Learning to make an Adoption Video

So making an adoption video should be easy right?
Well, not as easy as it may seem.  I spent 7 hours on Saturday uploading and editing to create a video only to upload it to You Tube and have it watermarked the whole way through smack in the middle of the video.  UGH!!! So much time wasted and now back to square one which is buy a different program and download it.  So I bought one and it wasn't the same at all to the one I had used before, although from the same company meant back to that learning curve I'd had the day before.  That turned into another frustrating experience so I read a bunch of reviews and bought yet another program.  Back, again, to square one after download.
So I'm getting the hang of this new program but it's still time consuming because it comes with only 2 templates and they are in no way what I wanted so I spent Monday downloading templates, titles, etc into the program.  I then started a project, got half way through and tossed it out.  Tuesday I actually produced the video and it was pretty good but now I needed to learn the audio so off to You Tube school I went.  Audio was pretty intuitive but I was just missing one key component Thanks You Tube guy!
So now the audio is done and I plug it into the video so I produce it and can't get it to save in an up-loadable format for our website, so I stopped because after 4 days of roadblocks and frustration I needed to step away.
Wednesday was our 20th Anniversary but Don is out of town, so I'm determined to get this thing done and uploaded.  I produced it a few times and then made more changes and long story short I finally got it to save in the correct format for upload to the website so I upgrade our website to handle video so I can forgo using the you tube video and it keeps having an error on upload.  I went back and produced every usable format of the video to try uploading, none of them work.  I sent in an email to customer service and thankfully they were really nice about the situation.  I was able to load the video to one drive, share it and they were able to upload it directly to our website for me.  Turns out the loader was timing out before the video could upload and looping which was causing the error.  So while I had no trouble uploading it to You Tube, our internet connection was too slow for their timeout (Life in the burbs).  Thankfully, as of next week our internet speed will triple (and still be behind the cities) and it shouldn't continue to be an issue.
Learning new things can be frustrating but I am so glad I took the time to learn them.  It will really come in handy later when I am piecing together videos and pictures of our child to share with the birth family (if they want them) and our own families.  I plan to get making videos of our travels until I get all the components ingrained and no longer have to think about what I'm doing.  My aunt does this for the family but she is the only one until now.  As frustrating as it was I was having fun in the end learning something new and useful once I got the right program for me to use.
If you're interested in our video it can be found Here
In other news Don and I are actually doing some fun stuff for our anniversary this year (although late) and I can't wait to share it all once it's over and I have details and pictures.
Have a great week everyone!

Fun in the sun with family on my cousin's sailboat

Remembering grandma and Family time

Remembering Grandma
Two weeks ago my uncle called to say he was planning a trip up the following week to spend time with family and to see grandma.  So we talked about getting together while he was here, etc.
Well, grandma passed away two days later surrounded by all of us who live here.  Other family from out of state called to say good-bye.  It was heartbreaking since losing grandpa 7 months earlier and she'd been doing pretty well until that day.  She was laughing and joking around just the day before and then she was ready to go.  I got a text from my mom and aunt that Thursday afternoon telling me it was time to say good-bye. Don was working from home that day so we got in the car and headed down. We stayed as long as we could and I got hug and kiss her and tell her how much we loved her. It really means a lot to me that I got to be with my grandparents before they passed away.  I got the call 15 minutes after we left that she passed.  I'm glad Don was driving us home. My grandma was the rock in the family, She always gave great hugs, advice when you asked for it, and her laughter was infectious.  She loved playing games, usually won, and she loved us all so much.  She also loved traveling with my grandpa all over the US, Mexico and Canada.  Later on they took a bunch of long cruises and went to China, Hong Kong, Panama, Antarctic and Australia to name a few and always shared their trips with us through stories and pictures.  Grandma's memorial was this past Thursday and everyone had such great memories to share and my aunt even had a recording of my grandma from the week before that she played and it made us all laugh when we heard grandma say "Where the hell are we going?" The service was beautiful and a great way to remember the amazing lady that she was.
October 31, 1931 - March 24, 2016

