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We had a holiday dinner with a small group of Sharon’s co-workers. One of Sharon’s co-workers Michelle and her husband Dave had us over to their new home for dinner. We each had to buy an ornament that fits the other person’s interests or personality. We all had fun with it, and we had a great meal.

Our friends Kimberly & Peter had their annual gingerbread house making party. They have a 2 year old son Finn, and are expecting a new baby in January. Kimberly & Peter are also friends with our other friends Gary & Melissa. I recently attended the baby shower for Melissa who is also expecting a baby. Both couples are expecting their new babies on the exact day in January. What a wonderful coincidence!

We went to the Babies R Us Babyfest so we could attend the free classes. We sat through the class “Sleep habits for your child” which is a topic of interest to us. Sharon has been reading sleep books and has learned that good sleep habits at an early age can help with learning.

My friend Mike from Philadelphia came to visit. Last year we went to his house in Philly. He and his wife have 3 little kids and we had a great time decorating their Christmas tree, and making cookies together. 2 of Mike and Kristen’s kids are going blind, but they’re doing an amazing job with these kids! The oldest one, Mikey is 8 and we went to his wrestling match. He’s almost blind and he’s wrestling which is pretty great!

We had diner with our friends Eric and Corrine’s house. Eric was the best man at our wedding, and Corrine is expecting another baby this summer!!!

This is the weekend to put up our Christmas tree and holiday decorations! It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. We play holiday tunes while we trim the tree. All of the ornaments on our tree are either handmade by Sharon when she was younger, or made by Sharon’s Mom and Grandmother. The ornaments have special significance to Sharon since both of those important people in her life are now gone. Our nieces have now started to make an ornament for our tree each year. We also started a tradition that we buy an ornament from each country we visit while we travel the world. Its fun to put these ornaments on the tree and remember our travel experiences! Lance bought soy eggnog this year so we’ll have to see if it tastes as good as the real thing?? When we finish all the decorations we’ll relax with a pizza.

We’re a few weeks late, but we went to dinner tonight for Sharon’s birthday. We picked a local restaurant with a live band. We learned this local spot also has free salsa dancing lessons every Sunday evening. W e met dancing and love to get out and dance together!

Today is Leo’s 3 year old birthday party. He’s the son of our friends Monica & Dave, and he’s Sharon’s Godson. Last year Leo was into construction trucks, this year he’s into race cars. Lance bought Leo a race car that you smash into walls so all of the doors fly open and lights flash. We quickly learn that the smash-up car is a big hit with Leo and his little 1 year old brother Sam!

Thanksgiving! Lance’s Dad Travis and his Brother Dane join Sharon’s family for Thanksgiving. It was a great feast, and a great day to relax and enjoy family! We have many blessings, and family is the most important one!

Our friend Kate stops by with her little son Ruslan who is adopted from Russia. He’s 5 now, and soooo smart! We took him to the park nearby to play. Kate and her husband Greg are waiting to finalize their second adoption from Russia and are hoping Ruslan will soon have a new little sister!

Our friends Martin & Lori have a new daughter. Little Gabrielle arrived into the world today with a big head of black hair. She looks adorable in the first pictures. We can’t wait to meet her!

Lance attends an adoption conference while Sharon goes out of town on business. He meets lots of great people and finds the sessions pretty educational.

Sharon attends a baby shower for her friend Melissa who is due in January. Baby showers and Mother’s day are a bit hard for Sharon since she’d still not a Mom. It was a lovely shower, and a nice opportunity to celebrate Melissa & her husband Gary’s happiness about their new baby on the way.

Lance goes to Israel and Turkey for business. He doesn’t typically travel for work, so he’s excited. Both are places he’s always wanted to visit. He’s hoping to get in some touring, even though it’s a work trip. He also recently got to take a business trip to Germany. He studied German language in High school, and he had fun practicing it at the last day of Oktoberfest in Munich for his business started!

