Fun with Olivia

So, as I said in my last post we have Olivia for the weekend. She is always lots of fun. We started our day yesterday with the all important BRAND NEW episode of The Back.yardigans. Missing it would have been a tragedy!

We played some W.ii in the afternoon and then we made some projects. Markers, glue, paper, and scissors are all a five year old needs. We now have a beautful snowflake and a butterfly card hanging on the fridge!

Then came time for cookie making. Olivia got all of the cookie cutters she wanted and lined them up ready to go. She very nicely made selections from all seasons so we ended up with everything from Christmas trees to hearts, to bunnies and much more.

I just love this picture - I was sprinkling flour on the island to roll out the cookies and MJ happend to snap a pic at the same time!

Here she is cutting out the cookies.And of course, she had to make sure the frosting was good to eat!

According to Miss Olivia all we needed was purple, pink, and white for frosting because "Those are Valentine's colors, you know."

We had lots of fun frosting and sprinkling the cookies. I'm not sure if more frosting went in Olivia's mouth or on the cookies. I know that more sprinkles ended up on the floor than on the cookies! We had to vacuum when we were done!



Here is one tray of our final creations!

Today we are off to a Winter Festival in the town where my parents live, so we'll have some good pics and stories from that!

Vacation Update

We have had a great vacation and can hardly believe it is practically over already. We ended up having to call in the troops (my dad and brother) to help us dig out of the storm - they were life savers - we just couldn't do it all alone. The snowbanks where the plow went by were up to my waist. When we finally dug out the mailbox, it was broken off the post, so we just stuck it in the snowbank!

Anyways, we had a great trip to Fox.woods - we had lots of fun, but darn those machines that just kept eating all of our money! We had a fabulous room and MJ was quite excited that we had a KING size bed (I'm kind of a bed hog)!



I was excited that you could sit on the "throne" and talk on the phone!!



It was so great to just get away for a couple of days. On the way home we stopped at IK.EA and did some shopping which was fun as well.

Yesterday we were cleaning machines and we emptied all of the furniture out of the bedrooms upstairs and cleaned the carpets, etc. Definitely a necessity when you have two dogs and two cats.

This morning I went for bloodwork to see how the meds are doing. I will continue stimming for at least another week. I'll get the results later today.

And, finally, we have our favorite five year old Olivia for the weekend, so I'm sure we'll have some fun posts of our adventures with her!

15 inches

We went to bed last night in the midst of a snowstorm with no power. We woke up this morning to this:

Um, yeah, we got a little bit of snow overnight! It is beautiful though! I am sitting here looking out the window at just a blanket of snow. The poor dogs couldn't even get out to go pee this morning.

In other news - we went to my parents for dinner last night. Alan (my brother) made ribs, beans, cole slaw and corn bread. Can we say YUMMY, YUMMY, YUMMY! The funny thing is that we though it would just be the five of us (MJ, myself, mom, dad, and Alan). Well, add another 7 people to the mix and we practically had a party. It was lots of fun and great food too!

Tomorrow we are heading to Foxwoods - a casino for the night. It should be lots of fun and hopefully we can win some money! If not, it will be a great mini getaway.

TTC/Fostering Update

Wow, lots has happened in the past couple of days - I guess when it rains, it pours - or maybe I should insert SNOW in place of rain!! We got 6 inches Wednesday night, 6 inches Thursday night, and we are slated for another 12 - 16 today. Fun times! Can't mother nature visit someone else for a change?!

On the TTC front - I had my baseline ultrasound and bloodwork on Friday. All was well, so I started my meds on Friday evening. Now I get to "shoot up" daily for the next 18 - 20 days. I really love the Doctor's office that I go to. They are so nice and want so badly for us to be pregnant - if only their well wishes were enough!

The only disappointing part of the visit to the doc was that they told me that this is cycle 8 on injectibles and that is pretty much their limit on how many cycles they will do . A lot of this is because we don't really know the long term effects of these injectible medications. So, if we are not pregnant this time, we will have to consult with the head honcho to see what her recommendation is. In terms of where we are at, the only thing that will work for us is if we can maybe get them to do a couple more cycles in their office as IVF is not an option financially.

Based on the above news that our TTC efforts may be over sooner rather than later, we are even more happy that we attended our first foster parent training yesterday. This is DEFINITELY something we are ready to pursue and we are excited about the possibility of welcoming a child into our lives who so desperately needs a home.