 I love this picture of grandma and I 

She loved to laugh

grandma in 1947 - she was 16

 With my grandma - I was a year old 

 Always loved the double exposed picture my Aunt took of my grandparents

 Grandma as a child 

Family Time

So my uncle flew up here for the week and I met him at Snoqualmie Falls on Wednesday.  We talked, walked around and took pictures before heading back to my house where Don had gotten off work early and was waiting for us.  We showed him all the changes we've made to our place and then went to dinner.  We talked and played games and had a great time.  He had to get up early to go pick up my aunt so we met up again at the memorial.  He was heading out to my cousins place for the weekend and we went out for the night on Saturday.  So much fun.  We hadn't been to my cousins new place since he moved last year so it was great on all fronts.  We got to spend time with family and see the island they call home.  They picked us up at the ferry terminal on his sailboat and we cruised back to the island.  The dogs loved it and it was a gorgeous day to be on the water. We met some of his neighbors at the BBQ that evening and they had 4 of the sweetest girls who hang out with my cousins daughter. We talked about adoption and it was great having someone who understands the process. They adopted their girls and they are so loved. One day it'll be our turn.  We hadn't planned on staying the night but we were invited to and we did.  I'm glad we did we had a great night hanging out with family having a few drinks, lots of food and lots of stories.  I liked what my cousin said when I said I didn't have stuff for us but at least the dogs had everything they needed and he said "That's why you're going to be awesome parents because they come before you." In the morning we were driven to the ferry terminal and said good-bye.  It was the first time the dogs had been on a ferry but they loved it.  Don will be seeing my uncle again next weekend since he'll be in CA for the weekend to see his parents. He offered to give Don a tour of CBS where he works so that should be a fun day for them.

  All Aboard Selfie

    Happy Happy

My aunt took this picture of us last week

The dogs meet my cousins puppy who wore them out 

Anniversary plans....The Best laid Plans gone awry

Our 20^th Anniversary is coming up in April and we originally planned on going to New York for 7 days but as they say the best laid plans….

We have some friends who were going with us (we chose dates outside our actual anniversaries) to celebrate their 30^th together and thought it would be a great trip with so many friends and family to meet up with and of course the amazing shows and just being in the city.  I LOVE visiting New York and we always try to plan our trips around baseball games. We have friends there or close by and I was looking forward to seeing them and meeting his new wife and son.  I was looking forward to Carmine’s, a Yankees game and Broadway shows as well as spring in Central Park.

Well then the attack in Brussels happened and our friend’s wife said to cancel their part of the trip (We’d extended our days to spend time with them in the city).  Then a couple days ago I lost my grandma so we canceled the 7 days in the city to save some of Don’s vacation time and will be going to Florida for a couple days instead.

I’m pretty excited actually because I’d originally offered up Florida as one of our trip options.  Don has been to Florida so many times he kind of dismissed it by offering up other trips and since he was stationed there for basic training I went with it with my own counter offers (especially since we just went to Disneyland in January).  I have wanted to go to Universal for the Harry Potter stuff (and last time I went to universal studios in LA or anywhere I was 12) and we’ve never been to Epcot.  I can’t believe it but we made an action packed theme park vacation for 3 ½ days.   I’ve bought us tickets for Epcot, Universal park hopper and for Busch gardens in Tampa.  Day 4 we fly home in the evening so we plan on going to the beach that day because let’s face it you can’t go to Florida without going to the beach and I’m a beach girl.  I Love the beach; I pretty much spent my childhood at the beach and it’s a great exfoliation opportunity for your feet.

Needless to say we're super excited, especially since Don will be traveling for work on our actual anniversary.  This isn’t something new; we’ve dealt with it before and really all that matters to us is the acknowledgement of starting our lives together which was 5 years before we made it official. 

Hopefully soon we'll be worrying about how to change diapers in a theme park or while waiting in line places.

An Oops that led to a room swap and our weekend

We’ve been busy working on the craft room and the game room.  We finished what was supposed to be the game room last year and then packed up all of my crafts, sewing and collections and moved them into said game room.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago where we started painting the craft room (now that last year’s construction is over).  We chose to do it in 2 colors so that meant long drying times to ensure it was dry before spraying the next color.  Well after spraying 2 coats of gray and waiting it became apparent it’d be so much work to tape off the ceiling and walls so Don decided to roll the Orange.  Much easier and it came out great!

