The Glorious Waiting List!

Above: Us with Lesley, the agency director

Below: Us with Taz, the Japan Coordinator

Yesterday was a big and wonderful day for us...we got to meet Taz, the Japan Coordinator for our adoption agency. It was a great experience, we really liked Taz a lot and we just know she will do her best for us. Also there was Lesley, the agency director. We had met Lesley previously at the classes we attended and immediately liked her warm personality. This was one of the reasons we had such confidence in choosing this agency to work with. Thank goodness for people like them who are willing to make sacrifices in their own lives to help others achieve their dreams. This pre-adoption meeting was our final step to officially being on the waiting list!

We have a lot on our to do lists...continuing to get the baby room ready and doing as much as possible to prepare for the phone call from Taz telling us we are finally parents. We have been told by some of the other adoptive parents that from the moment we get that phone call, the 4-5 weeks notice you have before travelling to Japan just flies by!

On February 10th, Taz makes her next trip to Japan, and on that flight will be our photo album anf "dear birthmom" letter. These two thingsare what the birthmom will look at to get to know us and make her decision on which lucky couple gets to adopt her baby. I can only imagie what a difficult task that must be for the birthmom to take on, choosing the best future she can for a baby she cannot raise herself.

So for now, we continue to make our preparations and we wait patiently...the rest is all up to the universe :)

On the day of our visit the Cech family was nice enough to make a trip to the agency so we could meet. Eryn and Gregor brought their two adorable little girls, Emi and Miya. Emi was adopted from Kazakhstan and Miya was adopted from Japan.

Those two little monkeys definitely stole the show! We had so much fun watching them just be silly little girls.

Miya (Miyako)...look at that cute little face!

Emi (Emerson)...pretty little girl :)

Miya looking at Saki...not quite sure about her!

Getting boba and smoothies with the Cech's after our meeting with Taz was a great end to a great trip up north!

Midori!

Well Ryan has been diligently working on the baby room...as you can see he got the door changed out and the closet doors in, as well as the crown moulding and baseboards...just some finishing touches still needed, but most of the big stuff is done! I'm so glad home improvement is one of his favorite hobbies!

Room Progress

Slowly but surely the room is coming together…Ryan is applying the primer tonight and tomorrow we paint! It will be so nice to finally see some color on the wall! It doesn’t look like it from the pics, but Ryan has really done a lot of work on the room…it’s all the stuff you can’t see, but appreciate, like electrical, drywall, texturing…this weekend we (or perhaps I should say Ryan…like how I take credit for his hard work??) will be installing the new baseboards, crown moulding and the closet doors.

Demolition

So we have started the transformation of the baby’s room…we decided to demo the giant closet and put in a normal sized one plus a smaller closet of shelves to make the storage space more useable and efficient. Ryan also scraped the ceiling and started retexturing it along with the walls. No more popcorn ceilings or orange peel walls! Yay! Ryan also put in electrical for a ceiling fan to be installed for those extra warm days...

The lovely popcorn ceiling that is no longer...

Ryan being silly from the attic/ceiling fan hole...

Demo of the closet...

Starting to take shape...

We'll update with more pics as it comes along!