First Family Red Dot/Adventure Road Trip

On May 11th, my cousin Alex, who I haven't seen probably since our wedding in 1999, got married. I took Saturday and Sunday off to be able to make the trip, because I haven't seen that part of my mom's family in years - probably since my wedding. Facebook is wonder for being able to stay in touch and see their families grow, but they hadn't yet met our kids either. Estherville is 3 hours away, but the next day, Mother's Day, we  took 9 hours to get home. We stopped off at small towns, basically our first Red Dot adventure with the kids.

After breakfast at Bud's Cafe with my mom, dad, Aunt Lisa and Aunt Val....

We are off from Estherville!

We stopped in Mallard to see this cool semi

 and to take a picture with his great big duck.

Next we stopped in Pocahontas to see the statue - My sister Tiffany was born here so it was extra cool.

When I was very young, we used to live in Laurens - I haven't been back in lots of years.

Our house in Laurens used to be where these pine trees are on Olive St.

We stopped in Fort Dodge to see Brad's Grandma Dellit so she could meet the kids for the first time.

Outside Grandma Dellit's the kids picked flowers for me for Mother's Day.

We stopped in Fort Dodge at the Maid Rite for dinner.

We stopped in Grundy to pick up the dogs. Grandpa Ron showed Mo how he could put his hand in the water in the street and then make handprints. I think he could have done this for hours.

Singing. Alot. How we roll. Any time we are in the car.

Adoption Day

Is it even possible that it's been 3 months exactly, since adoption day? My last post was about the home stretch of our wait, today it's been 3 months since the adoption. How does that happen? All of those years of waiting and now we are looking in the rear view mirror at that big day. Here's a bit of catch up about Dellitville.

I had to explain to the kids at some point why we were going to court, because as far as they  have ever known, they were always staying with us. So telling them we had to go "make it official" was a bit weird. I explained it like when Mommy and Daddy got married. We got married at a church in front of our friends and we were married, but we had to sign and send in paperwork. I told them adoption was kind of the same thing. We are a forever family, but we had to go to see the judge and tell him for sure that we want to be together forever. Knya once asked me "Will he tell you to 'sign here'"? She kills me - I told her that I was pretty sure he would make us sign some paperwork but the their names would be changed. {About a week before we found out the kids would be staying for sure, she randomly told me she thought her old last name was boring and that she wanted to change it - I told her we could talk about it - It was almost that she could sense everything that was happening right before it happened.}

Leading up to the day, Knya kept telling me that she was going to break dance for the judge because she was so happy. I asked both she and Mo what they were going to tell the judge when we got there and they said "We want to be a forever family!!". I have video of the days leading up - It's too cute - I will post them on my Shutterfly picture/video site that I am creating. {The link will be on the left side bar when I get it done}.

Adoption Day happened on February 28, 2013 - It was a Thursday and was a fantastic day that I couldn't have planned any better. Knya wore a dress and shoes that she picked out, especially for the big day. She was so excited, and couldn't wait to change her name. I picked out Mo's outfit for him and boy did he look handsome. We got up early , got everyone ready and in some bizarre twist of the universe, all 4 of us were ready to go, ahead of time.  We got to the courthouse early so we could meet our village who was coming to cheer us on. We had to move to a bigger courtroom because we had so many people and our friend Beth took pictures. I knew I wanted to capture pictures, but wanted to focus on the moments so I asked if she would take the pictures instead. She did an amazing job.

We signed {yet more} paperwork when we got to the courthouse and then went in to sit at the tables. Our village sat in audience and we waited for the judge. The kids were on our laps and we turned around to talk to everyone while we waited. Knya, who is usually really outgoing in front of people she knows, clammed up and just smiled sweetly, but didn't say much. Mo on the other hand, hammed it up. He was talking about his car, his outfit, everything. At one point, he randomly said "Everyone in here say 'Forever Family!'". It was the cutest thing. Ever.

The judge came out and Mo asked "Are you the judge?" The judge told him yes and then told Mo he liked his sweater vest. He told the judge that he had just gotten it. The judge asked us some questions and then had to swear us in for the official stuff. He asked Brad and I to raise our right hands. We did. And so did Mo. The judge noted for the record that all 3 of us had been sworn in. The funniest part of the whole thing was that the court reporter had to document everything he was saying. I really need to get a copy of that transcript.

When we were done, we did pictures with everyone in the courtroom. We got the whole village in one picture. Several people had to go back to work, but we went to lunch with my parents, grandparents, Brad's dad and Kelly and Amanda.  Then we headed home.

We pulled Knya out of school for the whole day and Brad had taken the whole day off, so we were left to our devices. There was a lot of snow on the ground - We had a blizzard a couple of days before - so we decided to go sledding - just the 4 of us. And it was awesome. The perfect day.

Life Changing Day

As you may have read on Facebook, we got our foster care license in the mail on Friday, November 5th. We also received our approval to adopt out of foster care. Yes, when I opened the envelope and saw these two pieces of paper, I cried. Finally, a route to parenthood that might actually succeed. A truly life changing day.