 Painted walls and new cabinets 

My craft and sewing tables as I attempted to organize

So once it was all dry we started hanging cabinets for storage.  They look great and then we moved in furniture and I started digging through boxes to begin sorting and putting things away.  That’s when the problems started.  The majority of my Scrapbooking stuff wouldn’t fit in the cabinets.   Then we set up the game table in the game room and there wasn’t enough space to move around the table with Chairs.

That led to us revisiting Home Depot for shelving to put in the game room and once that was in we moved all the furniture out of the craft room and into the game room.  Guess whose room that game room is now.  Yep, mine and I’m still going through boxes but at least the cabinets in that room can hold all my craft stuff and then we moved the sewing cabinet back in there.  With the smallness of the room Don will do his painting in the game room and now he even has space to play his drums since the game table folds down to a smaller table. The added bonus to that is not just good exercise but it opens up the storage area under the stairs next to my desk.  So I get to use that space for anything I just want tucked away like my extra sewing machine or that box of vacation shirts I want to make into a quilt. Don is even thinking we could build a train layout around the room.  I think it’s a great idea.  I’d love to unpack the trains more than once a year for the Christmas tree.

my new room cabinets are filling up

Parker waiting to help me unpack this box

So while I’m doing all that unpacking  Don is going through all our music and reorganizing it all so it’s easier to find and put on our phones.  Yay! No more low volume older music versus high volume new stuff playing in the car.  It should all be leveled now.  That’s how we spent Saturday and then Saturday night we had tickets for the theater.  It was for the play Assassins .  When we were given the tickets I looked it up and was like huh, weird content for a musical.  Well it totally works and it even had us talking about it all the way home from Seattle.  I even looked up two of them because I wasn’t familiar with their stories.  No time like the present for a history lesson.

Sunday was nice and fairly lazy.  I unpacked a few boxes and reorganized some stuff and Don continued to work on the music.  We even played our first game in the game room last night.  A game Don was given for Christmas and I wasn’t sure I’d like it (Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures) given that it’s a starship combat game but it was fun.  I can see us adding the expansion packs to it over time.

That’s our last few weeks.  Here’s to a great week of unpacking.

Forever in our hearts and always on our mind

Dear Baby,

We can’t wait for your mom to find us and ask us to be your parents.  We don’t know if you’ll be a boy or a girl but we are excited to find out! I can’t wait to see your beautiful face in your first moments and hope we get to be a part of it with your birth mom. I know, even when you spit up all over my hair and shirt or have that up the back total blow out just how happy I’ll be to clean you up and how very grateful I’ll be that your birth mom chose us. 

I see so many cute things when I’m out shopping and think how great it’s going to be to bring it home for you one day. I admit though I have broken down and have a bunch of things already from jammies and onesies to burp cloths and bedding. You have so many quilts because your grandma is overjoyed you will be here someday, hopefully soon. Maybe you’ll have a favorite you just have to have with you all the time like my brother did. She loves to sew and also made you car seat covers so you can sleep soundly without the sun in your eyes (although mom’s car has tinted windows to help with that). In fact when your grandma found out we were hoping for you, she bought the crib on our wish list.  We haven’t put it up yet but when you’ve found us we will get the nursery all put together.  We also have the cutest red leather toddler chair for you when you start to grow and want your own personal chair like mom and dad have.  I’ve been collecting books for you too.  I can’t wait to read them to you every chance we get, but especially at bedtime.  I have many more on our wish list for you and hope you have many favorites among them.

Speaking of growing up, we are almost finished redoing the craft room and when you get a bit bigger you will get to have so much fun in there with us creating whatever you dream up.  You will get to finger paint and color, on paper, not the walls (we hope!) and play with clay and play-doh.  I can’t wait to see your creations.

Your birth mom will be forever in our hearts and always on our mind.You will always know her greatest sacrifice was out of love for you.

I hope you find us soon little one because we already love you so much and we can’t wait to meet you both. 

