It's Cold Up Here!!

O.K. So maybe I am exaggerating with the picture but it feels that cold up here. I squeezed in one more post in all the chaos packing and moving. I will never complain about the heat. I promise. This sucks! We are slowly getting packed up. My daughters are finally giving in to the move. It finally sunk in that no matter what they do, we aren't changing our minds. It will be an adventure and will bring us closer together. Now we need a baby brother to complete the picture- BUT PLEASE- after we get there- OK? It has to be getting close. We are at about 22 months. We are at the point where I can actually say without knowing deep down that I am lying to myself that it could happen, soon. I will bet before Christmas. I hope everything falls into place. Unless I get a referral, this is my last post from NH. See you at the other end.

Florida Bound- One Way Trip!!

We just accepted the offer from our buyers from Queens NY and they want to close in 3 weeks!!! I have alot to do to keep my mind off of Taiwan for a few weeks. If anyone notices a crazy truck with animals sticking out of it in all directions going down south- that will be us. I will post when I get online again. Wish me luck!

50/50-stress

Well most of you know that we are trying to sell our home. We along with countless others in the area with the unfortunate luck of having to sell during this time with the market being so bad. Last week we had a mother come to view from Queens NY. She looked at 30 houses before ours. That is what we have been up against. Buyers have the pick of the litter out there. So, I didn't get my hopes up at all. A day later my realtor called and told me that she will be coming Friday-yesterday for a second showing and her hubby will be flying in for it. They will be picking between two houses-ours and one four doors down! I couldn't believe it. The one down the street has the same builder as ours. It is priced $50,000 more than ours but has an inground pool and a finished third floor. Our house is an expanded cape with no third floor but we have an awesome finished basement with built in cabinets. So, to compare them is difficult. Well, yesterday they came and I have been beyond stressing about this!! The main reasons are first- my daughters are very upset about the possibility of moving this early. We put our house on the market very early because of the fear of not selling. We don't need to move to Florida until next October. So, they are in shock, angry, sad-you name it. My sixth grader is having an awful time. She is very attached to her friends. The buyers mentioned that if they make an offer, they would need to know that we can close very quickly! So, we all know that we will have to relocate possibly within 45 days to Florida. No place picked out to rent, schools not set up. AHHH!! A referral coming-probably as soon as we get in the truck and start driving. The second reason I am stressed is that we were told if we don't get an offer soon- before the snow flies, forget it until April. The third reason I am stressed is that we haven't decided what we are going to do for work down there yet. We may sell the Subway's up here and do something different or hold on to them and open one down there. The sticky thing is that for the adoption we need to have proven income, especially when I redo my homestudy when we get down there. They will ask me what we do. If we sell the stores up here, we will have no income until we open something new. I have come this far and a referral is coming soon. I don't want to risk losing it. I don't know if they just check your previous tax returns, because that would show that we own businesses. I need input! We ideally want to hold onto the stores up here, but we are having a hard time keeping them stable with the help and we don't have anyone to run them yet. 45 days won't give us much time. So, back to the house selling- I got off the track. They as of now- Saturday afternoon are still thinking and will choose between the two. They are going to make their choice after they fly home at the beginning of the week. Just put me out of misery! God, making me wait this long is a killer. If they buy it, I will have mixed emotions- sadness for my children, but extreme relief for myself. I will let you guys know as soon as I hear.

We Are Leaving On A Jet Plane!

Florida here we come! We leave Wednesday for a five day trip to Punta Gorda to pick out all our home choices. Even though this isn't a leisure trip, it'll work for me. After all the car trouble and house selling trouble, I can't wait. I ended up getting a new car, so that is all settled. As far as the house selling,NOT! The realtors came over last night and suggested dropping at least $25,000. We dropped $20,000 for now. The slow times are coming ahead as soon as the snow falls, so we are hoping to spark some interest before November. With this being the fact, a plane ride sounds great to me. We may even squeeze in a day at the beach looking for shark teeth. My daughter loves to do that. I am going to leave my troubles behind and for five days not worry about houses or the phone not ringing from my adoption agency, which by the way, I have actually not thought too much about lately. A whole three weeks has gone by without listening to every ring of the phone and checking emails constantly. So, now I am suddenly at 21 months and it is looking like I am almost at the finish line. Even if it stretches out until Christmas, we are only talking a few more months. I can't see it stretching past 24 months. I probably shouldn't say that, but my gut feels like it is coming. Not so soon, but it is coming.Or should I say HE is coming.

I had A Crash!

