Happy Anniversary from the State Patrol!

We've been married for 7 years today, hard to believe! Best decision I've made to date. The State Patrol decided to give us a gift this year, our fingerprint cards and background check information back in the mail. Apparently we wrote the check for too much money! Back it goes with our first setback of a week or two. On a side note when I got fingerprinted at the State Patrol I found out my prints are very fine....which I believe makes them harder to detect. Muwhahahaha!

We're Adopting!

Doesn't have quite the same ring as "we're pregnant" but who cares, because we're adopting! One of the objectives of this blog is to document our adoption journey and progress so other people could follow if they choose. We realize not everyone cares as much about this process as we do but we thought this would be a good way for progress reports. We are also using part of this blog to help us document our journey for our new son or daughter that will be part of their Lifebook we are creating for them. There are of course things for just our son or daughter we won't share but we thought this would help us remember some of the details and some comments from friends/ family to share with them later. More to come about the Lifebook in the future. Hopefully some of you can be a part of it! If you have any questions, any at all please ask us through this process. There are a lot of misconceptions and fears people have about adoption and we want all of our family and friends to feel as comfortable about the process as possible.

Our adoption agency is Holt International (www.holtinternational.org). They are a national non-profit organization that has one of their branch offices located in Omaha! Which is awesome. They pretty much started the international adoption movement and have tons of experience and support. In a strange twist of fate the branch director and our assigned social worker is the wife in the couple we bought our house from. Crazy! She actually will be doing a home study in her old home! Everything with our home sale went down well and she's knows it's a good house for kids so we felt comfortable with it.

We are doing the China Child of Promise Program. It is a program for children that have correctable physical conditions. Common conditions are cleft lip/ palate, missig digits, club foot, minor heart defects, etc. We get to choose what conditions we are willing to take on. Most children are between 12-36 months but we have requested a child 18 months or younger. We did not preference gender. While girls are more common from China due to their one child policy, in our program there are both. The wait time is anywhere from 12-18 months from application to when your bring your child home. We have heard the wait might actually be lessening so in our perfect ideal world we will have a child home before Christmas next year but that is best case scenario. Really what's another year after having been at this for 2 already.

Our application was sent in on 11/9. The journey started at the gorgeous Elmwood Park Post Office!

A brief overview of the process: Our application was ......

New Mexico!

We drove down to Albuquerque to visit my brother and sister in law (Kate & Todd).  Terribly boring drive but fun trip. Stayed in some questionable hotels Kansas and Colorado. Elected not to go for the Motel 6 in Kansas with the bulletproof glass and strange men loitering outside. Smart choice I think. It was really fun and we had never been to New Mexico. We did some abbreviated hiking, went to the nuclear museum, ate good food, visited Santa Fe.

Ovarian cysts- Best thing that ever happened to us?

I developed ovarian cysts from the hyperstimulatory drugs I was taking back in late September and we were forced to stop treatment for what ended up being 2 months. We were so angry and frustrated we couldn’t continue. Turns out it was the best thing that could have happened to us.

One piece of advice for couples going through treatment is to take a month off here and there. I know I know…..if someone had told me that during our treatment I would have been like, “who the f**k do you think you are, I’ll decide what’s best for me.”

For once we were forced to take a step back and see things from a more clear, “less babycrazy” perspective. We took a vacation and......

Yeah, we’re “those” people.

I vividly remember the day we were sitting in the reproductive endocrinologists office for our consultation. There were actual fertility masks in her office. I quickly glanced to her degrees on the wall making a mental note to check her residency program’s reputation.  We had waited 3 months for the appointment (and that’s actually getting in a month early)! We sat there looking at each other and having to admit we were “those people” now. It shined a giant spotlight on the reality that we were officially joining the elite ranks of the reproductively defective.

The 6 months that followed made us realize what being “those people” meant. We endured every other day transvaginal ultrasounds, testicular biopsies, daily injections, etc. Our life became all about having a baby. It changed almost everything. We became different people. The cycles of small amounts of hope followed by tremendous disappointment month after month take their toll quickly. Those of you that have struggled with infertility know.......

The Cooks!

It's my first blog post! Most people who will read this probably will already know us a bit but I thought I would take the opportunity to tell everyone a little bit more about our little family. I'm Kristen and I have a wonderful husband, Adam. That's us!

We live in Nebraska and both turned 30 within the past year. We both work for UNMC here. I teach pharmacy school and work as a pharmacist in the outpatient clinics at the VA. Adam works as a software developer. We "love" renovating and have done tons of projects in our home. Love in quotation marks as it's often a love/hate relationship with the house! Adam's very handy and being naive to start with helped because once you rip something out you have to figure out how to fix it! I'll post some before and afters in later posts and I'm sure we'll have more projects in the upcoming year to post about. We love to travel, our next trip is Albuquerque/ Santa Fe in about a week to visit Kate and Todd (my sister and brother in law)! I like to cook and bake. We like to eat and try new restaurants. I am addicted to several TV shows, etc. etc. I won't bore you with more details of our likes and dislikes. You'll figure it out. Oh yeah we do have three pets and great families and friends you'll hear more about later!

Baxter

Timmy

Ester

Why blog now?? (anyone a Millionaire Matchmaker fan??)

We have always wanted to start a family blog and are starting a new journey in our lives. After trying to have a family the "traditional" way and fertility treatments for 2 years we are beginning our adoption journey! So excited! More to come on that later!  

The title of the blog....... it was the title of my column in the high school newspaper and back then meant "smooth" (slight inspiration from the Mike Myers "Coffee Talk" sketches) . Kind of high school, I know. However since then I've definetly realized not everything works out so smoothly. I'd like to say I decided to keep the name to reflect my deeply sarcastic sense of humor and reflect the wonderful irony of life but it was mainly because I couldn't think of anything else cool. Cook's Corner or Cookin with Gas or Cook's Country (for all of you PBS fans) just didn't have the same ring to them. We hope you enjoy!