Our Resolve infertility support group met again today. We take turns hosting the group at each other’s homes. All of the couples in our group are trying to adopt, except for one couple that is still undecided. The woman is eager to adopt but her husband is hesitant. We feel for them, because it must be tough not to be in sync on such a major topic. We’re happy that as a couple we’re both completely on the same page about pursuing adoption as our path to form a family!

We toured the Farnsworth House by the architect Mies van Der Rohe. Since Sharon studied design, she’s into architecture and she drags Lance around on lots of tours. Lance actually loves it because he’s into history, as an engineer he appreciates the structures. He’s also starting to really appreciate the clean lines of modern design. The Farnsworth house is gorgeous!

Sweetest Day! We didn’t specifically plan anything romantic but we spent a nice day together. We went to one of last Farmer’s Markets of the year, and walked to breakfast. We spent the day hanging out and then watched a movie. Lance loves movies and we rent lots of them through Netflix.

Sharon attends the award winning musical Jersey Boys with her friends. Lance has no interest in musicals so he stays home to play Xbox 360 instead. Sharon also recently saw Wicked, and Oklahoma with our 2 nieces Amy and Sara. Now we’ll get tickets to take our niece Amy to see Phantom of the Opera. Amy is 13 and enjoys singing and dancing with her school groups, so the musicals are fun for her.

The big Marathon is today. We’re not running but we have lots of friends that are participating. The weather is terrible for a marathon with record heat & humidity. It’s so bad that the marathon is actually canceled because so many runners are dropping from dehydration. Luckily all of our friends are OK, and some even successfully complete the event. Impressive!

We depart on vacation to Croatia. Hooray!!! We picked Croatia as our destination because of its Mediterranean climate & food, its history as a world port for centuries, and because it’s stunning coastline. Lance’s Mom Sylvia joined us. Sylvia is a world traveler, and its one of the few destinations she had yet to visit. Sharon did the destination, flights, and hotel planning. Lance and Sylvia planned the tours and daily sightseeing itineraries. We toured Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The war torn areas of Bosnia were still pretty depressed economically, and it was clear how much the people are still struggling in some areas there. The areas we saw of Croatia and Montenegro were restored and beautiful. Lance and Sylvia loved the history, while Sharon enjoyed the art and architecture. We had a great trip!

Today we attended our Resolve infertility support group. It’s a national organization with a local area chapter. All the couples attending are trying to adopt, so have a lot in common. We all encourage each other’s dreams to start families.

Our friend’s Jeff and Leeanne and their 2 daughters, Ginny & Kate, recently moved back to Chicago, so we’re excited to get to spend more time with them again. We joined them for a Labor Day weekend neighborhood festival. Lance and Kate have become special friends. She’s 10 and seems to appreciate his silly side. We played carnival games and Lance won stuffed animals for both girls.

Sharon’s friend Susan invited a group of business school classmates over for dinner. Susan has a lovely home and she’s a great cook. Susan and Sharon went to cooking school in Italy together so they were eager to try out the new recipes from their classes. Dinner was delicious!

Summer is winding down. Summers are so wonderful in the city and there are so many fun things to do for families. We look forward to the days when we’ll have kids and we can experience all of the fun summer events together as a family!

We got rained out for the air show this weekend. We have a great view of the show from our patio and typically have a big party for friends & family, but the weather was so crummy that the show was cancelled. Bummer. Sharon likes to throw parties and mix groups of friends. Many of her friends have become friends with each other over the years, which is great!

Our weekend was spent with Sharon’s nieces who are 6 and 8 years old. We babysat while Sharon’s brother Mike and his wife Chris went to the weekend-long Lollapalooza music fest. We spent the day at the Museum of Science & Industry. It was the girls’ first visit to the museum, and they especially loved watching the baby chicks hatch and then try to take their first steps. Then we went to the Cirque Shanghai, which is a circus of acrobatic performers. Both of the girls are taking gymnastic classes now, and said the performance was the most amazing thing they had ever seen! Our hands were sore from clapping so much!