I haven't posted lately because I have been preoccupied with my car predicament. I was driving home from work last week-alone thank god and an old man pulled out of a side road right into me. I was going about 45 mph. So basically my minivan is alot smaller on the side now and crumpled. We were very content not to have any car payments right now. We were going to drive my van for at least another year and Billy's the same or more. The damage to the car came to almost $5,000. If I traded my car in when it is repaired I will only get about $3500 for it, so do the math. We needed to get a new car with the check from his insurance company. So, with the check for $4500 and the trade in for $1000 with the damage, we got a new car. Not a minivan, but a car to replace what will be Billy's in the future. So now we have two small cars with the hope in a year we can get a new minivan. It is a really cute car. We are happy, we made out well considering the inconvenience. We have a small car payment and a safe car. But, we do have two children and one more coming---well I don't know when, but coming. So, the van needs to come first. Today, I had to part with my rental vehicle which I have become quite attached to the last week. It is a Chrysler Aspen-oh my what a nice SUV. It is like a bus. I felt so powerful. I am almost mad they gave it to me. What a tease. So, it was a sad day for me. Maybe someday I will have one.

We celebrated 13 years!

Today Billy and I have been married for 13 years. We didn't actually celebrate anything, except by sharing rolos at work together this morning. Now that I think of it, we never got a chance to eat them. Oh well, Billy got me a beautiful frame that holds baby pictures- One for birth,three months,six months and a year. I cried. When we get our referral I will put in the birth photo. I also got a wall clock for our new house in Florida from my girls. The thirteen years since we got married has gone by like a rocket, but this waiting for a referral has been like a lifetime. What the heck? We go down to sunny Florida in a couple of weeks to choose all our house colors, flooring and other good stuff. Now we just have to sell this place. You want to talk about depressing- we had an open house yesterday and NOBODY came. That is a scary thing when you have a house being built in another state. Since our house has been for sale, two people have come by. It is sad. It is an adorable country house. I would take it with me, if I could. Everybody seems to want those mansion looking houses with the open concepts. Ours is more traditional with the rooms broken up, but it is still big and I think it is nice. I feel bad for our house. Poor little house. We just need to find the right family for it. I will keep you posted.

Create Your Own!

I Have Been Tagged!!

Myspace Stuff

I have been tagged by Island Boy. I was tagged quite a while ago by my friend Ann and never got a chance to continue it. So, this time I will play along.

You have to post these rules before you give the facts. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. When you are tagged, you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged & to read your blog! O.K.-Here we go...

Marie is my middle name

M- Movies- I love movies. I am a big Will Ferrell type movie fan. I love Farrelly brothers films. My favorite movies right now are Blades of Glory and Knocked Up.

A- Animals of course!! I love all creatures with or without fur and feathers. They are my buddies and I need to be surrounded by them at all times. Animals rock.

R- Rocking Roller Coaster. Disneyworld is my favorite place and that ride is one of my many favorites. I actually go through withdrawal if I can't ride it for a long time. Test Track would be my ultimate favorite but I don't have a T.

I- Independence. My husband and I have always been self-employed and I couldn't go through life working for someone else ever. We love to have our independence to do what we want when we want it.

E- Exploring. I love to travel. I love to ride planes and see new places.

I now need to name five people to Tag. The winners are blogs I have been following for a while regurlarly. I feel like I know these people.

http://www.taiwantreasure.blogspot.com- Ann is hilarious.

http://lyadoptionjourney.blogspot.com- Kira is such a sweety pie.

http://www.learningpatience.blogspot.com- William has gotten sooo big!

http://chairmanmom.blogspot.com - I love the name! I started reading this blog a while ago. She is funny.

http://www.babyhomepages.net/dearonebaby/index.php- I have followed the story of Jeremiah for a year. I love to read her blog.



You guys have fun and continue the game.

