In case you didn't know...

Apparently God wants McCain to win this election and His reputation is on the line, at least according to one Rev. Arnold Conrad. Check it out. Wow! I realize there are extremists on both sides of this election. I think it's unfortunate that Christians get so caught up in this thing to the point that they make statements like Rev. Conrad just did. I'm not going to expand anymore on his statements other than to say I strongly disagree with him and think it is embarrassing to hear another Christian make statements like this.

A note of clarification for those who would read this and make false assumptions about what I'm trying to say in this post. I'm in NO WAY saying that I think it is embarrassing for a Christian to support McCain. I have never stated that. Don't just read the text. Follow the link and see how this man was praying. The manner in which he was praying regarding the election is what I found embarrassing as a Christian, not the person he is supporting.

Home Study Interviews

We had our home study interviews last Thursday and Friday. They went really well. Our social worker, Rhonda, was great. She was very easy to talk to. We had our individual interviews on Thursday and then a joint interview on Friday. During the individual interview, I went ahead and confessed that talking about my feelings and emotions wasn't exactly my strong suit. She seemed to get a kick out of that. She would tell me when we were done with questions about feelings for awhile. There was a finance piece in the interviews that I was all over!

A few minutes after Rhonda got to our house on Thursday, Brennan asked her if she wanted to see his room. Brennan proceeded to give her a tour of the whole house, basement included. It was pretty funny. Later she asked Brennan a few questions to see what he thought about us adopting. One of the question she asked him was how he would feel if his new brother or sister got into all his stuff. Brennan sort of chuckled while answering and said something to the effect of "oh that's ok, Sawyer already does that". It was pretty hilarious.

Hopefully in another 3-4 weeks we'll have our homestudy finalized and be ready to submit our dossier to AGCI and officially be on the waiting list.

We have an appointment at 8:00 AM this Tuesday in Hammond, IN to be fingerprinted for the Dept of Homeland Security. It has something to do with us getting pre-approved to bring an adopted child into the country. I think that's the last criminal/background check we have to get through.

Overdue Adoption Update

Fortunately, the delay in posting an update on our adoption process does not mean there was a delay in getting things done on our to-do list. One thing that should be sufficiently clear at the end of this process is that we are not criminals. We've submitted several different criminal background checks for the home study and dossier (local & national). We had to go over to South Bend to be fingerprinted at an Indiana State Police post. Hopefully soon the USCIS (Dept of Homeland Security) will be sending us an appointment to go somewhere else and be fingerprinted.

Home Study - We have submitted everything on our list for the home study agency, and our social worker called us today to schedule our home study interviews (09/18 & 09/19). She's going to interview us and JB & Carla on those days. Once we get through the interviews, I believe the agency will be able to get our home study written up. When that is done it will go into our dossier.

Dossier - The only significant item we have left to complete for the dossier (besides the written home study report) is our Statement of Reason to Adopt letter. It's partially written but we need to finish that up. Otherwise we just need to take a few pictures of our house and ourselves to include.

We also have a ten hour online educational thing to get through and a big workbook to fill out. We're 1/10 of the way through the online stuff and about 1/2 way through the workbook.

So, I think things are in pretty good shape. Once we submit our completed dossier, we'll be on the waiting list for a referral.

Floor Update

They finished sanding Mom & Dad's floor on Tuesday. They had to rent a special hardwood sander that's designed for houses that have the old hot water radiators. It's designed to be able to get underneath the radiators while sanding. They needed this to be able to get up close to the edges because of the logs.







Here's a shot of the floor I took tonight (w/o a flash). I believe they've put two coats of finish on the floor. I think they're going to put a top coat on tomorrow and then it will be done. Wow does it ever stink in there. I was in for a few minutes and my eyes were burning. We'll try to air the place out this weekend before mom and dad get home.

Our little boy's getting bigger

Today was Brennan's first day of preschool. He's going to preschool at the old Honeyville School, now Eden Worship Center. He has class on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday from 8:30 to 11:00. Today I picked up Brennan and his buddy Noah after class and they were both eager to tell me about how much fun they had. The highlight appears to be finger painting with chocolate pudding and then getting to eat the pudding. Throughout the day Brennan kept mentioning how much fun he had at preschool. Here are a few shots of Brennan getting ready for his big day. Sawyer filled his diaper right before Monica was ready to take pictures of Brennan so the photo-op got cut short.

At the neighbors

Mom and Dad are in Phoenix for this week visiting Melissa, Maury, and Isaiah. While they're gone, they are having their hardwood floors sanded down and refinished. Here's a few "before" pictures and a few shots of the sanding that was done today. The before pictures don't really do justice to the need to have the floors redone.

Demolition

A few Saturdays ago, I set out to remove the closet in our "mud room" to make way for the entrance to the new laundry room. Here's a shot of the closet before I got the sawzall involved. Brennan was on hand most of the time to help me out. I started by taking the closet doors off and taking all the trim off.













Once I got to the point of actually ripping the walls out, it got pretty dusty in there. Fortunately Monica and the boys were gone during this part.















Here's the current state of the area.

















Jon Swartz came out a few days later and helped me rip this hole into the garage for our entrance into the laundry room. I'm pretty confident I could've taken at least 2 or 3 times longer than Jon did to frame the opening and created a much bigger mess. The opening is covered by a sheet of blue styrofoam right not to try to avoid all of our cold air escaping into the garage.











Over the next few weeks I need to get the electrical work done and hang the drywall. The guy who is going to be doing the mudding can't get to it until a week or two into September so that buys me a little time, which at my current pace I'll need.

On the adoption front, we're starting to tick away at our to-do lists. We both got our autobiographies done this week. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Hopefully we can get far enough along to get our home study interviews scheduled soon.