The training itself was LONG and BORING!!!! But at least it is 6 hours down for the 21 that we need. The next step is to take our classes - ther are 5 of them that are 3 hours each. We will do these starting March 11 and we will be done on March 25. Then, we will have a homestudy, fire inspection, be fingerprinted, get references together, etc. My guess is that we can be licensed by the end of April.

We were defnitely impressed with the agency which helps a lot! They are a private agency and they offer many supports to their foster parents. We may have to wait a little longer to get a child through this agency because the majority of the children they work with are teenagers and we want to work with kids under 10. They said it isn't impossible to get young kids, it just may take some time.

So, we are moving along with lots going on! We also get to enjoy February vacation this week - one of the fabulous perks of being a teacher! We are going to just hang at home for the week with just an overnight trip to a casino with some friends. Should be fun!

One

Cycle Day one that is! We are off and running again and right on time! We both have a renewed excitement with this try. We have fingers, toes, and everything in between crossed that this cycle will be the one. This coming week marks three years since we started trying to have our baby. I think we have definitely put in our time! I have baseline bloodwork in the morning and ultrasound in the afternoon. If both things are fine - I start my Folli.stim tomorrow night!

We also have our first foster parent training session all day on Saturday - so lots going on in the realm of making our dream of a family become reality.

Not to mention vacation starts at 3:30 tomorrow! I love being a teacher!

Redeemed!

Some of you may remember some of my past posts about the football pool at work. Well, MJ and I lost in our top standings in the last two weeks of the season! The best part of the football pool is that we all go out to eat at the end of it and the winner pays the bill and keeps the change as their prize. As part of this dinner, we did some fun football trivia type games. I was the big winner of these games! I won a New England Patriots calendar, date book, lunch box, can coozie, and bottle coozie. Unfortunately, I had to give back the princess crown! We had lots of fun though!

We are getting very excited as there are only four more days until vacation!

Perfect Dinner

Just a few pics of our scrumptious dinner we made for Valentine's Day last night. We had crab legs and we fondued shrimp and steak. We still have food left over, so we'll have the same thing tonight. It was so yummy, I'm not complaining! The dogs even had a special treat because my mom bought them hickory bones for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! May you all spend the day with the ones you love! We are going to go Pop-up Camper shopping and then enjoy a wonderful dinner of shrimp and crab legs when we get home! We decided to make a weekend out of it and we are going to have steak tips tomorrow night!

Just a few pics of the Valentine's treats we made for the staff at the two schools we work at plus MJ's class. We cranked out 130 bags of these pretzels in a few hours on Thursday night. That equals out to about 275 dipped pretzels! We weren't going to do anything, but after the week we've had with budget cuts, etc, we decided that everyone needed a pick me up! It was a success - and we are glad we did it!

Have a great Valentine's Weekend!

Called into the Principal's Office

On Monday I got the dreaded note in my mailbox- "Carrie, please see me before the end of the day." Now, I didn't think I was in trouble as it was only Monday and I couldn't be in trouble yet, right? I almost wish I had been in trouble because it may have been better than the news I received. Due to MAJOR budget cuts and the fabulous passing of a tax cap in the city where I work - my position has been cut for next year.

Now, you have to understand that this position is my dream job. When I was working on my master's degree a few years back I always said that my dream job would be to teach computer classes to kids. Well, for the past two years, that is what I have been doing. I absolutely love it. The icing on the cake with this job is also the fact that I do not have to deal with parents, correct papers, do report cards, etc - all of that "stuff" that takes up all of your free time when you are a classroom teacher.

The good news in all of this is that even though my position was cut, I have enough senority in the district (10 years) that I still have a job. But that job will be back in the classroom. They won't be able to tell me what grade or where (we have 7 elementary schools) until probably the end of June. I hate the fact that I will be in limbo for the next few months. If I had known this might happen, I would have never left the classroom 2 years ago.....

Deep down, I am truly happy that I still have a job as that is a better situation to be in than the first and second year teachers who will lose their jobs totally. But it still sucks ......big time.

February Quilt Blocks

We went yesterday to get our new quilt square kits for February. Because we are both big dorks, we decided to be over-achievers and do them today. Mind you, they don't have to be done until the first weekend in March. There were a lot more triangles to sew together this time, so they took a bit longer. We are pleased with the outcome though!

Here are the two different fabric choices for this month:

Here are the little triangles all cut up and ready to be put together.

