Ladies who lunch celebrate again

Yesterday the ladies who lunch celebrated with Julie, the referral of her beautiful daughter Kacey. Julie had put in her order for key lime tarts so they were the dessert du jour. Kacey received lots of nice gifts and as usual we all had a great time. Of our little group, three of the babies are home, two of the girls have their travel dates set, Julie has her referral and then there's me, the last of the group...Waiting patiently...

Bloggy tour of homes week 2

Last week we welcomed you to our home with pictures of our entrance and foyer. This week the theme is living rooms/family rooms and dens. As you noticed in last weeks post, when you enter our home, there is no real foyer, you walk right into the living room/dining room space. The original plans for this house called for the dining room to be where we currently have our living room and the living room to be where we have our dining room. I switched this around though as the space originally designated as the dining room is small and I wanted a larger space for all the dining room furniture and since we generally use the family room for us and even when we have guests over, the living room being on the small side didn't bother me.

I love that the living room has a half cathedral ceiling and is open to the dining room. The door on the right is a pocket door to the kitchen and the double doors lead to the family room and back hall. I love my red sofa and can't wait until all the local adopters have their babies so that we can take our own red couch picture. I have two other favorite pieces in the room, the antique radio which is next to the kitchen door and the gilded lily table which is in between the two club chairs.

The gilded lily table is from my parents. It is the one piece of furniture from their home, that I always wanted. When they moved to Florida a few years ago, they didn't have a place for the table so it came to us. The radio was in my maternal grandparents home and that was the one piece I had always wanted. I'm not a big antiques person, but I've always loved this radio.

The sofa has a funny story to it. The first time I saw the sofa was in a black and white publicity shot for the show Frasier, in the T.V. guide that comes with the Sunday paper. How I actually saw the sofa though all the cast sitting and hanging on it, I don't know, but I did know that I wanted that sofa. I called the show and spoke to their props department and asked about it and they put me in touch with the company that did the publicity shots who in turn, put me in touch with the company that made the sofa, Galerkin Design. They were so fabulous to work with, they sent fabric swatches and pictures and then shipped the sofa cross country and there you have it, a mail order sofa.

Our family room is where we spend the most time.

I love that it is open to the kitchen and that it is a large two-story voluminous space with lots of windows, a sky light and views. Looking out we see our small back yard, the covered patio, the deck, the dock and the pond.

There are always ducks and geese in the yard so always something to see out the windows.

Eammon's favorite part of the room is the big screen T.V. and that the sofa turns into a recliner. My favorite part in the room is my teapot table and chair set. It was made by a good friend of mine, blacksmith George Martell. He does gorgeous work and I love that we have a custom made piece. I also love the built in book shelves as it gives me a place to display all my stuff without cluttering up tables. At the bottom of the stairs we have a little wet bar and on the door that leads to the garage we have a dart board. I'm better at hitting the door than the board when we play, but it's fun.

Here are some pictures from before we purchased our home, they’re from the day we did our pre-purchase inspection. The first two pictures are the family room. The bottom two pictures are what we currently have as our living room, the previous owners used that space as their dining room.

   
Well, that ends today's tour. Check in next Friday to see our dining room.

One year Anniversary

It boggles my mind that one year ago today, our dossier was logged in at the CCAA. At that time we reflected back on the paper chase and we looked to the future and the thought that within 6-8 months we'd have little Baby S in our arms. Six, eight, ten, even eleven months have come and gone and now we are at 12 months, but we still wait.

Recently seeing other families whom we've known or followed since the beginning of our process, both local and online, receive their referrals I know that our time will be here soon. Though I get tired of explaining time and time again about the reason for the delays and re-assuring people that no, this isn't some scheme where we'll lose all that we own, for the most part I'm happy that people are interested and always ask what's happening. In many ways the wait has proved a very positive thing. I've met so many wonderful people, so many local adopters, the Utah bloggy girls and numerous online friends. Many of these relationships will be life long and had our referral come back last February, these bonds wouldn't have been made.

So, here we sit 365 days since log-in, 555 days since we were accepted by our agency and probably over 850 days since we decided to adopt and started looking into agencies. I know that there are twenty-eight days worth of LIDs between those matched and ours and I'm strangely calm.

So, what are we doing to acknowledge this anniversary? Nothing, just another quiet day here at the Shanahan home.

Utah and the bloggy girls rocked!!

