On Wednesday afternoon we got a voicemail from Nicole.  She said she found our profile on parentprofiles.com and wanted to talk to us.  We called back on Wednesday evening and talked for an hour and a half.  We talked about what she wanted for the baby and answered a thorough list of questions.  It was evident that she knew what she wanted for the baby and what she was looking for in adoptive parents.  Near the end of the conversation she told us that she had a doctors appointment the next day and asked if we’d be interested to know how the appointment went.

The next day she called back to report on the doctor’s appointment.  I answered the phone – Kate was at work.  Nicole said the doctor visit went well and she wanted to talk to us about it, so I told her we’d give her a call when Kate came home from work.

We called back later in the day and I’ll never forget the words we heard: “I choose you.”  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – someone was telling us that they had chosen us to adopt their child.  The words “thank you” don’t suffice – in fact, there are no words that suffice.  We were shocked and unsure how to react.  On the inside we were screaming, jumping up and down, and doing backflips out of excitement (actually there were no backflips – I never took gymnastics) – on the outside we were trying to stay calm and collected while still portraying our thankfulness for such an incredible gift.  I wanted so bad to reach through the phone and give her a big fat giant hug – even though I’d known her for less than 24 hours and never seen her in person. We said thank you and tried our best to show our gratitude and appreciation, but we quickly realized how difficult it is to portray the emotions associated with that type of news over the phone.

At any rate, Katie and I finally calmed down after our voices gave out and our legs couldn’t handle any more backflips.

We talked with Nicole over the next couple of days and she told us that she’d like to meet us before the baby was born.  She was scheduled to have an ultrasound the following week and invited us to fly out for the visit.  We were ecstatic – super excited, but still in complete disbelief that this was actually happening.

So we booked our flights.

What an amazing experience – we went to an ultrasound with her.  We felt (and saw) the baby kick.  We spent three days getting to know her and meeting her family.  If I could describe her in just a few words I would say she is the nicest, most down-to-earth person you could ever hope to meet.  And her family is the same.  We had dinner with her family three times.  Two of those times included home cooked meals that would knock your socks off – a roast that melted in my mouth and the best chicken and dumplings I’ve ever tasted.  Actually the only chicken and dumplings I’ve ever tasted – but it was incredible.

It’s a boy.  And he’s due the first part of April.  And he already has a fine collection of shirts with guitars on them

He'll probably wear this one most days of the week.

This will be his favorite t shirt.

...and when it's time for bed he'll be wearing this.

We began our anniversary celebration festivities by going to see a matinee of the movie ‘Hugo’. It was the first time we have ever had a private showing in a popular theater. In fact, they didn’t even play the before-movie ads or ask us to turn our cell phones off. Right before the movie started, Justin had to make a trip to the little boy’s room and left me alone in the dark, empty theater. I was kind of creeped out being alone in there to start with, then to make matters worse he came back in through a secret door on the opposite side from where he exited. I was relieved it was him and not the grim reaper with a scythe ready to finish me off. The best parts of the movie were when Justin stood up and danced to the music and then gave a standing ovation when it was all over. We made it out alive and enjoyed the movie.

Next we headed up to the Zermatt Resort in Midway. We hauled our stuff to our room, then headed out for dinner at Tarahumara which included tortilla chips with approximately 136 different salsas to try at their salsa bar. Justin was in heaven. To finish the meal off right, we had their churros that are covered in about 3 inches of cinnamon sugar and dunked in caramel sauce. We then made our way to Soldier Hollow for a nighttime tubing session. We got lucky and there were only about 15 other people tubing with us, so we never had to wait in line. We cruised down the tubing hill, hurried back to the pulley, and went up for another ride.

When we were done tubing, we thought it would be fun to go sit in the hot tub back at the hotel. We put on our swimsuits and got there to be greeted by the Bulldog Wrestling Team. They were screaming, yelling, doing cannonballs, and taking up every chair in the whole place. We considered going to the outside hot tub but when we stepped outside and the water droplets on our feet frozen instantaneously, we decided we better to stay inside so as to not catch a cold. We waited for the bulldogs to get tired and head to bed, but we tired before they did and ultimately headed to bed while they enjoyed keeping everyone else in the hotel awake.