We went back up to Wisconsin for the weekend with Renee and Chris. Renee’s brother Randy volunteers at the Experimental Air Museum in Osh Kosh, and he got us tickets for the big air show up there. There were hundreds of planes, and Randy gave us the special tour. Lance and Chris were especially thrilled with the restored P51 WWII fighter planes.

Sharon went to Paris for work, and stayed over the weekend in Lyon, France to meet her co-worker’s new baby son. Lyon is gorgeous and the food was delicious. It’s a historic town, and the center of gastronomie (fine dining) in France. The baby is 4 months old and adorable, with these great big eyes! It was hard to leave him when it was time for me to go home. We so much want a child of our own, but I’m really happy for my friend that she’s filled her dream of starting a family.

We spent the day with Sharon’s family. Her brother Jim and his wife Laura invited the family over to see Sister Vicki, who was visiting from California. She is the cousin of Sharon’s Mom, and a Nun in the Catholic church. Vicki is this amazing, sweet, fun, lady that works hospice for cancer patients. Sharon’s nieces put on a talent show, where they danced and sang and pretended to be rock stars like Hanna Montana from the Disney channel. Very cute!

We just returned from a weekend with our friends Renee and Chris in Wisconsin. They just bought a piece of land north of Sheboygan, and wanted us to come up and see it. They were hoping that we would buy property nearby, so we could spend weekends together with our families. We like the idea, and we had a nice trip, but it was a four hour drive which unfortunately is way too far for a weekend summer cottage! While we were there, we went to a historic Indian burial site. Lance and Chris were intrigued by the ancient arrowheads.

Was our wedding anniversary! Lance planned a picnic for Sharon and some of our close friends on the lakefront to watch the city’s fireworks display. Lance doesn’t cook, so he joked that he’d be serving our guests pop-tarts and cereal. J He actually planned a delicious dinner and it was a perfect evening!

We just returned from a rode trip to Omaha. Lance’s college room-mate Adam got married over the weekend. It was great to share in Adam & Megan’s special day, and to meet their families. We drove through Iowa on the way home and stopped at a Frank Lloyd Wright house there. We also stopped at the Herbert Hoover presidential library and boyhood home. The library was really more of a museum, and it was fascinating since we both enjoy history. We stayed in a lovely Victorian Bed-n-Breakfast in a small town in Iowa. It was a lot of driving, but a relaxing weekend!

We just returned from Sharon’s company trip to Bermuda. We had the days to ourselves, and the evenings were spent with Sharon’s co-workers. We toured the island, did a jet-ski safari, and went swimming with the dolphins. We also just spent time in the sunshine hanging out at the gorgeous beach. I figured the dolphins were the highlight for Lance since he loves animals, but he really loved going “full throttle” on the jet skis! It was wonderful to have the time with each other in such a beautiful place, and to have time with Sharon’s co-workers in a fun-in-the-sun setting. It was also great that the company paid for the trip!!!

We’re also planning a trip in the fall with Lance’s mom, Sylvia, to Croatia. She’s been everywhere, but not to Croatia yet, so we’re excited she’ll join us. Croatia looks beautiful! It should be a wonderful combination of the things we both love to do. There will be Roman ruins for Lance who loves archeology and art for Sharon. It’s on the coast with a Mediterranean climate, medieval walled cities, waterfalls, national parks, and islands. Sounds relaxing and we can’t wait!!!

Now that we finished our renovation project, we’re ready for vacation planning. Later in June we’ll go to Bermuda with Sharon’s company for a free incentive trip. We’ve also planned weekends this summer in Omaha for a wedding with Lance’s college friends, and a weekend in Wisconsin with Sharon’s friends that recently bought property there for a family vacation home. Sharon has been dreaming about building a vacation home so we’d have a summer place for our kids as they grow up. We’d love a place nearby that would be big enough for our immediate family, and extended family to come visit too! Right now it’s just a dream since we don’t have any children yet, and we’re still in the thinking stages about the best location.