I'm back from a wonderful and fun week in Utah, meeting some of the most fantastic adoption bloggy gals you could imagine. I know I'm the last to post, but I have a few good excuses: First, my camera wasn't cooperating all the time so I had to nick all the other girl's pictures; Second, I was much too tired to post earlier but after a long shower and a good nap, I'm feeling somewhat normal; and Third, now that everyone else posted I can fill you in on the nitty gritty especially since M3 revealed the truth about me, in video no less, letting the world know that I'm the instigator of bad behavior. Yesterday, Tuesday morning, I awoke around 6 am MST and had a fun day before flying out on the 11:30 PM MST red eye to Newark, finally arriving in Atlanta today, Wednesday morning at 10:30 am EST, so the fact that I'm posting at all today is amazing.

So, here's the week in excruciating detail. Last Wednesday I arrived in SLC just before midnight and was met at the airport by Kim & her husband Lee who were kind enough to pick me up at such a crazy hour. After a great night's sleep at their home (thanks Madison for allowing me to use your room), I finally got to meet the girls before we all headed up to Park City. I was then clued into and taught some of the local lingo so that I wouldn't sound like a complete outsider and I also learned about Wingers Creamy Amazing Sauce and how good it is on fries. We saw some of the local sights and then spent the night at the Park Plaza in a lovely 2 bedroom/3 bath top floor condo (Thanks for the condo David, it was wonderful!!). The girls had a blast checking out all the rooms, playing in the pool and trying on the bathrobes that were provided in the Master bedroom.

Friday was a big day which started with Lee giving us all a great tour of the area along with a mini history lesson. The mountains & canyons were amazing and beautiful, I can see why people would want to live there. We then went to the This is the Place Heritage Park which is a site not to be missed. The girls learned how to print newspapers and also how to make rag dolls. I was sorry that not all the buildings were open, but it was all very interesting.

Kim and family then brought me over to Lisa's adorable home where I along with my luggage were dropped off and I said good-bye to the girls until I would see them again on Tuesday. I met the voices from the phone, Lisa, Donna and M3 and we all chatted like long lost friends, not people meeting for the first time. It's been decided that Lisa is the hostess with the mostess because she laid out the welcome mat, treats and goodies to make us all feel so welcome in her home. The four of us then headed out for a mini tour of Salt Lake City and then up to Park City where we saw the Olympic Training Center, ate a wonderful lunch at Wasatch Brew Pub, I kissed a moose and we got to check out the goods of some of the artists who were setting up for the Arts Festival which started the following day.

The next morning started with a real treat, Lisa's Mom Sunny came over and made pannekaken (Norwegian pancakes) which we topped with butter, homemade jams, sour cream and powdered sugar.

Tiffany arrived just as we were finishing up so Sunny made another batch and we all ate and chatted until the last of the group, Julie arrived. M3 then passed out adorable t-shirts with all of our little one's names on them. Can you imagine this group getting together again and all of our children wearing their little shirts!! Yes, M3 knows the secret name (and I know she won't talk because I know where she lives!!) but until referral, the rest of you only get what you can see in the picture.


After gaining strength from our wonderful breakfast, we headed out to go shopping, hitting a massive scrap book store where the scrap book people of the group ogled and drooled over all the crafty items. It was time for lunch and we all loved the place that Lisa suggested, Cafe Rio Mexican Grill where we all had the best salads ever. After some more shopping at Gardner Village, I think we went back to Lisa's for a rest before heading out for more shopping at The Gateway and dinner at Thaifoon.


Just because we had three fabulous meals already, that didn't stop us from digging into the Blotkake (Norwegian cream cake) which Sunny made for us. It was awesome and reminded me so much of the Italian whipped cream cakes that I had every birthday growing up. Stuffed and tired, we all sat on Lisa's porch and watched as a rain and lightning show passed through the area.

Sunday morning brought us all down to the 4014th broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Watching the production and listening to the choir was wonderful and we all got silly and really felt the spirit of the music when they did a traditional spiritual, Ride the Chariot. A few more songs like that and they may have had a nice little group of converts.

After the broadcast let out, we all had to say farewell to M3 as she had a plane to catch...We missed her when she left!! The rest of us, of course had to make our way to the ladies room which was the cleanest restroom I've ever seen in my life. To top it off, I was blown away by the number of stalls in this one restroom and being the sad weirdo I am, I had to count them. So, if you're wondering there are 42 stalls in just that one ladies room! I wish other venues would take a gander at that bathroom and figure out how to keep that line of cross legged ladies moving along. Sorry, no pictures of the ladies room, I was already getting weird looks just walking along counting the stalls

Coming out of the Conference center there were Missionaries who would take you on a language of your choice tour of Temple Square. We passed on the guided tour and just took a nice little walk around checking out a few of the buildings. The outside of the Temple was so pretty and the gardens were in full bloom and absolutely beautiful. I would love to go back someday when the choir is back in the Tabernacle, I bet that's a great experience.