The kicker in all of this is that when I was planning our weekend away, I picked Midway because there would most certainly be loads of snow there the first week of January, right? When we arrived Friday night, the only snow to be found was the man-made snow on the tubing hill. We did, however, wake up Saturday morning to no more than an inch of fresh snow on the ground. About an hour after we woke up, I got a text from my mom with a picture of no less than six inches of snow in her backyard! Strange how that works – the one night of a nearly snow-less winter that I choose to go the mountains, it snows six times as much at my house in the valley as it did in the mountains that are said to have ‘The Greatest Snow on Earth’.

We ate breakfast at the Zermatt’s bakery where they have delicious fresh European pastries that were well worth the hefty price we paid for them. Then we drove back to Bountiful to pick up our dog who had spent the night with my parents.

The best part of the weekend was when we arrived at my parent’s to get Charlie and he got to romp in the snow for the first time since last year. I’lI conclude this blog post with two pictures, the first of Charlie in the snow and the second of Charlie when we finally coaxed him into leaving the snow to say hello to us.

Snowball Charlie

The Full Effect of Snow on Charlie's Fur

This week we will celebrate our sixth anniversary!  Each year we take turns planning the activities – last year was my turn, so this year it’s up to Kate.

I’m excited to see what she has planned.  I’m also excited to see what I decide to give her for a gift.  According to tradition, the appropriate gift for a sixth wedding anniversary is iron.  Not “an iron”, just “iron.”  The modern traditional gift is a wooden object.  It looks like I should probably get Kate a shovel with a wooden handle for a gift – that should satisfy both the traditional and modern traditional requirements of wood and iron. 

Because Kate is in charge, I’m not sure what we’ll be doing. I do know, however, what we will not be doing:

Publicly professing our love to each other via Facebook while referring to each other as “babe” and writing up sappy blurbs with lots of exclamation points bragging to the world about how this has been the best six years of our lives.  The truth is it has been the best six years of our lives and we love each other dearly – so much so, in fact, that we tell each other in person.  Call us old fashioned, but we actually skip right over the Facebook wall and tell each other face to face.

Let’s take a quick poll – and be honest: raise your hand if you like to read posts on Facebook that say things like “Happy Anniversary Babe!!!!!! You’re the best wife EVER!!!!!”

See?  Not a single hand went up.  Nobody likes to read that stuff.  Nobody cares what sort of nicknames people have for each other – babe, snookems, whatever.

I also instantly disagree whenever I read on Facebook that someone has the “best husband ever” – because I am the best husband ever.

I think a more appropriate Facebook post might be something like “Celebrating our 6th anniversary!” or something to that effect.

One last thing while I’m on the topic of Facebook – I’m not going to feed your farm animals and I will not be a part of your mafia – at least not on Facebook.  However, both of those things do sound exciting and I would be more than happy to offer my services for either those adventures in the real world if you really need the help.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to our anniversary this week – let’s keep our fingers crossed that the shovel goes over well.  If any of you have any other gift ideas that involve iron and wood let me know in the comments.

Mr. Home Study made a visit to our house at the beginning of August to check and make sure that we didn’t have any crazy dangerous stuff going on. He checked behind every single door to make sure we weren’t hiding anything, all while taking tedious notes on his iPhone. He didn’t tell us what he was typing, but I think he was probably making notes of important things such as where we keep our freshly baked cookies and ice cold milk – essential pieces of information for future visits. He also warned us that if our food storage suddenly disappears in an emergency, his house is the first place we should look. Actually, he didn’t say that, but that is the first thought that came into my head when he talked about the ‘list’ he keeps as he visits various families’ crawl spaces.

The second weekend in August we spent all day Friday and Saturday at the Families Supporting Adoption National Conference. We attended many classes on various subjects and were able to learn and join with others who share our situation of building their families through adoption. Anyone involved with adoption was welcome to attend – classes were held for adoptive couples/families and birthparents/families alike. It was a great opportunity to learn more about adoption and the feelings of everyone involved in it.

That same weekend we assembled our ten hard copies of our profile to be given to prospective birth mothers. This involved a lot of cutting, taping, assembling, and sheet protector stuffing.

