Wednesday Update

The Adoption: I worked all day today on updating the dossier. It's nearly finished. Hubby has to do an update of our financial statement since the first of the year brought an increase in salary (yay!) and our home situation is all different. Still waiting on the letter from the owners of the house we're renting. Then we'll be up to date on paperwork and ready to send to Austin for apostilles.

The House: Two days of no work :o(. Yesterday was thunderstorms and tornado watches so nothing was done. Today was beautiful, clear and high near 60*. The contractor had a delay in the delivery of the solar decking sheets for the roof. But when hubby drove by the house around 5 p.m. tonight, it had been delivered! So hopefully they'll get started tomorrow on putting the lid on our house!

Here are the latest updates in pictures.

Monday, January 7 - They worked on the eaves and corrected a misplaced window on the front porch. When I posted those last pictures, I realized we weren't going to have room for our shutters and that is because they had placed a window incorrectly in the family room. They got that corrected and a few other odds and ends that aren't outwardly noticeable.

Lots of Progress on the House & a Little Progress on the Adoption

THE HOUSE: It now has it's roof frame and is ready for the decking next week! We just got finished sweeping and cleaning the house and the yard area where the workers just drop their cups, cans and bottles any and everywhere. I'm sure the neighbors will be happy the trash won't be blowing into their yards! It looks great now, so clean! It was the first time I cleaned my new house :O) I wish there were a way to post the smell of the wood online, I love that smell!

Here is D "sitting on the toilet" in her new bathroom. Not much privacy from the neighbors at this point!

December 31 - they started enclosing the framework with solid wood!

January 2 - More enclosure!

January 3 - They started putting a bunch of bracing in to prepare for the roofing. They also began doing the plastic insulating wrap around the house. They've got the back side of the house wrapped but for some reason they haven't finished.

January 4 - they began building the roof framework!

January 5 - yes they worked on Saturday! They completed the roof frame-work and now it's ready for the decking to be added hopefully next week! I didn't get a picture of it completed, I'll have to get that later.

THE ADOPTION: I spoke with our casemanager and they are scheduling our home study update and we should hear next week when that will be. I finally dug out all our last dossier to see what we really need to get done. This will be dossier number four. Our I-171H fingerprints expire today. Our I-171H is good till September, though, so hopefully to goodness we'll have a child by THEN!

Catching up and adding pictures

Well, it's official - I will not be having any internet at home until we move into our new house. The mobile home was "wired by owner" and the phone connection is not compatible for even dial up. I tried for over 35 minutes yesterday to just get ON the internet, much less do anything.

So, today I am at hubby's office, filling in for the receptionist while the staff has their Christmas luncheon. So, since I have no duties except to answer the phone and say hello, I'll update my blog.

I went ahead and brought my camera card too, so I'll just do my pix from here.

We have a foundation, but it must sit and cure for 5-7 days, so there has been nothing else done to the new house since last Friday. I've been hoping they'll get started this Thursday with the framing. It will be so exciting to see the walls finally going up!

Still nothing new on the adoption front. We've got to get our home-study update done in the near future. Also, our fingerprints expire in January, so we'll have to see about having those done again too. I haven't gotten to check blogs, or FRUA in ages. So I feel so out of the loop.

Ok, I'll add some pix of our latest house adventures!

November 6 - The culvert was added so trucks could get onto the property


November 19 - We were so excited when after 2 weeks of NOTHING happening, we saw the port-a-potty had been delivered!!! This meant things were about to begin. See the little white paper posted on the pole? That is what held us up for two weeks - the permit!


November 27 -Seeing these forms go up was one of the most exciting things we had experienced up to that point! We were just ecstatic to finally see the outline of our new home!



December 3 - And the then plumber came and laid the foundation pipes!
It is great to look and think, "ok, there's my corner tub, the potty, the sink,
the dishwasher etc, etc."

December 5 - The Electrician came to do the initial foundation wiring!

December 6 - The concrete crew came out and prepared the slab for pouring the foundation! I thought it was interesting how they dug a deeper area for our fireplace (it'll be in the corner of the family room)


December 7 - On the way to school, D and hubby stopped by "the land" and saw the concrete crew had already been hard at work for a while. Our foundation was being poured!


A crew of 12 men worked quickly and by 10:00 our foundation was poured. The rest of the day they trowled, smoothed and leveled it.


And that brings us to today where we just wait for it to cure. It's been raining a bit every night, but that shouldn't hold it up from curing. It looks so small right now, just looking at the cement slab, but everyone warned us that it would!

Busy Day

Busier
Originally uploaded by Merodema

Wow, this has been a busy day.

It didn't really start out that way, but definitely ended up being one.

I finally got that adoption paperwork going.

It was hard to get with it, I don't really understand why. Just emotional, I guess. I do know that when I went to the file box to get Viktoria's 1st dossier out I nearly cried. See, we ended up doing 3 full dossiers for Viktoria. I had printed out cute little covers with a different baby doll on each and the title "Viktoria's 1st Dossier; 2nd Dossier, etc." Just knowing we did all this for a child that will never be ours is just hard. It's hard to turn my thoughts to a new unknown child. But I got it started. I just have one more document to do before sending it to Austin, but I'm waiting to hear back from our casemanager on how to go about it with our moving and all.

Another bummer to realize was that when we did this stage of the paperwork for Viktoria's adoption, it was 6 September, 2005. Over two years ago. It makes my stomach hurt all over again just to write that.

After working all morning on that, I went to the church to finalize the women's retreat rooming list. We've ended up with 73 ladies going. I think it will be really fun. The planning is just killer. Even with delegating responsibilities to others, I still end up carrying out a lot of the demands. Maybe that means I'm not a very good delegator, so therefore shouldn't chair such big events in the future??

We worked till it was time to pick D up from school then back I went (with D) to Hubby's office at the church to finish up the adoption paperwork and print it out (our printer is dead at home.)

We came home at 4:30 and I started dinner while D played a bit. We ate dinner, did homework (spelling words), got D's bath done, hair dried and up in curlers then off to bed.

About 9-ish the tree guys called to say they'll be at "the Land" early in the morning to cut the trees! Yay, it begins!! Only I wanted to take one more "before" picture. Oh well.

By the way, Hubby has a humongo case of poison ivy from "the Land." Had I mentioned that? He finally went to the doctor yesterday.

Ok, it's past my bedtime and tomorrow is bound to be another busy day.

So much for the slow, meandering country life, huh??

p.s. Has anyone noticed my ongoing different "roads" on each post? Or am I wasting my time on that??