Love mom

Frequently Visited States

Our agency posts stats every month and it can be exciting or discouraging.  This month was discouraging. We met most of the expectant parent intakes (they are shown by a number so they are anonymous except to the agency) except they chose state restrictions. I know to help make the letters they do get more manageable they are asked for specific things they are looking for in hopeful adoptive parents so the agency can narrow it down for them based on our own profile questionnaires. Now I understand where they are coming from with over 600 waiting families it'd be daunting to get even a third that many profiles to go through. They may also want to be sure they are close enough for face to face visits and we understand that but seeing state restrictions for states we frequently travel to, hurts. So this post is about states we frequent or could frequent because of close ties or we drive through it on our regular trips south.

California:

Don and I were both born and raised (for the most part since my parents divorced I also lived in NV and WA) in southern California. We routinely travel to visit family and friends there and thus we also drive through Oregon, so an expectant mom in Oregon or California would have frequent visits lining up with our travels and would be just one more bright spot for additional visits home.  We always stop to visit friends in Northern California then head south and stop to see them again on our way home.

Now on top of our  California connection we also have direct connections to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. 

Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee:

Don worked in Atlanta for over 2 years so we grew many friendships and that we'd visit multiple times a year, including Dragon Con weekend.  We are guaranteed to be there one to two times a year.

Alabama and Tennessee are less likely now but if we had birth parents from there it'd be a priority. When Don was working out of Georgia we'd drive to see our friends but since he's been mostly home we plan on Dragon Con weekend every year so we spend 4-5 days together on vacation in Atlanta and have a blast catching up.  Now one of my best friends lives in Tennessee and we text, Facebook, and face-time regularly. In fact recently we face-timed while Don was driving to our friends place on super Bowl Sunday for about 20 mins. (Don was driving so it was safe).  I haven't been to Tennessee since I was 16 but I do look forward to going back to visit and what better excuse than the parents of our child live there and so does my BFF.

Texas:

My brother and his family moved to Texas and Don and I lived in Texas for a couple years so we have friends and coworkers we visit there. Don even travels for business to Texas still so traveling there is easy and frequent. Speaking of Texas, we used to drive to surrounding states for the weekend or vacations so that's not out of line for us either. We LOVE to travel!

So in short, I understand most parents can't guarantee multiple visits from a far off state but we can and so it's discouraging to see the limitations each month when we'd otherwise be a letter they'd receive; especially when it's places we regularly visit anyway. It of course doesn't mean they'd give us a second look but it's the fact we could be considered and not automatically discarded based on where we live. I know it'll continue because it's the way this process works.

 I also know that no matter where our baby's birth parents live we'll be thrilled to come for visits.

 Our Dragon Con meet up

 with our friends from Atlanta in Italy

Goofing off in New York

Giant Silent Void or 28 months and counting

I realized recently that I haven’t really talked adoption in quite awhile in my blog posts except in short blurbs.

Well, honestly there is nothing to report.  We’ve had a few contacts that were scams and were presented with a couple different situations that were way out of our range but otherwise it’s a GIANT.SILENT.VOID.   

I’m so glad to have the friends I’ve made in the adoption community though to share the wait and the ups and downs of it all. Today’s topic seemed to be the Last Minute Hospital List and someone mentioned only 8 more months until they’re eligible for the National list and I said yep, us too, especially since we aren’t eligible for the agencies local list since we live 2 states away.  She responded with I hope you never see that list and I needed that.  I hope neither of us sees that list but it’s good to know it’s there.

So with not much going on I’ve taken the time to refresh this blog with easier to navigate pages and have updated the color scheme. I’ve also starting making a private adoption website as just another way to spread the word it’s been 28 months and counting and we are SO ready to be chosen.

The website is nice because I can keep it pretty streamlined unlike Facebook, Twitter, or many of our other sites where you have to dig through tons of info.  I like that if all you want to see are pictures I can have nothing but tons of pictures to look at or if you want bullet points on some of our favorite things it’s there. It’s definitely a work in progress but if you would like to have a look you can find it HERE. 

On another note we'll be going to a Super Bowl party at our friend's place and I can't wait.  Really hoping for a Denver win but we'll see how it goes, Carolina was a tough team this year.

After that it's home where I have to prep for Jury Duty for the next few weeks. Really not looking forward to that at all.