Proud Parents of a Bouncing Baby Brochure

Oh-Kaaaayyyy...
I made the final edits to the letter...and it's been accepted! The catch? We have to print one out on cardstock and send it in for final approval. The IAC says it's just a formality; they're sure it will be accepted. Gregg spoke to Lane today, and he sounded very happy about it. He told Gregg some of the people at the IAC looked at our letter and remembered us from our visit, and feel we won't have a tremendously long wait. I take that with a grain of salt. I don't want to get my hopes up to much, or six months from now after we've had no contacts from birth mothers I'll be headed for the big depression. Anyway, we printed one out on cardstock and it looks good. Some of the printed pictures came out a little dark on the stock, so I'll lighten and reprint tomorrow, then FedEx it over to the agency. If all goes well and they like the print and they have the remaining paperwork we need to fax over, we'll be in the book and on their website by Friday...Finally! Then I won't mind the waiting so much, because we'll be Waiting For Something Important, not just another stop on the paperwork express.

Chihuly in the Gardens

While waiting to hear on our letter, we spent the weekend with my aunts, Alice and Karen, from New York and Pennsylvania respectively. Michelle and I took them, along with Michelle's mother Nancy, to see the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Phoenix Botanical Gardens. Gregg and I get to the gardens about once a year, and being the beautiful January day in the desert of about 75 degrees that it was we had a perfect day. The gardens are beautiful anyway, but the Chihuly glass sculpture that was integrated throughout the cactus made it even more spectacular! I thought you might enjoy a few pictures of the day. You really need to click each picture to enlarge it and get a better feel for the sculpture. There was a lot more there then this, but these are some of the cooler shots I think.

The yellow structures below are not plants, but glass sculpture!

This one had a weird sea anemone look to it.

Calling All Gay Parents--Birth Certificate Survey

Real quick before I get into my survey question, just an update. We heard back from IAC regarding our letter and they just had a few quick formatting requests. It took me about ten minutes to do and I sent it back. Our counselor loves it, and is showing it to his supervisor. If she likes it, we'll be asked to send them a final, printed card stock hard copy. I know....on and on....but I think we're almost done.

Now my survey. A comment was left on my last post regarding how gay couples handle the names on the birth certificate. I know that is up to the state the child is born in, but I thought it would be fun to see what some of you that have already adopted have ended up with. So, if you're an adoptive gay couple, please comment with the following information:

• State you adopted in (that issued the birth certificate)
• Were both parents names on it?
• How did they "label" you? Parent and Parent? Mom and Dad?
• And of course, who got to be the opposite sex parent? I'd love to know how you felt about that!

We Now Return to Your Regularly Scheduled America, Already in Progress

Well we did it again. This great country once again turned over the highest office in the world peacefully. What great pagentry. And talk about emotion! I took the day off so I could watch the fulfillment of my dream for America over the last two years finally come to fruition...President Barack Obama. Has a nice ring to it huh? I have to say I did feel a little sorry for the Chimp; 2 million people chanting "Hey hey hey good bye!" But that's his fault, he created it. I have such hope for 2009. Barack Obama is President of the United States. The Arizona Cardinals may win the Super Bowl. And I'm sure Gregg and I will become parents. Fantastic! Here's a picture I took myself when I went to see the future president in February of 2008 when he came to Phoenix.

Don't Let the Door Knob Hitcha Where the Good Lord Splitcha

Today on my way home from work I listened to George Bush's Farewell address to the nation. Did you hear what I said? His farewell address. As in leaving. Gone. Forever. Adios. Never did his mumbling stumbling "speaking" style sound so good. If we get lucky we'll never have to hear his voice again. His farewell address. What a pleasant sound! Good bye Mr. Bush, and don't worry, we won't miss you.

Waiting and Waiting...To Wait.

