Merry Christmas!

This is our super cute christmas tree. Gold balls and white bows.

This is Diego making an absolute mess of our kitchen.

And this is Diego's super cute gingerbread house. Um... gingerbread... saloon? This is Diego's super cute gingerbread saloon.

We Passed!

I'm happy to say the home study went very well. Our caseworker is awesome. She is one of those people that you can tell really takes pride in her work and truly cares about the people she deals with. She exclusively worked with birthmothers up until a few months ago. It's great hearing her side of everything because she knows what these young mothers need from adoptive couples to make them feel comfortable and that they made the right decision in choosing adoption. I have so much love for people that only want the best for their children. I can't imagine how hard it is to place your own baby in the arms of someone else. I don't know that I could be so strong. So, how can I feel anything but love for them?
Anyway, I digress. The caseworker showed up at our house and immediately started to inspect our home. Yes, she opened closets and cupboards looking for hazardous/toxic chemicals. She checked every room for smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. She made sure we had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and made sure our medicine drawer was securely locked. It sounds like it took a long time, but really it took ten minutes and we passed. Then we had our joint interview, which was honestly just a nice chit-chat, followed by individual interviews. It was so laid back and relaxed. What was I so stressed about?! She didn't even notice that I polished all of our stainless steel appliances or that I scrubbed the glass shower doors so hard that you could see Mr. Clean himself smiling back at you! Oh well, I guess the house needed a good cleaning anyway. And we got the end result we were hoping for so I'm happy. Now we can enjoy the holidays and wait to be approved. It should take about six weeks. I just hope we don't run into any complications that might make the process take longer!

Home Study!

We are scheduled for our adoption home study on Monday at 1:00! For those of you who have never adopted before (that's a joke, none of you have adopted before), it's when our caseworker comes and inspects our home to make sure it's safe and kid-friendly. She will also interview Diego and I as a couple, and separately. So all in all, her visit will be about 3 hours long. I think it will go just fine. It's the days leading up to it that will be somewhat hectic. We have had family at our house for a week now. The last bunch just left last night so our house is once again a mess. I would love to devote all of saturday to cleaning the house, but we are on the activities committee and saturday morning is the ward Christmas breakfast. We have to be at the church at 6:00 in the morning! Yucky! And we will get home at a reasonable time, about 10:00, but I'm pretty sure we will be exhausted. Oh well, we will just have to work anyway. And Diego teaches Elders Quorum on sunday so he will have to devote his saturday evening to preparing the lesson. Not to mention there are several requirements for the homestudy that we haven't taken care of either; childproof locks on cabinets containg toxic/hazardous materials, fire extinguisher in the kitchen, guns and ammunition locked away separately, etc...So, I'm a little stressed about how everything is going to get done in time. Oh, and I really wanted to put up our Christmas tree this weekend! Sunday? Maybe?