Hip hip hooray! We finally finished our renovation project in the room that will become the nursery. What seemed like a small project, turned into a much bigger project once we got started. What a mess! We’re finally done and got everything cleaned up. Now we can start shopping for children’s furniture…

We took a trip to Wisconsin for the weekend. Lance’s brother Dane is a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, and so is Sharon. We rented a cottage designed by FLW for the weekend. It’s only one of two houses in the world designed by FLW that can be rented for overnight stays. It was great! The rest of Lance’s family came and stayed nearby so we could all hang out for the Memorial Day weekend together.

Sharon went to visit her friends Shari & David and their 2 young sons for the weekend because she had a business trip nearby. The boys are now aged 1and 2 so we had fun riding bikes (with training wheels), playing in the park, and taking baths with all of their tub toys! Shari & David sent back their infant car seat and 2 bases for Sharon and Lance’s cars. Now we’ll be ready to transport a baby safely in our vehicles!

We took a trip to visit Lance’s family for the weekend of Mother’s Day. Sharon was missing her Mother, and was sad to not yet become a mother herself yet. We had a great time with lance’s Mom Sylvia and the rest of his family. Lance’s nephew Sean was running in a track meet so we all went to cheer him on. We had a fun dinner at one of those Japanese restaurants where they chop all the food at your table. Sylvia liked having all of her kids and grandkids together to celebrate Mother’s Day!

We’re waiting to hear the news about Sharon’s company incentive trip. Her boss shared the possible itineraries which will be either Spain, Italy, Denmark/Copenhagen, or Bermuda. We’re hoping for the Italy or Spain trip and are eager to hear the destination!

We spent the day with our nieces, aged 6 and 8. They’re the kids of Sharon’s brother Mike. We had tickets for the “true story of the 3 pigs” which was interactive musical theatre where the audience got to vote on whether the wolf was really guilty. It was cute and the girls loved it! Then we took them to the local nature museum. Their favorite exhibit was the butterfly sanctuary. None of us had ever seen such beautiful butterflies!

We went to Austin Texas for the weekend over the Easter holiday. Lance has family in the Texas area since both his parents were born in Texas. Sharon has friends in the area too. We stayed with Sharon’s friend Cindy and her cute little dog Lucy! Lance had fun playing with Lucy all weekend, since he loves dogs! We intended to listen to lots of live music in warm weather, but it was freezing and sleeting all weekend. We went to the LBJ boyhood home and library. It was our first trip to a presidential library and it actually was pretty interesting. We had lots of great Tex-Mex food and a little shopping for Sharon!

Went to lunch with some friends today. They told us about using their 9 month pregnancy periods to get ready for their babies. One of the things mentioned was selecting a pediatrician before the baby was born. It sounds like a great idea to find a good local pediatrician now so we’re ready when the time comes!

Sharon’s Dad, Jim, came over for dinner tonight. Sharon tries to make him dinner at least once per week since he appreciates her home cooking. Jim lives alone since his wife Anne (Sharon’s Mom) died. He was telling us stories over dinner about his childhood, and about how he got started in his career as an electrician. It’s always fun for us to hear the stories, and he always has some new story he never told us before! Tonight he told us that he was hit by cars twice while growing up, because he ignored the school crossing guards!!!

He grew up part of a large family that emigrated from Ireland. He was born here, but his parents and many of his relatives were born in Ireland. He has a beautiful singing voice and Sharon has fond memories of him singing her Irish lullabies when she was young. At our wedding, Dad (Jim) took the microphone and sang an Irish lullaby to Sharon. It as beautiful!