This means we are now "dually licensed" and can be utilized as a "concurrent" home. In Iowa the law is that DHS must find a permanent home for children 3 & under in 12 months and if about 18-24 months for children 4 and older. We could be selected to be a foster home for kids that need a foster home, but whose workers are asking for a "concurrent" home. That means that the foster parents may be interested in adopting the kids if they are not able to be reunified with their families. Remember that reunification is always the goal. It just depends on the adults in the situation and if they can get their situations on track.

So we patiently wait for the call of duty...I swear, if there was a waiting club out there somewhere, I could be it's president it in a heartbeat.

We have had so many friends and family offer to help, send clothes, bring clothes, bring supplies, offer daycare referrals, offer advice....It's been wonderful and feels like this is what was meant to be.

A quick update on the other front - We were not able to do IUI this month because my body decided to surprise us and I was out of town for the day. When we can't do the IUI, there is always the old fashioned way. :) If this round doesn't work, we have 3 months remaining we can be on the medication. So again....we wait.

Dellit Summer Update

Every day I want to blog. I just have been too lazy. You know that I always have somethingto say about everything. In my old blog, I used to be good about updating everything. I guess Facebook has taken the place of some of that, but there are always lots of things going on that I don’t talk about there.

Here’s some things that have been going on (in no particular order):

We raised $540 for the Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk. Last year when my Grandpa was so sick, we call the AA and they sent us information that helped lead us to a neurologist that concluded that Grandpa was over medicated.  This is how we were able to restore his health and get him to come home.

Grandma’s birthday was at the beginning of September. Gpa and Gma visited Mom and Dad while they were camping in Dike. We drove over and had dinner & dessert with them. Brad and I also went on a bike ride around the lake.

At the end of August, we went to LeGrand to run a 5k.  Jess and Curt and the kids hung out at Curt’s parents house which was right on the route. The boys high fived us as we went by!  After the race, we hung out with them for a while and then went to the parade. We had a great time grabbing candy with the boys.

In July, Mom, Dad, Brad and I went to Newton to the US Cellular 250. It’s a fantastic facility and we were really impressed. We got to see Michael Annett race, a Des Moines native. He did really well and it was a great race. We tailgated before the race at the UNI tent and afterwards while the traffic died down. Brad cooked burgers on his toolbox grill. He’s so awesome. 

In July we also were a host house for RAGBRAI as they traveled through Waterloo. My friend, Tom has a bike team and we hosted 15 people from the team and had a great time! Brad grilled a huge dinner which the team loved, and in the morning it rained until noon, so we made breakfast, too. It was great to get use our house for hosting so many great people!

Here are some pictures of our cutie pie “kids”:

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Thursday

Dad got tickets to a small wine festival in Grundy last night (by the way, I still owe you for those!). We drove over quick after work. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Hunter, Ian, Brad and I headed to the farmer's market and the wine festival. We tasted a few wines and bought a couple of bottles...then we headed to Pizza Hut for dinner.

It was fun to hang out with Hunter and Ian for dinner...they crack me up. I was thinking the whole time they were being silly, I wish I could remember all the funny things they are saying so I could blog them for Jessica like Becky does with her kids. Unfortunately, after work, my brain is mush!

On the way home from Grundy, we stopped to see my grandpa in Gladbrook for a bit. I called him earlier in the day to let him know we were coming, but it would be late. That too was cute. When we got there he was sitting up at the front waiting for us. He told the nurses we were coming to visit him and made sure that they didn't close at 8pm because we were supposed to be there around 730 and he wanted to make sure we could get in. He was so excited to see us and was in such good spirits. (by the way, Melissa, when you read this he LOVED your father's day card). He moved rooms yesterday, to be with a roommate who isn't mobile in the night. The nurses always have to check on his roomie so it wakes him up. And they have gotten to know how much he loves the outdoors, so they put his bed by the window. They got him a better mattress to try and help him sleep better. They up'd his pain meds a bit because his ribs were really hurting, but while we were there, he said he didn't have any pain....I think that's what was helping his his spirit.

He was excited to see us, because he knows my work schedule is going to be a little crazy for a while, so he wasn't really expecting us for a bit. We are going back over on Sunday, since we will be in Virginia next week. Here's to hoping his spirits are just as good. :)

Family Time....our way

Recently, my cousins Melissa and Todd, Aunt Sue, and Uncle Rod were in town....we blew off some stress with some of our crazy family activities!


Brenda posing between rolling the pigs.....yes, pigs....


Melissa & Brenda making money airplanes to throw at my Mom when she wouldn't take money for pizza.


Hunter wearing the paper hat

Hunter wanted to take pictures with my camera...here's a fabulous picture of a plant.

Here's another Hunter picture...this one, a great tow truck shot

Melissa rolling the pigs.

Jessica and Ian hamming it up.

Me and Hunter hamming it up.

Brad...doing something crazy for Hunter

Ian, being Ian