20 Months !!

Yikes, that is a long time. I have been very busy keeping my house ready whenever prospective buyers come by, and we had to do some repairs and repaint rooms. All of you who have had to sell know my agony. I can't wait until it is over. I know people waiting months and months right now with the market so bad. I hope we are one of the lucky ones. With all my pets it makes it a challenge to get the house visitor ready. My home is always clean but I have to lock up the four cats and now they want me to cover the rats cage and the snakes tank because it gives people the willies. Come on! My rats look like fuzzy giant mice. All they do is sleep. How could they have scared anyone. The only thing that they can possibly do that would embarrass me would be -well it is kind of funny. They are both boys but one is a youngster and he is frisky. He humps my older guy. I feel so bad for Walter my big old fat one. Frederick just jumps right on. So I can see if they saw that going on, but really, it is quite funny and I just can't see how anyone would get frightened of them. As far as Pete our snake. Someone saw him-oh my god are you ready for this? He was SLEEPING on a log! Call the animal control. That freaked them out. He is secured in a tank and if you don't know, he is a baby. This isn't something from the movie Anaconda we are talking about here. I get so mad at people. You aren't buying the snake, you are buying the house. It is a very clean cute house and my clean caged animals shouldn't make a difference. So tomorrow I need to hide everyone. They said that if the rat cage is under a blanket that will be ok. So, apparently nobody will notice a blanket on a cage and wonder what is inside? Same with the snake. I don't know. I just guess I am getting a little ugly with this wait stretching on forever. No news in that area. I just wait for that CALL. I know it will come. We are still deciding whether to go directly to Florida if our house sells. It may be easier before the baby comes to make the two day drive with the kids and pets. I contacted FHSA-which some of you know well. They do homestudies and adoptions. I asked how complicated it would be to switch everything if I move to Florida before I bring him home. It is just basically an update with new police clearances and physicals. I would need to pay USCIS $385 to switch to a different state. So in total with the update-about $700. Not too bad considering my homestudy expires again anyway in February and it costs me about $300 to update. So I am paying and extra $400 but we will have the stress of relocating out of the way and rent is way less down there. So if we rent an apartment until the house is ready next August, I can start my girls in their new schools and we are golden. Hopefully if all goes well- yeah right baby will be home with us by May??? Is that too hopeful. A December referral? Maybe June. The funny thing is if I didn't mention- we are moving to Punta Gorda the infamous Hurricane Charley epicenter. All six Charlotte County schools are being re built but my girls' schools won't be done until Dec. 2008, so they will go to new schools in Pods-trailers I think. They asked me what their new schools look like and I said-They got blown down. They aren't too thrilled. The good news is that they will both have brand new schools after completion. That is pretty cool. Wow, I have typed away tonight. I will keep you posted of my many goings-on. My spirits are pretty high right now. So all is good up here in New Hampshire!

No New News To Share

I haven't posted much. I just realized it and decided that even though I have nothing to report, I should post something. Our house has been on the market a couple of weeks now and that has kept me preoccupied, which is good, because it gets my mind off the wait. I do think I will be waiting close to 2 years. It is a major bummer. This has caused some confusion for my family because I need to make an important decision. Our home in Florida won't be done until around August 2008. If our house sells soon, we are planning on renting in our town so my children can finish one year of school here. The problem is that our town is very small. Not even a street light. So I don't know if I can find a rental here. If I move out of town, my girls will have to switch schools. This really is not something I want to do to them, because in Florida they will have another new school. So, I was contemplating moving straight down to Florida. Our new town is big and there will be a rental. But, this is where the adoption wait causes a big problem. If he isn't home yet when we move- everything needs to be redone including the I600a which I just redid. International adoption is sooo irritating! Also if we move- none of our family will meet him because they are all up here. What to do!!! I looked up rentals here in town and it lists zero on every website. One thing I have to remember is our house may not sell for a year and then we won't need to worry about rentals, just going bankrupt. I guess my gut says I need to find a rental in town. I will just put up a big sign that says- Help No Home Family of Four with a gazzilion animals!

Our house is officially For Sale

Our house is now with all the other hundred homes in our very close area on sale. Not the best timing, but the house in Florida cannot wait for the market to get better and I heard it is going to get worse. So, we are going for it. Hopefully we won't still be showing it a year from now. I am already very tired of keeping it sparkling everyday. Our baby may never see the home we have lived in for the past six years. If all goes as planned, he will come home to a very tiny apartment jammed with cats, rats,parakeets,a snake, a gerbil and four family members. Or if the referral keeps dragging on- he will come home to Florida instead of New Hampshire to a brand new home. My life is always a question mark. Our ducks whom I love dearly have been transferred to a new home. My original plan was to drive them down to our new house, but the realtor didn't think it would help the selling of the house with ducks wandering all over the yard and feathers everywhere. I find it adorable- but some people are not animal people. So, I found them the best home I could. I also think it is for the best because it would be hard to find a temporary rental that allows ducks if this place sells quickly. I also don't know if they would survive the two or three day travel south. I will have new babies when I get down there. I am having a pond dug for them in the back. It isn't the same as having mine, but at least they have a safe home. I will keep you posted. If any of you are looking to move north- there is a nice house for sale with a great view!

19 Months down ??? months to go

Could we finally be getting to the finish line? Probably not, but it helps me to dream. I sent in my new photo album which was supposed to be more extravagent than my original. Well, the reply I got from my caseworker was that it turned out simple but well done. That's me! I don't have any extravagence in me even when I try.I included a card from each of my daughters written to the birthmom. We will see if it makes a difference. It is on its way to Cathwel now. I am hoping that we will hear by October so we can travel around March. By March our house will hopefully be sold and we will be moved into a temporary apartment until August when we move to Florida. I don't want to travel to Taiwan and have to come home and still show our house. That is not the time I want to worry about being clean. My coordinator said that families wait an average of 2-3 months to be picked after being shown, so if she is correct that we are being shown- October seems possible. Even Christmas will work for me. In February our homestudy expires for the second time. It appears we will be redoing it again. Last time it was pretty simple to redo. I think if we are in an apartment, we may have a bit more to have checked but compared to the immigration paperwork I redid, this will be a piece of cake.