Dad (Jim) was the only member of his immediate family that never has been over to visit Ireland. Weeks before our wedding, he decided that he wanted to attend a large family reunion held in Ireland. Relatives would be gathering from around the world. Sharon organized the trip for her Dad and some of her cousins. It was fascinating to see the towns where both of his parents were born, and to see the house were his Dad grew up. We learned about how our French ancestors came to Ireland to help the Irish overthrow the English years ago. The combined French/Irish troops lost the battle, but our French ancestors stayed on in Ireland. At the reunion, we got to meet our relatives from both the French and Irish sides of the family. Dad (Jim) got to reconnect with cousins he hadn’t seen since childhood. It was a truly wonderful experience to spend the time together! Lance and I hope one day to help our child with a family tree for both his/her adoptive and birth families!

WhooHoo! We got our DCFS cards in the mail as foster parents registered in the state of Illinois. We were approved months ago, but now we have all the official paperwork in our hands. We don’t intend to become foster parents, but now we’re all set to care for a child in the interim period. We passed all the background checks, took all the parenting classes, had our home inspected, had our finances reviewed, had numerous references interviewed regarding our character, and now we’re officially ready! (or as ready as anyone can be to become a parent!)

We met our friends Roy and Vanessa for brunch today. They're adoptive parents of a beautiful little red-haired daughter Gabriella. She came into their lives when she was about a week old, and now she's 15 months already. She was really cute running over to greet us at the restaurant! We brought her a picture book about adoption that we bought at the adoption conference bookstore yesterday.

We recently gave her another book called "This is Me!" which is a memory book that Roy & Vanessa can use to keep her milestones. It has pages for memories & photos from both her birth and adoptive family. We've been looking for a book like this for our future child. We looked at many books, until we found just the right one! We were so happy with this book, that we gave them as gifts for all of our friends with adoptive children!

Our friends Kate and Greg, who are adoptive parents, invited us to join them at an adoption conference. (Kate and Greg have an adorable 3 year old son they adopted from Russia; and they are heading back soon to adopt a daughter.)

We had to get up at 6am on a Saturday for an early start at this conference, but it was well worth it! Maybe we're a bit over-eager as hopeful soon-to-be parents, but we want to learn as much as we can, so we can be the best parents possible.

These are the classes we took at the conference:

- The Heart of Being Brothers & Sisters which was about attachment between and among siblings. This was an important topic for us because we hope to have more children one day in the future.

- Parenting with Love and Logic talked about suggestion for guiding children to solve their own problems.

- Enjoying an Open Adoption discussed the practicalities of incorporating our children's birth families into our new family.

- Medical, Developmental and Behavioral Issues in Children was an interactive session lead by 2 pediatricians.

- Panel Discussion with Real-life Open Adoption Stories was a panel of birth and adoptive parents who are living open adoptions. They shared the joys and challenges that the experiences have added to their lives.

- Navigating the Challenging Behaviors of Children was about parenting kids with different learning styles.

It was wonderful to meet so many others sharing our same experiences, and comforting to hear about so many successful families formed through adoption!

Hello there!
We got the preliminary word that our home study paperwork will soon be approved. We've been filling out forms, going through background checks, having our condo safety inspected, and sitting through lots of interviews. We're encouraged and excited to almost be ready for the next step!

We've been taking classes during this time, as part of the process. Here are some of our classes so far:

- Becoming an Adoptive Family/Core Issues in Adoption
- Child Development from 0-5 Years of Age
- A panel discussion on Birth Parent/Adoptive Parent Family Relationships
- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects

We've been doing a lot of reading on adoption, but it's great to also connect face-to-face and learn from others experienced with adoption.

We took 2 of our nieces out tonight. Sharon’s brother Jim and his wife Laura have 2 daughters, Amy & Sara (ages 12 & 10). Amy recently won the district spelling bee so we wanted to take her out to celebrate. Amy took a school trip with her choral group to sing at Disney World last month, so wanted to do something musical with her. Her class had performed some of the songs from the musical “Oklahoma” so we found a local production. She thought the story was weak (because it was only a love story) but she sat on the edge of her seat for all of the musical numbers. It was fun to see both Amy and Sara react to the performers!

