do something?  I chugged it.  All I remember from that moment was Denise saying, “Oh my God…she’s going to puke later.”  For the record, I didn’t.  Dean had a great time at the wedding….a little too much fun.  Mom and Dad took him to our house that night and I can honestly say I have never been so happy when someone passed out in the middle of the car ride home. 

Those are just some of my favorite memories of my big brother.  I can speak for my whole family when I say we miss him so much every day.  It’s so hard to believe it has been eight years.  Some days it feels like it has been forever that we have talked to him and other days it seems like it was yesterday.  I miss him calling me Motor Mouth, even though I hated when he called me that!

We miss you and love you, big brother.  Keep watching over us.  

Catching Up

It's been a while since I last posted, and it is because we have been busy!

Last weekend was the big Strassenfest celebration here in Jasper!  We had so much fun!  I don't have too many pictures, but here are a couple.

I also walked the Wettlauf (foot race) 5K race on Saturday morning.  I walked with my sister-in-law, Autumn.  I decided to support my friend (and new cousin!) Lori's Dad, Terry Seitz, in his bid to become the new mayor of Jasper.  A bunch of Lori's friends and family walked in memory of their mother, Ann Seitz, who passed away last Thanksgiving.  It was so sweet to see all of the "We ran 4 Ann because we can" shirts.

Then on Sunday we attended the parade.  Autumn lives on the parade route.  Since she is so awesome, she went and put chairs and their canopy out on the curb at six a.m. so that we all had a place to sit.  Thanks, Autumn!  It was perfect.  

  

As if the parade wasn't enough excitement for one day, we were invited to go swimming at Brady's Dad, Woody's house.  Woody and Marilyn were very nice to let Trevor and Kendall come along.  They had so much fun.

That brings us to a week ago today.  The past week was filled with the usual tasks that come with owning a house.  But today we got to welcome home my cousin, Nathan, home from basic training for the US Marines.  I forgot my camera, but we are so proud of you Nathan!