You are wondering if the snake ate? NOOO! It has been almost 3 weeks. I have talked to reptile specialists and they said not to worry, yet. He is a baby so we can't let it go on forever, but they think he will shed soon. They said to continue with the thawed food and when he is hungry, he will eat. I will resort to live food when he is on his death bed. As he gets bigger, so does the live food and it eventually turns into looking like Walter our rat. I saw him drink for the first time yesterday. How funny. He slithered over to his bowl like a dog and stuck his head in and drank for a while. It was cute. He isn't fuzzy like my other pets, but he has his own cuteness.

Anyone else getting tired of this?

I was just suggested by my caseworker to redo my photo album. Perhaps that will help us to stand out. Basically translated into- our album is boring and the moms are picking everyone else instead of us. This is not something I want to do right now or ever. But of course knowing that our boring album has been sitting there for 19 months, I stayed up until 2am doing it. It isn't at all fancy. I don't do fancy. I am who I am. So, hopefully she picks us for us. Our house goes on the market in less than two weeks and the blasted snake still will not eat. I am not going to try live food. He will have to manage with thawed or live somewhere else. We have live food as pets and I cannot go to the pet store and purchase pets that we have as family members and watch him strangle them to death. Frozen rodents are alot easier to accept. I have a call into our local reptile dealer to see if they can help. So, no baby still, a skinny snake and going crazy getting this house together in time. This is my life. It is always interesting. Never dull around here.

OK, now I am ticked off! I told you that our-well my daughter's-new baby ball python ate his first meal last week. I was very excited because I had read in numerous articles how hard it can be. So...this week I figured it would be a piece of cake. I have gone through three mice in three days trying to get him to eat. I don't need this stress right now. He takes a look at it, smells it and then slithers over it to look at other things. Eventually he either falls asleep on it or I get so angry I put him back in his tank and throw it away. Man! Our house goes on the market in two weeks. I don't need anorexic snakes right now. Any suggestions from snake experts? I found myself actually having a conversation with him. I told him he was being very fresh and if he wants to starve then fine. I am going nuts! I have also decided I am never selling another home again. I don't want to be "super clean mom" right now. I had to pack up most of my girls toys and I have to nag them to keep everything spotless. I don't want to do this.I have done it before and it stinks. We are building a home in Florida and although it won't be complete until next summer, we are selling our home now. Or at least we will try. The market is horrible and we can't risk it not selling in time. Since there are so many other houses on the market, we have to keep it sparkling clean and we had to repaint and box up alot of our things. So we will pack it up if it sells and move temporarily into an apartment in NH so the girls can finish up one more year of school here. And hopefully in amongst all this chaos-A call will come with A BABY. It is too complicated to move to Florida without having the baby yet. I have to redo paperwork again. At least if I stay in NH, I can just update my homestudy. I will keep you updated on Pete's progress.

The snake ate! What a load off my mind. It was actually pretty interesting. I want to feed him again. It reminded me of the movie Anaconda when he raised his body up and looked at the food and then opened up his mouth. It was just in mini-version. It was the first time I saw inside his mouth and his teeth. Lots of them. Since his food is so tiny, I don't feel so bad about giving it to him. When he gets bigger and eats more, I am sure it will be tough to do.

So I got an email from my caseworker the other day. I haven't made a big deal out of it, because I have been let down before. She said she got an email from the orphanage and from what the coordinator said it "sounds" like we have been already been presented to the birthmothers. Now I don't get my hopes up because I was told this before. About four or five months ago. Also I know that just because we may have been shown, it doesn't mean we will be picked yet.So, I am still planning on a few more months. But you never know, do you...

18 1/2 Months...but who's counting?

Well, we got back from Canada. That got my mind off things for five days. When we got home we got my daughter the pet that she has wanted for a while. A Python. Yes, I did say a Python. Right now Petey-named after her favorite rock band star,Pete Wentz, of course- is only about 16 inches long. Now we don't know if Petey is really a Petey or a Patricia. That makes a big difference in size. Petey will get up to 3 feet on average. Patricia could get to be 4-5 feet. Now if you know me, you know how much I love animals. So, your question would be how could I feed mice to a snake. Well, it is frozen. I don't know if that makes you feel better. It makes me feel better and it is tiny. When Petey gets bigger, so will the mouse. We haven't fed him yet. The tiny mouse is in the freezer and on Friday we will have to defrost him. Yes, I did say defrost him. This sounds insane, I know. Then we give him to Petey and hopefully he eats it. We do this once a week.At first it was hard for me to hold the snake, but I am kind of getting used to him. He is kind of cute. So that brings our pet total to cats,birds,ducks,gerbil,rats-which Petey is not aloud to eat,fish and a python.

Niagara Falls, Canada

The Maid of the Mist