Flood Waters, Three Weeks, Home Study, and Baseball

***WARNING - SUPER LONG POST AHEAD***

Nathan has officially gone into no communication mode. As of today, there will be little to no communication with my dear husband as he begins the journey for home. He will spend about another week in Iraq and will then begin the trek home. He should arrive here in about three weeks. I can't even imagine how amazing it will be to finally live with the man I am so in love with. He will get to see his home for the very first time. He will meet Fat Frankie the Bulldog for the first time. He will see my very short haircut for the first time. He will live in the same state with his wife for the first time. It is all very exciting and I know that we are both filled with such anticipation right now.

I was so excited to have this perfect home to share with Nathan when he got here. This weekend, God taught me that perfection is not always what we get. Southeast Kansas had 10 inches of rain in three days. This has been the wettest summer in Kansas in many moons. The water table rose quickly and promtly flooded our beautiful finished basement. We spent the afternoon after church yesterday tearing out carpet and bringing my beautiful family room down to its bare 70s linoleum covered concrete floor. I was soooo sad that my favorite room in our house was now our ugliest room. BUT, after several hours of pouting and tears, God convinced me that life would still be okay and that I should be thankful that I have a home. I also got all excited that Nathan and I will get to remodel a room together this summer. We're both very much looking forward to having a project to work on together. So, it all worked out in the end but it sure made for an emotional weekend. Thankfully, I had my kick off party for my Jockey Person to Person business the night before the flood. The party went very well and I nearly hit my goal for the month. I have my next party this Thursday and I am excited about getting this business going.

As for Baseball, my MN Twins are doing beautifully and I have several very cute items for our boy's room. During our recent trip to OKC, I purchased some great things for the baby's room, which we are planning to decorate in baseball paraphenallia. I am unrealistically obsessed with the Minnesota Twins and Nathan loves them as well. If I hadn't mentioned this before, my dear mom is making a sweet quilt for the baby that has the alphabet in letters that look like baseballs. My mom has always been great with crafty things and so I'm sure it will be a wonderful gift for our son. Here are some pictures of the things I got:



We sort of won this sweet baseball pillow at Frontier City Six Flags. I played this football game and I couldn't get the football through the holes but the kid gave us the baseball anyway! :)



I am so in love with Pottery Barn for Kids. I had no idea this store existed until we saw it in an OKC mall. This baseball bat and the ball are so soft. If you hit the ball with the bat, or throw it against the wall, the ball makes sounds like a crowd cheering on a runner on the field. It is sooo adorable. I also bought a nightlight that looks like a baseball but I forgot to take a picture of it so you'll have to use your imagination.



I bought all of these wonderful books as well. Three of the books have something to do with baseball of course. My favorite is the Touch and Feel Baseball book. It has the textures of the baseball leather, the bat, the fabric of a baseball cap, and a piece of astroturf. The two other baseball books have wonderful messages about morals and teamwork and my favorite part is that both of them have children of various races represented. Also in the book pile is a great First Bible with the hard pages and a children's atlas. I also found this great book that takes place in Kenya. It is about a 130 year old Tortise and a baby Rhino who become best friends after the Rhino was stranded during the Tsunami. The greatest book of all in the pile is a book called Chowder. Its a sweet book about an English Bulldog named Chowder. He doesn't fit in at all with the other dogs because he is so different from them. He is sad because he can't be like the "normal" dogs. But, he has parents who love him oh so much and they take him to the petting zoo where he makes all sorts of new friends who don't look like him. It is such a wonderful book and it is sooooo representative of our sweet bulldog. BTW - I adore books!



This is a giant floor puzzle with pieces as big as my head. It has animals from all different regions. I thought it would be a neat way to teach our boy about different areas of the world and show him all the differnt animals that live all over the planet. It seemed like a fun toy. Also from Pottery Barn Kids!



This is our boy's first Twins bobblehead! It's retired hall of famer Bob Allison. I'm sure the boy will have a ton of bobbleheads before he moves out and goes to college!

Okay, well I know this post is incredibly long, but I've got one last bit of news! I talked to a great home study agency today. They were so great! Judy at Gladney suggested that I discuss our unique situation with the home study agency and see if they thought we needed to wait a while before proceeding with the adoption. Judy basically told me that if our home study social worker thought we were prepared, that Gladney would be alright. So, Heather, our new social worker extrodinaire talked to me for a while this afternoon. She told me that she needed to talk to the director of her agency and see what she thought. Heather said she'd call me back in a couple of days but instead she called me in an hour!!! She talked to the director and they decided it would be fine to proceed with the homestudy when Nathan got home!!!! Heather told me it would likely take us 5 weeks to get the paperwork together to send our homestudy packet in and get our visits started. She said she'd go ahead and send out our packet tomorrow!!!! I am sooo excited that we'll have a whole packet of paperwork to do!!! Nathan was hoping we could move forward soon as we'll have the entire month of August together before life gets really hectic. We were thinking that we could get a fair amount of paperwork chasing done together during that period before Nathan begins all his classes at Wichita State University. Anyway, this is just one more piece that indicates that this process is moving forward and I am sooo thrilled!!! I'll post again when we get the packet in the mail. Have a great Fourth everyone!