Next we hit a small, funky coffee shop where we grabbed lunch and I had a great Brie and green apple pannini, which I know I'll be recreating at home. Next we headed up to Snowbird where we took the aerial tram ride up 11,000 feet. The views from the top were spectacular, but I'm not sure where that little blond kewpie doll came from!

As if seeing two of SLC best sights wasn't enough, we then headed to Antelope Island State Park, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake. This is where the story that Julie didn't want to tell is let out of the bag. The island is home to a roaming herd of approx. 600 bison and when we were driving along, we came upon a large heard. They were amazing to watch as they crossed the road right in front of us. Donna took a great video and hopefully she'll post it. Anyhow, we went to the end of the road, turned around and when we got back to the heard we stopped at the side of the road again to watch them.

Well, there was a group of younger guys, probably late teens/early 20's who had left their cars and were walking up to part of the heard. Julie sticks her head out of the car window and yells to the guys, "Dude, hey don't do that". They kept going closer to the heard and she then yells out, "Dude, do you value your life?" Well the guys let her know that they're trying to get some of the heard to turn around so that they can get a better picture. So she then yells to them "Dude, what's your email address? We have some great pictures and we'll email them to you." Well, Donna, Lisa and I could not stop laughing she was so funny! Poor Julie, we picked on her the rest of the time together. The guys were such idiots and Julie was worried about them, but it was too funny!!

After such a busy day, we decided that salads on Lisa's back porch would suit us fine for dinner so we headed to the grocery for all the ingredients. We all participated in the making of the salad which was delicious with grilled bbq chicken, black beans, corn, cilantro, lettuce, jicama and a ranch bbq dressing. We laughed so hard over the days events, the neighbors must have wondered what was going on.

Monday brought more shopping followed by lunch at Rio Grande Restaurant. After that we all were pretty well wiped out so we sort of spent a quiet afternoon at Lisa's until she had to go to work. Tiffany joined Julie, Donna and I then the three of us dropped Donna off at the airport for her flight home. Our little group was dwindling away. Julie, Tiffany and I went to dinner at Noodles & Co followed by some wonderful frozen custard. Then it was back to Lisa's so that Julie and I could pack and get some sleep, so that was good bye to Tiffany. I'm hoping that since Tiffany and I are only one day apart with our LIDs, that maybe we'll be in China together.

Tuesday morning, it was our farewell breakfast with Lisa, out on her deck. Then Julie brought me to meet back up with Kim and family and I bid her farewell and a safe flight home. Kim, Madison, Grace and I went back to Temple Square and went to a movie about the life and legacy of Joseph Smith. Then we had a lovely lunch at The Garden Restaurant where we had a spectacular view of the Temple. We wandered around the Square for a short while checking out the reflecting pool and a few fountains. Both Grace and I were ready for a nap, so we headed back to Kim's home where Grace did sleep and I chatted with Kim. Kim made a tasty dinner and then she and Lee took me to the airport.

Going home, Lisa was able to book for me, the best steerage class seat available. M3 thought she had leg room, well check out what I had, leg room galore and a window to boot...Not too shabby.

It was great meeting the girls but I was so happy to return home as I missed Eammon so much. A few people emailed or left comments asking what the house would look like after I'd been away for a week and Stacy wanted an after picture of this freezer, wondering what it would look like and how much of the food would remain. Well, Eammon did great and I was surprised beyond words when I came home. Click on any of the pictures to enlarge and see what a lucky gal I am.

Postcard from Utah

Bloggy girls Lisa W, me and M3 in Park City, UT making friends with the locals.
As you may notice, one of us is obviously a bit more friendly and makes friends easier than others!

Having a great time, wish you were here.

More details and pics when I return home.

Kisses.

Lisa~~

Welcome to our home

Shannon, being the nosy girl that she is, decided that she was interested in seeing the homes of all her bloggy friends. Thus, she has created the Bloggy Parade of Homes. Each week a room will be designated and on Friday, everyone who is playing along will post a picture of that room and tell what they like the best or least about the space. This being the first week, what better place to start than the foyer.

We don't really have a separate foyer, when you enter our home you're in a large space that includes the foyer, living room and dining room. I love the light in the space with the large skylight right above the entrance. About ten years ago I purchased the red oak mirror frame at a tag sale for $5, there was no mirror in it and it was covered with black paint. A friend and I spent a long afternoon stripping it down to its natural color.