After having craft night and getting the hard copies of our profile books put together, the last requirement was to attend one last education meeting.  So, we woke up early Saturday morning (at 4:30 AM) and left our family vacation in Bear Lake to make the drive back to the LDS Family Services office to attend the meeting that would fulfill our last education requirement. We made it with time to spare and enjoyed a delicious breakfast which included Skittles, Starbursts, M&Ms, and Goldfish crackers for dessert. That is my kind of breakfast! We then enjoyed four more hours of classes and instruction.

We returned to Bear Lake later that afternoon and spent five more days with the family – hiking, jumping off rope swings into sub-zero degree waters, lounging at the beach, (pretending to) play tennis, and attempting (mostly unsuccessfully) to fly a kite that I am convinced has some sort of fear of heights.

Wednesday August 24^th we got the phone call that we have officially been approved to adopt and that our profile was put up on the itsaboutlove.org website. You can visit our profile here (Profile ID 26432924). Now the hard part – the waiting – begins! Thank you to all of our wonderful friends who have blogged about us and who have posted our link on your facebook walls to help get the word out. We appreciate you more than you know!

Yum! Sort of.

First of all, a big thanks to those of you who ordered scrap books from us on our last post.  We got 2 orders – well, 1 order, for 2 books.

After thinking it over, I realized why we only had 1 order: we were selling them for too cheap.  So, effective immediately scrap book prices have doubled.  They’re now $70 a pop.  Congratulations to those of you who purchased scrapbooks at the discounted rate from our last post and the rest of you dudes are going to have to shell out 70 big ones per book.

Moving along, this week we hung out with Sara (Mrs. Caseworker) for a while and talked about a few things.  A piece of advice for those of you who can make your own children – you may want to consider adopting just so you can hang out with Mrs. Caseworker, she’s pretty awesome.

So far she has given us (me) some valuable advice:

Learn to make something other than a PB and J.

As you may or may not know, each potential birth parent that comes into the adoption agency typically receives a letter from an adoptive couple to help the birth parent get to know the adoptive couple.  As a part of our letter, Katie was bragging about my cooking skills and wrote that on the days she works I wake up early to make a PB and J for her to take for lunch.  Now, not only is Mrs. Caseworker awesome, she is smart – when reviewing our letter, she asked us if a PB and J really is Kate’s favorite thing to take for lunch or if that’s the only thing I know how to make.  I know you’re all probably wondering the same thing, so I thought I’d address it here.

The truth is, it’s not her favorite. It’s nobody’s favorite.  Not even little kids who get to eat them as snacks during church.  But, at the crack of dawn when I can barely open my eyes that’s about the best anyone’s going to get out of me.

Now, I’m no Bobby Flay, but I have invested a considerable amount of time watching Alton Brown, Guy Fieri, and other Food Network All-Stars prepare some pretty incredible dishes (most of which do not include PB or J as the principle ingredients).  With that, a PB and J is not the only thing I know how to make.  It is, however, the only thing I know how to make at 6am.

If any of you have suggestions as to what I should make for Kate’s next lunch, you can leave them in the comments.  I’ll give it a shot and let y’all know how it goes.

Also, this week we met with Mr. Homestudy for our one-on-one interviews. His real name is Paul, and he’s awesome, but we’ll call him Mr. Homestudy because his main job is to 1) visit our home to make sure that we don’t have loaded guns and dangerous chemicals laying around all over the floor of our house and 2) put together a report that says we’ve got a nice home in a nice neighborhood and we’re a nice little couple that would make great parents.

Mr. Homestudy owned one of the top 100 sites on the internet at one point in time. He sold it, made loads of money, and now he is a licensed therapist or counselor or something to that effect. Super cool guy – sort of makes me wish I needed some counseling or something just so I could go hang out with him.

At any rate, Mr. Homestudy pulled us into his office one at a time to make sure that Katie and I are not trying to Jedi-Mind-Trick each other into adopting. He also asked us if we loved each other, about our finances, and he told me that the number of people deciding to place their baby for adoption dropped in the 90′s when Jennifer Aniston decided to keep her baby on the show Friends. I’m not kidding – turns out people in the real world thought that Friends was like real life.

As a side note, our official caseworker has been assigned to us. Mrs. Caseworker will help us put together a letter to the birthparents with a collage or scrapbook (or something along those lines) that will make us look good. For those of you who think we are awesome, we will be selling signed copies of our scrapbook for $35 each – just kidding.

