Milestones and Home Studies

Our kiddo has marked quite a few milestones in her time with us, but none of those have prepared me for her to move out on her own.  I know it is time, but I am still feeling the mommy blues.  She is moving to a cute little 1923 bungalow house about 20-30 minutes from us but very close to the college she attends.  The landlord will let her paint and she's already plotting what color schemes will look good in which rooms.  It's exciting and scary and sad for me all at the same time.  I am sure I'm not the first, nor the last parent to experience this array of emotional pulls, but it doesn't make it easier.  Mama S is very accepting and fine with the idea of our little girl getting her own place, so she doesn't really understand why I feel the way I do.  That's ok though...I guess we all adjust to our child's nest flight differently.

On a completely unrelated note, we received confirmation yesterday that our home study update meeting is a week from today.  I have SO MUCH TO DO (but yes, I'm sitting here blogging instead)!  We need to clear out the stuff that has accumulated in the other guest/potential kid's room, set up the bed, clean the house, take the cats to the vet for updates on shots, and I need to work on my final exams on top of working weird hours at my school.  If all goes well, I'll be able to sleep sometime late in the week next week.  We shall see...after all, sleep is overrated when you are a parent, right?

Keep Calm and Fill Out the Next Form

Picture stolen from Pinterest...pretty much sums up the home study process.  We found out today that we are going to be assigned a case worker to update our home study on Monday and will be given a call that afternoon to set up an appointment.  So here we go...on to the next step of our journey.

We have put in inquiries on a couple of kids, and have heard nothing back with the exception of one, who is aging out in less than 90 days (the required time frame after placement to finalization).  One is an ADORABLE little 12 year old boy, who our kiddo picked out for us.  He loves food, football and fun.  The other child is a BEAUTIFUL 15 year old girl that is caring and compassionate, who wants to be a midwife when she grows up.  The boy is local to our area, but the girl is from the same area our kiddo comes from.  The worker from the area our kiddo is from is eager to work with us again, so we shall see what comes of it, as we haven't heard back from her about the girl.    

In other news, I have to find time to prep the bedroom.  We had given away the twin bed that was in there previously and just got a double bed, which is MUCH better for a teenager anyways.  Going to leave the paint as is because our rule is that we let the kids pick their furniture and room color because we want them to feel like it's really their space.  I'm always curious to see what the room will end up decorated like.  Our kiddo chose white furniture with a fun black/white/purple splatter paint design in her room.  Totally fits her too! :)  

The scrapbook is slowly coming along.  I figured I could balance a page a day (good in theory) with my final exam schedule.  I didn't have a chance to work on the book yesterday, as I was on call at work and the kids were being squirrelly, but this weekend will hopefully leave me time to work on it some in between studying for/working on final exams.  I'll post some pictures to my Facebook as the pages come together.