And here are the finished products - the first two are mine, and the last one is MJ's!

Naughty Sadie

So, we owe another post to the furry friends. You see, our golden Sadie can be very naughty. Often she will scratch incessantly at the floor. She also has a thing for all things paper. Paper towels, tissues, napkins, regular paper, etc. On Friday night she was in one of her moods again and we were going crazy. MJ just gave her a hunk of paper left over from correcting papers and this is what she did with it. The mess was fun to clean up, but it kept her busy for quite a while!

Here is another cute one of the little boys laying together the other night - you don't see this happen very often.

Page Kit of the Month

Today we go to our Quilt Block and Page Kit of the Month Clubs. Here are our layouts for the January Kit. We had a bit of trouble because the printed paper was for sledding and ice skating. We don't have any pictures for that, so we just cut out some of the words on the page to use in our layouts. We weren't real thrilled with the outcome, but at least we got four pages done for the 2009 book!

Other than the Kit of the Month Club and a few errands, not much else going on. Have a great weekend everyone!

"I Love Jesus..... But I Drink A Little"

For those of you who have never seen this it is HILARIOUS.... I saw it when it originially aired on Ellen, but every time I see it again, I laugh just as hard as I did the first time. It is a bit long, but SO FUNNY! Enjoy!

HB436

HB436 - that stands for House Bill 436 relative to civil marriage and civil unions. This bill will be in legislative session today at the NH State House. This bill is proposing that gay marriage be legal in NH beginning January 1, 2010. How exciting would that be?

Let's hope that things go smoothly today when the bill is in committee. I know it still has a long road to travel before it can become law, but I will remain hopeful that I can marry my love someday soon!

***the above is a pic of our rings from our Civil Union***

Happy Birthday, Laura!

Today's post is for Laura - today is her birthday. She is one of our best friends and Mama to Miss Olivia. Happy Birthday, Laura! Enjoy your day!

***the above pic is from her 40th a few years back****

Another Update..

Some of you have been asking if we are putting TTC on the back burner and the answer is NO! We will be trying again in a couple of weeks. If that doesn't work, we have April and June as well. At that point, I think we are done TTC. It will be 12 tries, and more than 3 years. We don't have coverage for IVF, nor do we have the finances to pay for it ourselves. We are definitely still holding on to that glimmer of hope that we will be able to have a child of our own.

In foster parenting news, I talked with a super nice lady from the agency last night and got lots of information. We will definitely be attending the training on the 21st and we can have all of our other training modules done in March - we just have to call and sign up.

The only bit of bad news (if you want to call it that) is that this agency pretty much only deals with kids from grade 5 and up. We were really hoping for YOUNGER children. The benefit of this agency is that the kids they have are all pretty much looking for permanent homes. If we went through DCYF - those kids usually come to stay for a while and then go back to their families. So, we have alot of decisions to make. This agency said that it is not impossible to get younger children, we would probably just have to wait.

So, we have decided that we really want to stick with this agency as it is a private agency VS. working with DCYF which is state funded. Nothing against DCYF, but working as teachers, we know how underfunded, understaffed, etc state agencies are. Since we feel strongly that we would like to stay with this agency, we are going to let the chips fall as they may and really work with them to find what will fit best for our family in terms of placement of a child.

That's the update from here!

We've Started the Process

We received our packet in the mail for Foster Parenting this weekend. It was very exciting! The best part is that the agency we want to work with "values diversity in all areas including gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation." I am so excited about that! It is great to be able to work with an agency that will value us for who we are and not judge us because of our lifestyle!

So, we dropped our initial Interest Survey in the mail today and have sent an email to sign up for the first two modules of training on February 21. The ball is rolling, and we are excited about it! Keep your fingers crossed that things go smoothly for us throughout the process.

From the research we have done so far, we need to do the following:

1. Background/Fingerprint check
2. Doctor's Statement saying we are physically able to care for a child
3. Application
4. Home Study
5. Fire/Safety inspection of home
6. 21 - 24 hours of training to get licensed

We'll keep you posted.

The Sleepover Part 2

We finished the big sleepover by making cookies this morning. We found a cute recipe for making domino cookies. They were so easy - all you do is roll out cookie dough and cut it into rectangles. Then use chocolate chips for the numbers. Olivia had lots of fun doing it!

After the cookie making, we made little Valentine treats for Olivia to give to her moms. They came out really cute!

We had lots and lots of fun with her this weekend. Can't wait until next time!