Hoping to fill a dining room table

I hae a confession to make. Last weekend, Brian and I bought an enormous oak dining room table. Without the leaf, it seats 6-8 people. With the leaf... well, it's just big.

This may not seem like a typical purchase for a family of two. We don't exactly take up a lot of room. It seems even more impractical if you add in the cost of having to now get all new tablecloths because few of mine fit a table this large. But we just do things like this sometimes.

We are hoping and praying for the day when our family grows. Maybe even enough to fill our dining room table. And, even though it doesn't make much practical sense, we just can't help working to get ourselves ready for that day. Therefore, not only do we have a big dining room table. We've got a drawer full of cute little baby clothes. We've got a room set aside as a nursery. We collect children's books and toys and little fuzzy ducky slippers. I've picked out a crib. (Though I haven't bought it yet) and am working on figuring out what else a nursery needs. And, even though I often feel like I'm breaking some unspoken rule by being there, I just can't help wandering through the baby department when I've got a few extra minutes in a store.

In the meantime, we are lucky to have friends and family who help to play with our toys and eat at our table. One of our favorite traditions is inviting a family over for dinner and games. We love to share our home with our friends. So I guess that's a good reason to have a big table, too.

Adoption Home Visit - We're almost there!

The adoption application process is called a "home study". The purpose of it all is to learn as much as possible about our family and our home to make sure that our home is suitable for a child. The final step of the home study process is a home visit. This is where the caseworker comes to your home, interviews you as a family, looks around your house to make sure it's a safe environment, etc. etc.

We've got a really great caseworker! You can really tell she cares about the people she works with! And she has done a great job of helping to make it so this process has been a comfortable one, despite all the emotions that surround it.

The visit went really quite smoothly. She looked around our house and asked questions about childproofing and where the nursery would be, etc. We talked a lot about what's called our "preferences checklist" - a form where we indicate our preferences in the way of age, race, medical history, etc. for the child. Brian & I are of the opinion that the Lord is very involved in the adoption process - and that He will guide us to the child that is meant to be in our family. Therefore, we didn't put any major limitations on race or disability. Our child will be our child, regardless of those things, and we'll love him or her just the same. We were surprised because it didn't sound like that was a very common perspective.

Anyway, as we were wrapping things up, our caseworker asked us if we could have copies of our profile to her before the end of the week so she could present us for approval in staff meeting on Monday. That means that the application process is pretty much over and they'll send out our collage and letter to be shown in LDSFS agencies across the country. It means our online profile and website can officially go live, too. And - most importantly, it also means that whenever we find the right child to adopt - we are ready and able to do it... even on a moment's notice.