And to top it all off, Kate made this awesome video:

Q. Can you choose what kind of baby you want?

Yes. You can choose the color, age, gender, ethnicity, and everything else.  Remember though, we’re infertile – not picky.

Q. What kinds of questions do they ask you when you apply?

The questions are pretty detailed – here are a few examples:

1. Describe in detail the facial features of your long lost second cousin Leroy.  List every job he’s ever had.  Note whether he prefer boxers or briefs, his color preferences, and whether or not he ever went to the principles office in the third grade.
2. List all medications prescribed to your great aunt Norma. Did she pinch your cheeks when you were young?  How did that make you feel?  Describe her personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses.  Does she have a double chin?  Note the number of wrinkles in her neck.

Q. Do you have to do a home study?

Yes.  After answering the questions above and passing with a “C” or better, a case worker will come to our house to:

1. Make sure all cabinets are child proof and that all electrical outlets have little plastic cover thingies on them.
2. Check the floors to make sure we don’t have loaded guns laying around all over the place.
3. Inspect the garage for chemicals and bomb-making materials.
4. Make sure that a) we have a fire extinguisher, and b) the said extinguisher has been properly inspected by the Fire Marshall within the last 30 days.

In all seriousness, the process is lengthy and the questions are detailed.  But, I’m glad.  After all, if I was responsible for placing a child in a home, I’d probably want to know that stuff too.

As a side note, here's an awesome blanket and burp cloth set that Katie made last year sometime.

After passing the quiz, he went on to explain to us how the ‘applying for adoption’ process works. Justin had his phone handy for notes and it’s a good thing, because if he didn’t, we would be all sorts of confused.

While there we filled out papers for our background check, paid our application fee, and got a stack of papers for employment verification, physicals and infertility reports to be filled out by our doctors.

Here is a very abbreviated list of what needs to happen before we are approved for adoption:

• Physicals for J & K
• Employment verification for J & K
• Provide a certified copies of birth certificates for J & K
• Provide a certified copy of our marriage license
• Provide a copy of our sealing certificate
• Have our doctors fill out an Infertility Report
• Home study questionnaires
• Home study individual interviews
• Prepare home for home study (medications and cleaning chemicals locked up, obtain a fire extinguisher, move any garage chemicals out of children’s reach, make sure all smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detectors are working, etc.)
• Five references need to vouch for us that we want kids badly and would be good parents
• In-home visit to complete home study
• Attend Families Supporting Adoption National Conference August 12-13
• Follow-up meeting to FSA Conference
• Hopefully get final agency approval and be eligible to adopt!

We came home, listed out everything we need to get done and our deadline for each item, and figure that if everything goes as planned we should be approved sometime in mid to late August!

We are even more excited to adopt after finding out everything that needs to be done, realizing that before too many more months go by we could actually have a mini Gough to call our own. We can’t wait!

Shoes we've collected over the past five years or so... don't worry, we have a match for each one

1. Our puppy Charlie will finally be able to play with someone his own size.
2. I’ll have an excuse to buy one of those baby-carrier-backpack things that I think are so neat.
   

   Look at how happy that boy is - it's because he gets to ride in such a sweet backpack.

3. Baby shoes? Totally awesome.  You know we’ll be buying those things like crazy.
   

   If it's a girl she'll get a pair of these.

   

   If it's a boy he'll be sporting blue.

4. Sparklers on the 4th of July.  And snaps.  And those little black snakes (if it’s a boy).
5. Camping. Will. Be. Awesome.
6. I’m getting tired of making a snowman in the front yard by myself every year.
7. Skiing lessons?  Can’t wait to get those on video.
8. Can you picture that little J or little K reeling in his/her first fish?  Yep.  That’s going on YouTube for sure.
9. Think of all the delicious snacks that are required to raise a child: Fruit snacks? Pink and white animal cookies? Yum.

Absolutely can't wait to start stocking these in our cupboards.

Anything I’m missing here?  Let me know in the comments.

Lastly, I have not run this list by Katie so these things may or may not actually happen – but I hope they do.

Apparently LDS Family Services reviews their applications on Wednesdays – so, next Wednesday they will review our application and assign a case worker to us.  Fingers crossed that they find us fit to be parents.