My incredible husband

I probably sounded a bit more optimistic about the new house in the last post than I actually felt. I hadn't been over there for a few days, and Mark has been working on it day and night when he's not at work, or leading Bible study, or planning for our church to move into the new part of our building, or considering a new leadership role at the church, or working on adoption details. (It makes me tired just listing all of the stuff he's working on!) Every time he's mentioned the house he hasn't sounded particularly optimistic about getting everything cleared out before the dumpster will be picked up. Yesterday he got home early so we went over to the house together and this is what I saw:





He singlehandedly pulled off all of the plaster in the living room and took nearly all of it to the dumpster, started on the dining room ceiling, and pulled off all of the drywall in the dining room and kitchen. That would be the drywall with the fake bricks attached, a.k.a. the heaviest drywall in the world. I am so in awe of his perseverance on this project. All that's left is to remove the ceiling in the dining room and the plaster in the dining room and kitchen. The kitchen isn't a problem--we're having a hard time keeping it on the wall right now. It's definitely not in good condition. Then we have to haul all of the plaster from both floors out to the dumpster. Sigh. That is the not-fun part, and it's really heavy. I can only carry so much at a time so most of the burden falls on Mark, and I help by carrying out the lath and all of the other boards. But it's great to see so much progress, and to know it was all done by my husband! We might actually meet our goal to have the plywood subfloors down before we leave!! It's such a blessing to have a husband who devotes so much time and energy to our projects. :)

I love the little adoption accountability blogging group we've got going online. Between Tami, Nataliya, and myself none of us should forget to do or bring anything for our adoption!! :) :) Keep reminding me of things I shouldn't forget to do or pack, ladies!

Checking things off

I took a little road trip this weekend while Mark was working. Along the way, I managed to pick up some more clothes at garage sales, and a wonderful winter coat at an overstock store! It's down-filled and exactly what I've been looking for. I picked up a few other necessities for the trip as well and have a good chunk of our packing list done. Mark talked to the bank on Friday and we're all set as far as picking up the money. I keep checking the plane reservations every few days (...just did that again) to make sure everything's still set. I'll be calling the airlines this next week or so just to double-check. :) Mark put the storm windows in and I went through all of our extra dossier paperwork last week as well.

We received a wonderful gift this weekend as well that really meant a lot to us. It involved some degree of sacrifice on the part of the giver which makes it that much sweeter to us. The details will remain private, but I wanted to publicly acknowledge the giver. Thank you very much!

Mark worked hard yesterday hauling plaster out of the new house. We have the dumpster for about one more week and it's going to take a LOT of work to get everything cleaned out in that amount of time. But the house is looking good and it's exciting to see things coming together (or apart, depending on your perspective).

Still on the to-do list:
..put together the picture albums
..print out the embassy paperwork for coming home

...I think that pretty much covers the to-do list. There are some other things we would like to get done before we go, but they're not adoption related so aren't actually on the official to-do list. :)

Dreams and awakenings

Friday night I had my first dream about our SDA appointment.
We were ushered into a small room with three tables. There was already another couple there meeting with their SDA worker and interpreter. We were told we would need to wait a few minutes for the interpreter, so we sat down at one of the tables with our SDA worker and waited. We listened to the other couple's discussion (not adoption related, as I recall) and waited patiently. After some time, we were told that we would need to come back later. It wasn't a bad thing--it seemed to be for something like lunch and we just needed to return in a couple of hours. Our SDA worker was smiling and very friendly, and as we were getting ready to leave she was walking out with us and carrying our folder. Paper-clipped to the folder were three pictures of sibling sets, each with two children. The first two I saw were both boy-girl siblings, but for both of those one of the siblings was much older than we can accept (by US requirements based on our HS). I can't remember the third picture, but I think it was two girls. So we happily left knowing that we would come back soon and see the profiles for those sibling sets. However, once we got outside I realized we had brought NO MONEY to Ukraine!! NONE--we had no cash with us, not even $20. Can you tell what's been stressing me out?? ;)

On Saturday I went to the bank to discuss our money needs with them. We will need to take a significant amount of cash in relatively new bills (clean, not ripped, no marks). It's a pretty large withdrawal and we may be monitored by the government for it since they want to make sure we're not funneling money to terrorists. We're not, unless you count 2- and 3-year-olds terrorists, and some people might. ;) The woman at the bank was fantastic and they're going to do everything they can to help us. So check another thing off of the list! :) :)

I love Craig's list!

We've been collecting clothes to take with us for the kids, and we're collecting both through donations and things that we buy. But even Goodwill can be a little pricy when you're trying to collect a LOT of clothes, so I've resorted to Craig's list.** We've used Craig's list for a number of other things, both buying and selling, like a dorm fridge (sold), planer (bought), table saw (bought), and dresser (sold). It's a convenient source of local online classifieds if you have one for your area.
I posted a few days ago a WTB ("want to buy") ad looking for toddler clothes 12mo to 3T for $1 per item or less. I received an email from a woman who sold me about 40 pieces of clothing for $20! They are super cute, although to Mark's dismay they're mostly boy clothes. He just figures that means all of the clothes will be staying in Ukraine. ;)
We've been slowly cleaning out the bedroom that the kids will occupy. It had managed to accumulate a lot of stuff which has now mostly been moved out. In the process we cleaned the bedroom in the basement and reorganized the closet. :)

**Note about Craig's list: Be careful to type in craigSlist, not craiglist (without the s), as that latter site apparently takes you to an undesirable web site. Just thought you should know.

