This is How We Roll

Planned on having a nice quiet Saturday at home (figured we had a little boredom coming our way)
Enter five nephews and nieces to stay for a few days (their house flooded last night and my sister and brother-in-law needed the kids out from under foot while they cleaned up)
Decide to refinish two dressers and steam clean carpets.
Enter sister-in-law and her two daughters with steam cleaner for the daycare carpets. Exit sister-in-law and children. Exit K (to clean carpets)
Enter mother-in-law.
Enter six of the church family that helped us get ready for the homestudy and five of their children.
32 hamburgers later--
Enter 7 close family friends we haven't seen in forever with a gift for the baby.
Exit multitude at intervals.
It is now 9:00 pm. Our Saturday is gone.
Boring? No.
Quite? Absolutely NOT.
Nice? You betcha.

This Little Piggie...

Gets to stay home. The agency staff didn't take him with them, so I assume that means we passed. After 48 exhausting hours, we had our homestudy this morning. I was truly humbled at the number of friends and family who came and worked HARD to get this house up to snuff. We were even able to finish re-model on Cara and Levi's bedrooms, which is incredible. They are going to be really cute when we get all the furniture and decor items in, I'll have to post some pics of the final product. Right now, he's mostly hanging out in his bassinet when he isn't being cradled in our arms--and that is most of the time.
It is only now beginning to sink in that we had a baby. Over the weekend. We had a baby. This is crazy. And I guess I will be closing this blog and opening a new one. We are eight hearts no longer.

Good Friday

Friday morning we woke up late and rolled into our traditional holiday celebrations: enormous breakfast followed by egg dying. I add just put the water on to boil for the dye baths when the master noticed he had a missed call from D and the agency director. Within a space of an hour we went from having a baby early next week to having a baby on Saturday, to having a baby that day. We divied the kids among my sisters and my folks, threw our bags (which were packed for two days of lounging at the family lakehouse) in Daddy's pickup, and flew to Houston. Levi James was born en route. We got a call about an our out that he was here and both baby and D were doing fine. Then T (agency staff person texted me a picture.) We got to see him almost immediately. He's thirty four weeks but just as pink and chubby as you could expect from a full-term baby. Afterwards, we met with D. She looked exactly like I pictured her in my mind. Is that odd or what? She's very pretty and sweet. She talks as though she will be open to contact, at least pictures and updates, so we are excited about that.

The Ride Rolls On

Let me off I'm going to be sick! It had already been a crazy day at work, when the master called to tell me something I
Did not want to hear. D--while waiting for our book to arrive--had begun to ask for a choice. In other words, she wanted to look at more than just our profile. The director felt lead to send out an e-mail to the seven families they have "sitting on go" to see if anyone was open to the situation. Then they would be able to tell her honestly that they had contacted all their families and we were it.
Well, they were surprised to receive a response from one couple; they were open.
The interesting thing about this news was that just this morning, I had been thinking about all those couples who wait with empty arms for years because they will not consider opening their hearts to children like my Cara and Marina. I'm not being judgmental--I can only imagine that they might make a different choice if they knew my girls. If I could show them. If they took the chance. In that moment, I felt such a profound sadness for those nameless, faceless couples.
So now I was in turmoil. I wanted to be happy for this couple who were willing to bring this baby home. But now I was so selfishly disappointed. I needed some time to crawl away and cry but the day's demands at the daycare made that impossible. I kept thinking three more hours until I can cry...two and a half hours until I can cry...
I called myself nine kinds of stupid for posting about the adoption. I dreaded telling the children. I even felt mild irritation for our beloved agency--was't one of the first words out of my mouth, "Do you have a family open to this?" This had to be the worst result of assuming I'd ever! Then less than two hours later we got a second call--D CHOSE us! I never thought she would choose us. Never. Turns out she grew up an only child. She said it was lonely, she wants her sonto have brothers and sisters.
Brothers and sisters? Done. ;0)

Nine Hearts?

I'm sure those of you who follow me on facebook are dying to get the scoop on today's announcement: the master and I are adopting again. We haven't been holding out on ya'll. We didn't even have an inkling ourselves two weeks ago. This is how it all went down:
Do you remember when I said,

Due to the nature and circumstances of Cara's adoption we can never rule out a call from our agency--should they get a client or infant in a similar situation--but since they have only had two cases in 25+ years and hundreds of adoptions, it is not likely. If they did, it would definitely be a God thing. Would I jump up and run should we ever get that call? You all know me better than to doubt it.

