Home Visit

We leave today for our Mission Kiddos trip.  We are excited but I’ve got so much to do!!!  I wanted to give a quick update.  We had our home visit last night and it went GREAT!  The social worker was so nice and easy to talk to.  The kids did great.  She asked them a lot of questions about how they feel about the adoption.  Ellie was so excited to answer the questions.  We had the kids go play while Jody and I talked to her by ourselves for a while.  Cole kept changing costumes and then he would come down, crack the door, and stick one arm in and wave until we noticed him.  Then when we told him to go play, he would open the door and ask us some silly question just so we could see his costume and then run off.  He ended up as Mr. Incredible at the end of the evening.  The social worker asked Jody and I about our childhoods, marriage, and kids.  Then she asked the kids to show her around the house.  While Ellie was showing her around, our doorbell rang and it was a bunch of our friends from the neighborhood Christmas Carolling.  How perfect!  Not only that, my mom had just brought us some reindeer cookies so I had treats to pass out to them!  PERFECT!!!!!  When she left we found our friends and joined in the Christmas Carolling.  Cole went as Mr. Incredible.  The timing of the carolling was so perfect it almost seemed staged.  It reminded me of a time when Ryan and Ellie were little.  Jody had gone out of town and for some reason we decided to have a welcome home party for him when he got back.  For Christmas Jody had paid for someone to come and clean my house every other week – which is probably the reason I felt like having a “Welcome Home Party.”  Keep in mind that I had never done this before and I haven’t done it since.  Jody travels all the time so I have lots of opportunities but this is the ONE time we did it.  So, we made a cake that said “Welcome Home” and some cookies and lemonade.  My house was so clean (which is not usually the case)!  My friend Kris stopped by to bring me something just a little bit before Jody was supposed to be home and here we were!  We were all dressed and the house was spotless.  The table was decorated with our cake and cookies.  She came in and sat down so I offered  her some cookies and lemonade!  She was very impressed.  It was so funny because that was her first time to visit so that was her impression of us and it was soooooooooooo not how we really are!  Most days if you stop by our house, there will be kids running here and there, mud tracked in on the floor, shoes and toys in random places, dishes in the sink and on the counter, papers and mail spread out in the kitchen, ect.  While she was there, I felt like such a fake!  Of course, I told her that this was far from being the “true” me!  Anyway, just  a funny memory!  Kris and I still laugh about that!  Here are a couple of carolling pictures.

 

Not only did he have on a costume for carolling, it’s 4 sizes too big for him!