It's been over a week since I sent our birth mother letter into the IAC for approval. I did hear back that they've received it, but still no word from them on what they think about it or if it will be approved. I think I said before that I won't mind waiting for a potential birth mother to contact us, but this waiting for each step to be completed is what really kills me. It's like, come on already! Like being trapped in a giant ticking clock or hourglass just sitting there while precious time is wasted.

What a geek I am. That reminded me of this.

And don't get me started. They're not gay. Really. Not gay.

Letter Time Frame

We heard from our counselor Lane at the IAC yesterday via email. Looks like he had a total of 12 letters to review when he got back from the holiday break; ours is #4 on the list. So I guess we won't hear anything back on it until at least sometime next week. Bummer. I was hoping to spend the weekend at the printers. Oh well.

One other thing. We sent in some more paperwork this weekend regarding our choices on birthparent races as well as drug and alcohol use by birthmothers. This is pretty personal stuff so I won't post it all here. We are pretty open to almost any race, although our preference would be a mixed black and white child.

(No not like this !)

As for drugs and alcohol, we've done some research on the various substances and how they can affect a pregnancy. Alcohol turns out to be the worst of the lot. We also know we can't say NO to everything, we'll never see a baby. So we've laid down some pretty rigid ground rules, and we'll just have to take it from there. Fingers crossed.

I hope this letter revision goes quickly and gets accepted. We're so close now I'm finding this the hardest part so far!

A Little Redecorating Never Hurt Anyone

Yes, the blog has undergone major cosmetic surgery. Since doing the letter all weekend I'm in a graphical mood, and come on you can say it...that children's handprint background was freaking ugly. YES, it was. What the hell was I thinking? I like this better, it's more earthy. More raw. More lesbian. I like it!

Background on the Letter

I realized my last post about finishing our birth mother letter might need some clarification. I did have a friend at work design our first copy, which the IAC sent back to us with recommendations for a lot of revision. As much as I appreciate help on this, my friend travels a lot for work and has a lot on his plate, and we just couldn't get together for a large block of time to work on this. We're not very close friends, and not even in the same department at work, so as the time frame began to drag on I got more impatient but didn't want to really push the issue. After all, I approached him about it; before that he didn't even know we were adopting. So really I just needed to bite the bullet, sit down, and get this thing done. I did the major design of it around some of the concepts he came up with, so he really did get me off on the right foot to putting it together. I'm quite picky when it comes to project type stuff anyway, so once I got going on what I wanted to do I kind of got into it.

I cruised around the IAC site a bit clicking on prospective families today in search of other letters. We'd seen some hard copies while at our seminars at their offices last spring, but I wanted to see what was currently out there. As I suspected, some of the families had posted their letters on their individual websites. I would say as far as the look of the letter, ours has to be in the top 70% or so presentation wise. I'm glad our counselor Lane is strict about what he likes, because some of those websites are well...not what I'd expect to see, at least not if I was a birth parent looking for a family to place with.

We'll just have to see what they come back with as far as revisions. I did a quick test print in black and white and I was right, a lot of the cell lines and borders don't print out, so it has a pretty clean look. Fingers crossed! We'd like to be in the book any week now if possible...time's a wastin'!

I'm Writing a Letter to ...

I hate having a sense of humor. I was going to call this post "I'm Wri-Ting a Lettah to Da-Dee" but I knew no one would get it but me. Well, me and anyone who loves "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?". I know, campy comedy with both Joan Crawford AND Ms. Bette Davis. Have your laughs, har har har. (Insert fabulous dead movie actresses from the '40's jokes here...)

Anyway, I wanted to report that over the last few days I've taken off work, I finally managed to finish our birthmother letter! I decided to do it in Word after all. I was going to use Adobe, which I've never touched, and it wouldn't load on my laptop. I'm glad it didn't it would have taken me twice as long. I fought with tables, cells, and alignments but it's finally finished. I'm sending it off to the IAC tonight. So I now present to you the finished product, which will be a two sided card stock print. The main picture of Gregg and I will be an actual photo we affix over the printed version. It still may need a little cleanup, and it has to be approved by our adoption counselor at the IAC. Oh and you may see some cell borders, but they won't show up on the printed version.