Amy mentioned a babysitting class. We told her she’ll be our number one babysitter as soon as we’re ready!

Hooray! Our home study has been approved!!! We had to wait for our home study approval before we could post our profile on this site. We're eager to start our family, and are excited to post our profile on ParentProfiles.com!

We recently joined an online chat for pre-adoptive families. Some of the adoptive families we met through the chat have been successful in forming their families through this website. We're hopeful that we'll have the same success making the right connection through this site!

Sharon read an article in “Adoptive Families” about online scrapbooking. Sharon is kind of an amateur photographer and carries a tiny digital camera around with her. She creates online photo albums of our friend’s kids, and so our families can share in our travel adventures.

The March/April issue of “Adoptive Families” magazine has an article about family travel, including reader reviews of folding travel strollers. We enjoy travel and hope to continue exploring with our kids! Most of our friends with kids think we’re crazy to think we’ll still be able to travel with children. We’re not ready to give up on this idea, because we think travel can open young minds. We want our kids to have lots of world and life experiences. Fortunately, we do have other friends that are successful taking trips with their kids. They tell us the secret to travel with children is keeping with certain parts of their routine wherever you are in the world. We’re looking forward to exploring the world as a family!

We now get a subscription to “Adoptive Families” magazine. It’s a great source for all kinds of adoption related info. We found an article on the most popular books for adoptive parents, and the most read children’s adoption books. Sharon’s brother Jim recently gave us a copy of the #1 book entitled, “1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children.” We also already have one of the top 5 children’s books entitled, “How I was Adopted” which is the same book we bought for our friends Roy and Vanessa, and their adopted daughter Gabriella.

Happy birthday to Lance! He just celebrated his 36th birthday! Nobody ever knows what to get him as a birthday gift, so this year he asked for parenting books. Our friend Kristen gave him an entire stack of her favorite books including Brain Games for Babies, Baby Minds, Super Baby Foods, The New Baby Book (guide to babycare), Baby Days (activities & games for enjoying life with a baby under 3) and What to Expect the First Year.
Our friend Kate also recently gave us the same book What to Expect the First Year.
so it must be a good one! We now have lots and lots of reading to do while we continue waiting…

We went to visit our friends Mike & Kristen and their kids for the weekend. It was reunion of Sharon’s grad school study group. There were 5 couples and their kids in one house overnight! It’s been over 2 years since graduation and all the couples are having kids. Unfortunately, we don’t all live that close to each other anymore, so we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like.

It was fun to see all the little ones and how fast they’re growing!! We played games and read lots of books. Lance was the human monster “ride” for all the kids. Sharon is somewhat of a shutterbug, and took tons of pictures of all the kids. Lance was offering to feed the kids and change diapers so he can get practice. The parents were more than willing to let him change their kid’s diapers! J

Our friends Shari & David called to offer us their car seat, since both of their sons have now outgrown the baby seat. The adoption agency reminded us that we’d need one in order to bring our future baby home from the hospital. Shari says the seat that she and her husband selected is the safest one on the market. We’re sure it’s a good one, because Shari works for a safety company and she takes safety very seriously!

Sharon’s sister Julie received a coaching award! She coaches kid’s athletics and is an athlete herself. The family is very proud of her and went to her award dinner to applaud her success. Julie lives nearby and she’ll be available to work with our kids’ athletic abilities! Julie is good at just about every sport, but her favorites are basketball and fast pitch softball.

As we mentioned in an earlier journal entry, our families have been wonderful about our plan to adopt. Sharon’s family has been touched many times by adoption and foster care, but adoption will be a new experience for Lance’s immediate family. His Mom Sylvia calls or emails Sharon for updates. (Lance is somewhat introverted, so Sylvia says she gets more info out of Sharon than she gets out of her own son! J) Sylvia says that she can’t wait to meet her new grandchild, and see what he or she will look like!