In November 2004, Eammon's sister and sister-in law were visiting from England and I took them down to Disney for a few days. Eammon called me one evening while I was away to tell me that the frame and the mirror were both in pieces. He had come home from work to find them scattered across the room. The hooks that were holding it up had somehow slipped and the frame fell on one of its corners and just came apart. So he disposed of the broken mirror and saved all the wood pieces so that later that month when my father, the king of L-brackets and L-braces came to visit for Thanksgiving, he and I were able to glue and screw the frame back together. It's a little worse for wear, but I still love it.

The other piece in my foyer that I love is my fat cat. She watches over and guards our home, well her and the very noisy alarm system. Plus if you rub her belly it'll bring good luck.

Next Friday is living rooms/family rooms/dens, so watch for that post.

Leaving Eammon alone for how many days??

(click on picture to enlarge)
As you can see from the freezer picture above, Eammon certainly won't starve while I'm away. There are 15 home made meals, nine packaged meals as well as pre-cooked bacon and bread in case he craves a bacon sandwich. I know that I'll only be gone for a week so he really only needed 14 meals (lunch and dinner) but this way he'll have a choice and extra if needed. Also I got off easy this time as I'd usually prepare breakfasts for him too, but now that he's eating his cholesterol lowering oatmeal every morning, it's one less thing I had to worry about.

In addition all four bathrooms have been cleaned, all the floors have been washed, every surface has been dusted and polished, the bed linens have been changed and all of his laundry is done. I even picked up seven shirts from the cleaners yesterday so I know that he'll go off to work in clean clothes and looking smart.

Why do I do all this cooking and laundry for him? First, I don't trust him to touch or use my new wonderful and beautifully blue washer and dryer. The cooking, well he honestly enjoys my cooking better than having to eat out and it's safer to prepare meals for him than to let him loose in my kitchen. Shoot, Eammon hasn't been in a grocery store in probably seven years and in addition, he only knows about four appliances in the kitchen.

1. The refrigerator/freezer ~ Where food magically appears and is all ready for appliance #2.

2. The microwave ~ If Lisa isn't cooking and an item needs to be heated, the microwave is the only appliance he knows of that can heat his food. One time he turned on the cook top just to say he did it, but he's never used the oven, turned on the oven or even knows what any of the buttons mean.

3. The Instant Hot ~ Much faster than having to heat water in the microwave and as I said, he only knows of four appliance and the cook top isn't one of them.

4. The Dishwasher ~ He knows that all dirty dishes, cups, glasses and flatware go in the dishwasher. No dirty dishes are to be left in the sink, on the counter or in some other room. Even though they'll still be dirty when I return home, he knows where they belong.

In addition to his limited knowledge of kitchen appliances, he appears to know nothing about vacuums, floor cleaners, toilet bowl brushes or cleaning products in general. So laundry, dishes, dust, a weeks worth of build-up and an empty fridge will greet me when I return.

I've been packed for a week and even though I know what awaits me when I return home, I'm still excited beyond words that later today I'll be in Utah meeting the incredible Kim Brown and family and then on Friday I'll be hooking up with fellow bloggers Donna, Julie, Lisa, M3 and Tiffany! I've loved meeting fellow bloggers in the past and I know that with this group, it's going to be a blast!

Watch out SLC, adoption hormone crazed bloggy ladies are coming to town!!

Twenty-eight days and counting

Well, this current batch of referrals matched families with log-in-dates (LIDs) of June 29th through July 13th (remember we're August 10th) so we're getting closer. Currently only 28 days worth of LIDs separate us from Baby S's referral! Back last month in my post I asked everyone to send positive thoughts, prayers, or good vibes so that referrals would speed up to at least 15 days of LIDs per month and it worked! Thank you so much, as this month came through with referrals for 15 days worth of LID's. It's getting somewhat better, still not a full month worth of LIDs, but better than what's happened the past few months. March had only 5 days worth of LIDs producing referrals, 7 days of LIDs for April, 9 days for May and 13 days of LIDs for June, so this month is a step in the right direction and hopefully the number of days will keep increasing.

So, a re-cap of where Eammon and I stand right now. We have only 28 days left before CCAA reaches our LID. If CCAA at the minimum, matches 14 days worth of LIDs for the next two months, we'll receive our referral in September, just days after we return from Barbados! We're really keeping our fingers, toes, arms, legs and eyes crossed that our referral isn't any later than September as a referral later than that will mean we have to re-apply for our I-600A, our I-171H and also have an additional home study visit by the social worker. Last week I sent off a letter and money order so that we can be re-fingerprinted and I'm really hoping that the fingerprints are the only thing that needs to be re-done.

I'm asking all our readers out there, once again, please send positive thoughts, prayers, whatever you do to send good vibes so that referrals keep speeding up or at the minimum, are at least 14 days of LIDs per month for the next two months.