Pie and Paperwork

It it hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only a week from tomorrow.  I'm so excited to eat turkey and pecan pie and cranberry sauce, not to mention have a couple days off of work, which has been kind of crazy lately.  I like big Thanksgiving dinners with lots of people around for a lot of reasons, but one stands above the rest:  the more people involved in the dinner, the more varieties of pie I can justify.  Because  I love baking pies.  And I love having slivers of pretty much every option of pie available, even if it is not my "favorite" kind of pie.  My favorite pies to bake are apple and pecan. 

When Paul and I were dating I tried to impress him by making a banana cream pie (his favorite).  Only we were in that super early stage of twitterpation and he kept distracting me while I was adding ingredients.  Somehow I forgot to thicken the custard before I put it into the pie crust and we ended up with banana cream soup.  It was so embarassing and hilarious at the same time that I had made a total fool of myself while trying to show off for my boyfriend.

I really didn't intend to blog about pie when I started this post - I meant to provide an update on the adoption process.  We have both had our interviews now, and last Friday we had our home-study.  There wasn't really much to the home-study, which was sort of a let-down.  Our caseworker came to our house and we sat at the kitchen table while she asked us questions like "Do you leave knives on the floor?" or "Are there sinkholes in your backyard?"  I thought she would actually want to see our (required) fire extinguisher and first aid kit, and that she would check to make sure we had moved all the chemicals from under the kitchen sink to a high shelf in the garage, but she just wanted us to confirm that we had taken care of those things.  Then we walked her through our house (which takes a whopping 14 seconds to see every room).  The only rooms she really cared about were the baby's room and its proximity to our room.  After that she left. 

Then on Saturday Paul and I spent five hours getting adult, child, and infant CPR and First Aid certified.  It was hilarious and intersting at first, but by the end I was dying to be done with that class.  But now I can remind Paul that I am able to save his life, which is kind of cool.  I think being able to perform CPR is kind of like having a super power.

We both have our fingerprints being processed through the State (both California and Utah), the Department of Justice, and the FBI.  We both had to wait at the DMV to get copies of our driving records. 

And we filled out our "child preference" information, which was possibly the most scary, confusing part of the process so far.  It starts off by asking whether we prefer a boy or a girl or have no preference, and whether we have racial preferences.  The racial preference portion was interesting because races were listed with boxes next to them to choose "Full", "Half", or "None" of each particular race.  Then the questions went into more difficult things like whether we would accept a baby who has potentially been exposed to sexually transmitted diseases, alcohol, drugs, or abuse.  Then the questionnaire lists illness and birth defects, one right after another in a seemingly endless list of horribles, and asks whether we would accept a child with (or at risk for) things like Type I or Type II diabetes, bipolar disorder, cancer, muscular dystophy, Huntington's Disease, etc.  I felt like I was scrolling down that page forever and let me tell you, it was a sobering experience.  I had to use webMD and wikipedia to look up a lot of the diseases or mental disorders that were listed that I didn't know much about.  Not only did we have to answer for whether our child would have or would be at risk for these things, but also whether we were okay with either of the birth parents having any of these conditions.

Then we had to fill out a bunch of stuff about ourselves to help potential birth parents get to know us better.  Really it was just like being "Tagged" which was a blogging thing that went around a couple of years ago.  Here are the questions with each of our answers:

A book I highly recommend is:
P:  The Book Thief by Mark Zusak
A:  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My favorite flower is:
P:  Tulip
A:  Callalily
A game I like to play is:
P:  Phase 10
A:  Mastermind

The music I listen to most is:
P:  Classic rock
A:  Classical or Top 40

My favorite band is:
P:  The Police
A:  U2
A movie I watch over and over is:
P:  Rustler's Rhapsody (a cowboy comedy)
A:  Elf

A T.V. show I watch regularly is:
P:  The Office
A:  Survivor

My favorite quote is:
P:  Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
A:  Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss

My favorite thing to buy is:
P:  Fly-fishing gear
A:  Cardigans - I just can't resist and I wear them all the time!