Weeelllll.....that's kinda what happenend. Except,they didn't call us. We called them. Two weekend ago, on our trip down to Houston, I called in when we hit Lufkin to let them know that we were coming so we would be sure of catching them in the office. I noticed Denise sounded sort of stunned which struck me as odd because we go by almost every time we are in the city. Then, as we were getting off the phone, she said that we were, "just the people they needed to talk to." When we got there we discovered that 20 minutes before I phoned, they got a call from a birthmother that matches the profile of both Marina and Cara's birthmothers. I'm thinking, "Oh, they are going to want us to talk with the adoptive couple about our experience. That must be what 'just the people we needed to talk to' meant." It took a while for it to dawn on me that they did not have any families interested in adopting this child. They were actually asking us if we wanted to adopt the baby. We couldn't stay long and they really didn't have much information themselves at that point, so we left with a, "Yes! We are open to this situation should it develop." Cara had her appointment and we enjoyed the rest of the mini vacation. Came home, told a few folks there was a slight chance we might be adopting again. Heard nothing that week. Wasn't until Friday of the next week that we found out that D, the birthmother's, situation had taken a turn for the worse (and it wasn't an ideal situation to start out with)--and while I grieve that she is having to go through this, it made her commit totally to her adoption plan. They hadn't talked about families with her,but we needed to go ahead and get our references together. After Friday, I was feeling like this thing might actually happen; we told a few more people. Then yesterday, an excited, almost anxious Dennise called to tell us that 1) D has been hospitalized with hypertension. 2)The baby may come early. 3)They told her about us, and she didn't freak out that we have six other kids. 4)We needed all our paperwork and a birthmother book NOW.
We've been running ever since. Homestudy visit is scheduled for next Thursday AGGGGGH!!! After pulling an all-nighter, we fed-exed the book with a stack of documents today, found out Danee is expecting a boy, and told the whole cyberworld we are adopting again.
Hang on tight, it is going to be a wild ride.

Time for a Change

Since temperatures are supposed to top out at 90* tomorrow, I think it is time I took down the snow day pictures, don't you?

Weekend Doings

Well, really mid-week through weekend doings. We decided to cut out of here late Wednesday night and stopped in Lufkin (which is about half-way to Houston) and spent the night, then Thursday morning we headed on in and stopped by Cara's agency. We like to take her in whenever we are in town for appointments--which are about every three months. We love that she will grow up knowing the ladies that helped her join our family. After her appointment at Children's, we went to Hermann park and played for a couple hours.

Then, we got a suite at a downtown hotel. Did you know it is cheaper to rent a suite than two regular rooms? We didn't. But we will definitely be doing that from now on. Our suite had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a sleeper sofa. Very nice. Friday was zoo day. We had a close encounter with a orangutan. The habitat appeared to be empty, but K spotted him (her?) asleep next to the glass, and while we were looking down on him, he woke up and sat close to the glass for about ten minutes or so just studying us as we studied him. The thing was huge!!! I guess I've never seen one that close up before, because its size really surprised me.

Saturday morning was Marina's birthday party. We did an Americ*n Girls tea party, and boy, did it bring little girls out of the woodwork! All my nieces were here from both sides of the family plus a half dozen of Rina's classmates. We may do more doll themed parties in the future! We had a table for the dolls and miniature tea sets. The girls came in party dresses and we had "fancy" snacks and tea, which they drank out of real china. The girls decorated straw hats for their dolls with ribbon and rosettes and folded paper fans and took them home as party favors. Fun, fun party.

Did orientation for a new worker Saturday afternoon. Daddy and the master grilled out Saturday night and then we let the kids (my six + my sister's five) stay up late watching T*ngled. Somehow we missed seeing this in the theatres. Liked it.

Because none of the gentlemen of the family were invited to participate in Saturday's estrogen bonanza, we also had a bar-b-que lunch after church this morning. I decided at the last minute to have at the church; I didn't want anyone to see my house. So, of course--because, really, when you don't want family seeing the condition of your home, things have gotten WAY out of hand--after Sunday naps, I had a "Lord, I'm not gonna live like this no more" moment and scoured the kitchen. Evening church and choir practice then an offer from a friend in the church to take us all out for pizza. Get home and the master sees the kitchen for the first time since my cleaning rampage, and says, "Woah, what happened in this kitchen?!" and Randy (four years old) says with all seriousness, "I don't know....I think Grandma must have come over." How sad is that?