Check it out here

Proper Bowling Ettiquette (Instructional Video)

The following video illustrates the facial expressions all professional bowlers make when picking up a spare, regardless of my boyfriend's comment that I even "bowl gay":

Now, isn't that what everyone does? Geez.

New Years Part 2

I hope everyone had a great New Year's Day! I think I already broke a resolution--be a better blogger! I didn't mean to go this long between posts. Anywho, the brunch. One of the best parts for me is the picture above. After we ate, my brother, dad, and I took the kids across the street to the park. After romping on the swings and monkey bars, we started hiking Falcon Hill. It's a real easy, short hike as Arizona hikes go, and the kids had a blast chasing the dogs up the trail. They made me promise to take them on a longer one someday, so I told them in a few weeks we'll all go hike the Wind Cave Trail at Usery Park, which is only 10 minutes from our house. If you haven't been to Arizona, this is the place to be if you like outdoorsy stuff. The mountain hikes around here are beautiful, and with the weather in the mid 60's to low 70's, well you just can't beat a beautiful desert hike. In the pic above, our house is one of the ones in the background.

In the spirit of other resolutions, like more time at the gym and less fatty foods, I decided not to post FOOD pictures. I'm betting that's on everyone's list! Instead, here is our menu. Gregg made everything on it by hand. He started cooking on the 30th, and went straight through until 5 AM New Year's Day. He got back up around 9 to keep going. Voici le menu:

Appetizers:
Lil smokies n bacon (Mmm, good--mini dogs wrapped in bacon covered with brown sugar!)
Baked Dates w/chorizo prosciutto (Thought I hated dates, but damn these were good.)
Mini Quiches (The only "cheat"...frozen LOL)
Bloody Mary Soup (A type of Shrimp Cocktail)

Drinks:
Champagne
Mimosas
Bloody Mary’s
Orange juice
Apple Cider
Coffee Costa Rican & Mocha Java
Juice boxes for the kiddies

Main Dishes:
Pork Roast in apple
Prime Rib Roast (OK this was fantastic!)
Penne pasta and turkey sausage
Fudge Waffles (Picture this: Chocolate waffles with white chocolate chips...dreamy!)
Blueberry Waffles (Fresh blueberries; G. has none of that dried boxed stuff!)
Texas French Toast (This and the next one are from French bread, let go stale overnight, then turned into French toast...really good--I'm still eating the leftovers for breakfast!)
Double Cinnamon French Toast

Sides:
Mac N Cheese 5 cheeses (Yes, 5!)
Mac n Cheese 10 cheeses (In case your heart still beats from the 5, this one uses 10 cheeses!)
Sweet Potato Hash
Bacon
Sausage Links
Turkey sausage patties
Baked eggs and mushroom and ham crisp (I should have taken pics of this one...like an egg cupcake, from a muffin pan, with the ham as the "paper" and the eggs baked inside, poached style.)
Scrambled eggs n Cheese
Scrambled eggs mushroom/green onion/ cheese/
Gravlax (Salmon in herbs and spices; it was in the fridge with a giant rock on top of it for 2 days...apparently that is the customary way to make it.)

Dessert:
Pumpkin cheesecake (Yum!)

Sometimes having a fantastic cook for a boyfriend is what makes "More gym time" the resolution you have to keep!

New Year's Day 2009--Part One

It's New Year's morning around 9 or so. I'm putting the finishing touches on cleaning the house since today is our 3rd annual New Year's Brunch. Gregg cooked everything himself, and didn't come to bed until 5:30 this morning. He's still asleep and brunch isn't until noon so I think I'll give him another 30 minutes or so. There's cheesecake, eggs, two kinds of mac & cheese, roasts, all kinds of stuff. I'll do a post later with the complete menu and pictures.

I told Gregg at midnight we were celebrating more then just the new year. This is going to be the year of change. We'll be dads!

Pop over later for the brunch update and pictures.

Happy New Year!