Late night musings

I apologize profusely for the long absence. We are well, healthy, and doing fine, just a wee bit busy. ;) I'll share some pics--hopefully that will make up for the long lack of posts. I've been in training for work all week and Mark has been jumping between work and the house. In the evenings we've been working on the house, or we were until I developed tendonitis and needed to rest my wrist for a couple of days. So last night we ran some necessary errands and tonight we did some reorganization at the house we currently live in. And Julie, no. Pigs will fly and certain warm areas will freeze over before we would be able to manage finishing the house before going to Ukraine. You might understand better when you see the next pics, or when I tell you that the most recent person who came to see the house said,"Oh...I know you guys said it needed some work, but wow." Of course, he saw it in this condition:


Those are the front two bedrooms upstairs, and since those pictures were taken we (ahem, Mark) have removed the rest of the plaster off of the walls in there, so both of those rooms are completely stripped down to the studs and joists. The third picture is to show the multiple feet of plaster that are currently on the floors upstairs. We're planning on finishing the 3rd upstairs room tomorrow. We had hoped to have a dumpster the week after next, but it's going to be pushing it to get all of that plaster down in that amount of time. We did figure out a faster way to take down the ceilings, so that helps.

In adoption news, we have purchased an adapter/converter. We could have borrowed one, but we travel quite a bit internationally so we thought it wouldn't hurt just to go ahead and get one. We're also in the process of consolidating various packing lists into one. We tend to travel quite a bit lighter than most people so we are able to cross a lot of things off.

In other adoption news, I was the recipient of a rude comment. In training this week, two people were discussing the first time their children said "mama" or "dada". The woman asked if I had any kids, to which I answered no. Her reply: "Oh, you really can't understand how precious it is to hear that unless you've experienced it."

Let me tell you something: It's a lot more precious when you've been waiting for many many years and are still waiting to hear it.

I was good; I kept my mouth shut. I know she didn't mean it to be rude, but it really did hurt a lot. I've seen countless children speak their first few words. I've seen the joy on their parents' faces when they say mama and dada. And I've experienced the pain of knowing I might never hear those words for us. I am hopeful that that time will soon be coming to an end. 45 days until our appointment. I'm excited and nervous and scared all rolled into one, and a little sad too. I know it will get here and be over before we know it, and part of me really wants to cherish the last few weeks of our journey. To ponder what it will mean to be parents, and to pray ever more earnestly that we will be the kind of parents God desires.

Well, if I'm going to be able to hold a hammer tomorrow I've got to head to bed. Good night, all! Have a wonderful weekend if I don't manage to post again in the next couple of days! ;) :)

Where are we?

Mark's been busy working on the house, and I've been busy working on, well, work. :) He has been demolishing like mad, but carefully. He's not allowed to work on the walls or ceilings upstairs by himself (we're a little afraid of a plaster collapse, and that stuff is heavy).
We sat down last night to make a to-do list for Ukraine, but it really seems like there's not that much big stuff to do. We've still got to contact the banks to get cash and I need to confirm our flights, but other than that we seem to be pretty much set. Of course, we've also been preparing for this for almost 3 years. ;) We already have plans for the dogs and everything is set up (I think) at work. Most of the rest of the things we would like to do, but if they don't get done it wouldn't really impact anything (except maybe my stress level when we get home). So we're tackling a few little things here and there. We've still got to get car seats, but we're going to wait to do that until right before we leave so if there's any problem we can still take them back when we get home (Target has a very limited return policy).
In the meantime, we've got a band concert tomorrow night at 7:30pm (free! if anyone's in the area!) and we'll keep demolishing the house!

Demolition, day 1

Technically it's not really day 1, since Mark got the building permit on Thursday and had the opportunity to do a little demolition Thursday and Friday, but it's the first day we've really gone after it together. This isn't exactly at the beginning--we'd already pulled off a bunch of drywall, but here are sort of middle-of-the-day pictures:

After:

All of this is upstairs in between the back bedroom and the middle bedroom. Today we demolished the closet, removing all of the drywall and the studs that framed out the closet. We also removed all of the drywall off of the bathroom wall backed up to the middle bedroom, some firred out ductwork downstairs, and a bunch of plaster off of the fireplace in the front bedroom. It was hot, dirty, and a lot of fun. :) :) Even better, we went to Lowe's later and I got my own hammer. I think that was because I lost my grip on the old wooden one I was using and accidentally threw it about 6'. Luckily for all involved, it wasn't in Mark's direction. ;) But it did make him decide that it might be a good idea to get me one with a rubber grip. LOL

I also have my own tool bag now! Mark got a new one a few weeks ago so I get his old one. He said it might be a little too big, but I told him that's what my hips are for. God didn't give me hips for birthing, He gave me hips for holding tool bags. I'm not sure Mark thought it was as funny as I did. :) :)

Thank you for all of the helpful tips! Feel free to post more as you think of them--all of the comments get emailed to me so I will see them even if you comment on an earlier post. Last weekend we went to Goodwill and picked up a few clothing items for the kids. When we got home, Mark laid them out on the couch to remove the tags and write down what we got (we're making a list so we don't end up with too much of one size). I looked at all of the clothes and thought, I'm ready for this. :) Seeing the practical aspects of being a parent helps me realize we are ready for parenthood, or as much as we can be. Thanks for all of the prayers and words of encouragement!