Sylvia is a retired school teacher, and she’s amazingly smart. She plays Scrabble competitively, has fun with crossword puzzles and Sudoku to keep her mind active. She’s also very physically active, and has become an avid golfer. She’s traveled to more exotic places than anyone we know. She recently took her grandson Sean to Portugal. It was his first trip abroad and Sean had a great time!

Lance’s Dad Travis is also excited about our plans to adopt. We’ve received very touching hand-written notes from some of his extended family about our plans. Travis’ sister Nell (Lance’s Aunt) sent us a note of encouragement, and a few articles she found for us on adoption. Lance’s Uncle Charles also sent a wonderful note of encouragement.

Travis is a retired pilot. He keeps busy restoring old cars, and is active with his church. He volunteers time to visit the elderly members of the church, and in the good weather he helps with construction projects in a program kind of like Habitat for Humanity. He likes to take his old cars for road trips. He volunteers at the National Parks in the summer. He’s spent 3 summers volunteering at Yellowstone now. He’s the kind of guy that makes friends everywhere he goes!

Both Travis & Sylvia are very close with their 2 grand sons, Sean and Ryan. More on Lance’s family in future journal entries…

Our families have been really supportive about our plan to form a family through adoption. Sharon’s Aunt Wynn and Uncle Bob adopted their son (Sharon’s cousin David) at birth. He’s now 40 years old with his own kids. Aunt Wynn has been especially encouraging, and has started a novena for our new family (That’s a Catholic prayer group!)

Sharon’s cousin Dan and his wife Julie adopted trans-racially from foster care. Their son John was impacted by cocaine when he was born, but he’s a healthy & happy young boy now. Dan & Julie also have been very encouraging about adoption, since it’s been such a great experience for their immediate family.

Sharon found a website for personalized storybooks called “My Creations.” We can create our child’s own unique storybook with their own special story! We want the story about how our family was formed to be a natural one for our child. We’ve heard that kids love to hear their own stories over, and over, and over again!!! J

Lance went to the library and checked out a stack of parenting books. The other night he was lounging on the couch after work reading the “Baby Whisperer” which is a book about helping your baby form good sleep habits. It was extremely sweet to see him so intently trying to learn about helping our future baby.

Sharon read a book titled, “A Love Like No Other” which is a compilation of touching stories written by adoptive families. It tells both the challenges and the joys of adoptive family life.
One of Lance’s library books was “Adoption for Dummies” which is kind of a funny title for a book, but it was helpful as we were getting started in the process.

Lance has been busy getting quotes from contractors to make some improvements to the room that will become the nursery. It’s too soon to really prepare a nursery, but we want to get the construction work done now before a baby arrives.

Lance is planning a trip for us with his extended family over Memorial Day weekend. His brother Dane is a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright FLW, the famous architect. Sharon is also a fan, so we’re renting a FLW house together for the weekend. People come from all over the world to stay in this special little house that was one of the built by FLW.

Lance’s sister Darla and her husband Scott are coming for the weekend too, with their sons Sean & Ryan. Darla, Scott and the kids will stay at an indoor water park nearby. The boys are aged 13 and 15 so they should love the water park. Lance will enjoy it too since he’s still just a big kid at heart and loves playing with his nephews!

Lance picked up a copy of the CD “Wee Hairy Beasties/Animal Crackers.” It’s a kids’ disc created by some of our favorite local rock bands. The band members wanted to record a disc appropriate for their own kids. Two of our favorite local music clubs also do kids concerts on Saturday afternoons. We love music and hope to get our kids dancing at an early age!

We had dinner at the home of our friends Maria & Brian. They have a beautiful family, and their 2 kids were adopted domestically. Maria has been great about sharing many of their adoption related resources with us.