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We love our castle! It's built into our basement. This is a picture of us playing in it about a week ago. We designed it, based on an idea from Better Homes and Gardens, found at www.bhg.com. Wayne framed it, we had someone come do the sheetrock for it, and I painted it. We first built it two years ago, and recently, we added the shield, coat of arms, and ivy.
And how cool is it that I added that link in my blog, all by myself, without asking Wayne for help. I used real html and everything! For anyone who doesn't know, Wayne is a fabulous web programmer, and I mostly use the internet for shopping.
As you can see from the photo, we have a king, a queen, a prince, and a knight (Benjamin prefers being a knight because of all of the fun adventures they have). We even have a dragon! And someday, we will have a little princess of our own. For now, we enjoy borrowing the little cousins and friends to be our princesses.
I should have written about this before, but who says blogs have to be in chronological order? I realize that it doesn't have anything to do with our adoption, but this blog is about surviving the whole process. And one of the things you have to do is keep life interesting.
So, last weekend, Wayne and I left the kids with their Grandma and Grandpa (thanks Mom and Dad) and went out for a date. We went to the David Archuleta concert at the E Center. We had tickets for the middle of the first row in the upper concourse. It had to be the loudest concert I have ever been to, what with all of the screaming teenage girls. Surprisingly, there were lots of families there, too. And Mom and daughter groups. And Grandma, Mom, and daughter groups.
Most of the songs he performed were from his cd. It was fun to hear, and David Archuleta looked like he was having a great time.
So, we had our house inspection! It was on April Fool's Day, and we figured that if anything went wrong, we'd just say it was a joke. The real joke was that Daniel helped me "decorate" a room for our inspection, just to be silly. For anyone who doesn't know what the inspection involves, let me enlighten you.
First, we had the interview part of our homestudy with our caseworker Lauren a couple of weeks ago. She asked us all sorts of personal questions, both as a couple, and in individual interviews. We passed. As we finished talking, she asked us when we would like to do our home visit. I was really thinking I wanted some time to prepare for it, but then I realized it would just make me more nervous to wait. So, we scheduled for the soonest day that worked for both of us.
Preparing for the visit, I cleaned everything! I even washed the bathroom walls. By the way, the Queen of Clean recommends mixing two parts water and one part liquid fabric softener in a spray bottle for removing build up on bathroom walls (hairspray, dust, etc). Check out her other great ideas at http://www.queenofclean.com/tips.php.
I was glad that I prepared thoroughly, because Lauren looked at everything! It was mostly a safety check, though. She checked out where keep our cleaning supplies and any type of medication. She wanted to see smoke detectors, a carbon monoxide detector, outlet covers, a gate on the stairs, and even window well covers. Literally, she had to look in every closet and every room. I'll admit our house wasn't spotlessly clean, and some of the closets are kind of cluttered, but our house is very kid-friendly and was approved. Mostly, it's just a relief to have it all done. Our next step is to finish our birth parent letter and picture collage, so they can give those to other caseworkers who have birth mothers that might be interested in us.
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