Happy Halloween! I haven’t been in the fall/halloween mood like most years, I think because I got it out of my system in September when we were putting together Mimi’s fall extravaganza care package! Now I’ve mentally moved on to Christmas and am just wishing all the stores would hurry up and put out out thier Christmas stuff before this next package has to go out. But in honor of Halloween I thought I’d share Mimi’s first package that has already been delivered and received (2 weeks earlier than expected!!).
In this package we included a fall dress, bonnet, jellycat stuffed owl, a pumpkin, apple and cranberry packet (which I bought an extra and tried it, it was delicious!), apple toothpaste and brush, “It’s pumpkin day mouse!” book (which we filmed us reading and included the video on a flash drive), a scarf from Fleur De Lis wraped up for her foster mother, and a small soft photo book with a photo of us holding her photo on the front and photos of us and the girls inside!
For the care packages you have to be able to fit everything in a gallon size ziplock bag which really leads to some creative packing! You can either send them to your agency and wait for them to send it when they have enough or if you know of a traveling family willing to take packages you can send it with them! We were lucky enough to have a wonderful family offer to take two bags so we could also include a recordable book (which is so large is takes up it’s own bag!). We were so thankful for such generous people so we ran out and bought “Under the same moon” and recorded us reading to her!
This card we had found months ago went perfectly and we were able to fill it with more photos and cram it in with the book!
We got everything packaged up with lots of help from my mom who turns out, is a pro ziplock bag packer (we’ll see how she does with the test though, the Christmas bag!) and mailed off to the family delivering them for us! They would be delivering them mid month and Mimi comes for her monthly visits early in the month so we didn’t expect her to get them until after Halloween but much to our surprise we got a call that we had an update, Mimi had come in and gotten her packages, and there were photos! Best news ever and totally unexpected!!
She seemed most excited about the packet which I totally get.
I wish I could show her sweet little face looking at us in this photo but sadly I can’t! But I will say, it is pretty much the coolest thing ever to see your baby with the things you just packed days ago and staring at you in a photo! We love her foster mama so much for bringing her in early for her package (or she might have been there for other reasons, but still)! Now we can picture her looking through It’s Pumpkin Day Mouse today and celebrating fall with us from a far.
It’s finally complete! We got our final copy to review and approve and now as soon as a couple small things are changed we get our official copy! I had hoped it would be finished by mid June but I knew I was asking for a lot in a short amount of time but our amazing social worker made it happen!
Whenever I thought about the home study I had a loose idea of what it would be like. I knew people talked about a ton of paperwork (which did eventually come!) and after attending foster care workshops I assumed most of it would be a big home inspection. After talking to other families and reading lots of blogs about it I learned the home visit really was a series of meetings where the social worker got to know us.Way before we met with anyone face to face though the homestudy required hours and hours of preparation. We did about 16 hours of education (plus homework), met with a psychologist and did testing (really long testing!), had physicals and blood tests, filled out a gigantic questionnaire about us as individuals, our marriage, each other, our families, our childhood, our parenting philosophy, adoption, our faith, and more, we got finger printed, and became very familiar with our banks notaries!
After we submitted all of the paperwork we were able to be assigned our social worker and schedule our home visit! After sitting in front of a computer filling out everything the idea of meeting someone from our homestudy agency in person suddenly made everything feel very real. Even though we had been working on this for months, this was the part that I’d been anticipating the most even though I really felt under prepared for what we’d be talking about during our first 4 hour meeting in our dining room! She was able to get us scheduled pretty quick so I cleaned house, bought new backyard furniture (although shockingly this was not what made us pass the home visit), made blueberry muffins the night before, turned on my favorite french pandora station and opened the door at 10 AM on memorial day to the woman who would be writing the document hopefully approving us for adoption.
We started with a really quick house tour and then it was down to talking at the dining table and getting to know each other (or I guess mostly her getting to know us). We talked about a lot of the same things as we’d talked to the psychologist about and that we’d written in our biographies. There is a lot of repetition in the beginning phases! We talked about our marriage, our family, our expectations, and so on. Somehow the time flew by and we were on to scheduling the next visit. After that we had our individual meetings the next week after we got back from vacation. Individual meetings sounded a lot more intimidating than they were. Again it was a lot of conversation about our childhoods, family members, and we had to fill out more questionnaires.Our sweet social worker knew we needed to speed this process along so she stayed the night in town and came back early the next morning for our 3rd required visit.
This visit was really the one I had been looking forward to the most. This one was the visit we got to discuss the profile of the child we were hoping for and the special needs we were comfortable with. Honestly, I was trying to dive in to this from the first meeting but all good things come in time! We already had filled out a medical needs check list for our placing agency and she went over that with us and clarified some questions we still had. In the end she approved us for a boy or girl or twins 0-3 years old and a list of special needs we felt comfortable with. After that we discussed our finances, did a quick walk through of the back yard and garage, and that was it! We waved goodbye and we were done with our final home visit!!A few days later she sent us the rough draft and we got a chance to review it and check for any errors. Then it was sent to our placing agency for review, then back to us for final review.
We did one last read through of the 15 page story of our lives, emailed our agency, and soon we will receive the official final copy and then it’ll be time to begin the I-600A process! One step closer!
I always like to make sure to set aside one day just for us to go play in the blooms and take photos and revel in the beauty all around us. This year we also had the opportunity to bring some of our family and their friends visiting from Minnesota along with us which is always so fun to share this unique Central Valley treat with those not from here. My grandmothers friend explained to us that the same bees that are here pollinating the almond blossoms are later brought to North Dakota (where they have a family farm) to pollinate there in the summer. I always love learning things like that, I had no idea we had traveling bees here working in our local orchards.
Spending so much time in the almond orchards always makes me in the mood to bake all things almond and this year I found and perfected a delicious almond flour pancake recipe. I don’t have any photos of them because I always devour them before I get a picture but trust me, they are amazing. They are thin but light and fluffy, with just the perfect hint of sweet almond flavor. Make these and imagine you’re here playing in the orchards!
When you’re putting up shiplap in your kitchen, the floor is covered in pieces of wood, the counters are littered with paint cans, tools, and everything else in between, your exhausted and yet it still seems like a good time to bake something. That my friends is the time you make construction zone scones. When I was browsing through the dried fruit section at our local sprouts (yay sprouts!) I ran across currants which always seem to be in my favorite baked goods, that, pared with some extra cream left over from the black berries and cream we’ve been enjoying nightly (so addictive) just called for making these guys. They’re just about as easy as you can get if you’re wanting to make something more exciting than cereal or toast while your kitchen is in shambles. No cutting in butter, no rolling, just mix, drop and bake! The best part is, you won’t have them adding to the clutter for long either because they’ll disappear within moments.