I drive a:
P:  '96 Toyota Tacoma
A:  Gunmetal grey Honda Civic

I love to collect:
P:  Souvenirs from places we visit
A:  Passport stamps

If I could afford anything at this moment I would buy:
P:  A 1965 blue Shelby Cobra
A:  An amazing trip to either India/Nepal or the Galapagos Islands

If my house was burning down and I could only rescue three things, they would be:
P:  Assuming my family was already safe, I would rescue my camera, my laptop and photos from our wedding.
A:  (Assuming my family was out safe already) my computer, my scrapbooks, and our camera (so I could photograph the event and blog about it)

A smell that makes me pause is:
P:  Chocolate
A:  Cinnamon and tree bark

My favorite sport to watch is:
P:  Football
A:  Gymnastics

The city I would most like to visit is:
P:  Paris - even though I have already been there.
A:  Tokyo

My favorite restaurant is:
P:  Bombay House
A:  Bombay House

A moment when I achieved absolute happiness was:
P:  When I married Amy.
A:  Graduating from Law School.

My favorite meal is:
P:  Steak fajitas
A:  Homemade chimichangas

Someone or something that made me laugh this week was:
P:  Dwight Schrute on The Office
A:  Photos of my niece in a hilarious Halloween costume

My earliest memory is:
P:  Lying in my bed in the early morning and hearing my mom blow-drying her hair.
A:  Being upset that my mom was only giving me half a graham cracker instead of the whole graham cracker. This story is famous in my family and has been told so many times that I may not actually remember it even if I feel like I do.

My first paying job was:
P:  Working in the warehouse of my dad's computer company.
A:  Other than babysitting, I was a server at a Mexican restaurant in high school.

The memory that still makes me laugh is:
P:  It's not a memory really, but it is hilarious to turn off all the lights in the house at night and try to scare Amy.
A:  When I was training for a marathon and Paul decided to go running with me while he was wearing flip-flops. For some reason that made me mad, and I hollered at him "You're not cute, you're not funny, and I'm mad at you!" Then we both started cracking up.

My best birthday was:
P:  In Capri, Italy when I turned 27.
A:  Probably when I turned 21. I was so excited to go on a mission and it was just a big point in my life.

A smell that reminds me of my childhood is:
P:  Raspberries
A:  Chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven

The story behind my name is:
P:  I was named after one of my parent's good friends.
A:  My middle and last name were chosen first and were both really long so my parents wanted a short girl's name. My middle name (Elizabeth) comes from my great-grandma. My maiden name (Casebolt) means "bald head."

My favorite color to wear is:
P:  Blue
A:  Navy

My strangest possession is:
P:  A machete
A:  A Travelocity Roaming Gnome

My favorite dessert is:
P:  A dessert Amy makes with raspberries, jello, cream, and Nilla wafers. We just call it "raspberry dessert".
A:  Razzleberry pie a la mode

When I exercise, I like to:
P:  Play tennis
A:  Run or do yoga

My favorite thing to do on a date is:
P:  Go out to dinner at a nice restaurant.
A:  Get outside and be active - mini-golf, hiking, walks, biking - anything like that

The best vacation I ever had was:
P:  When we went to Machu Picchu in Peru.
A:  Either visiting ancient Mayan temples in Mexico with Paul and my sister, or visiting Machu Picchu in Peru.

The best thing about being married is:
P:  Getting to spend all my time with my best friend.
A:  Always having your best friend to do things with even if it is just to stay at home and watch t.v. and eat ice cream in pajamas.

The thing I am most passionate about is:
P:  Photography
A:  Travel - exploring new places and making everyday of life an adventure

In high school, I was:
P:  Kind of a dork. I played tennis, took AP classes, got my Eagle Scout, and took up surfing.
A:  Nerdy and super involved. I was on the dance team, show choir (just like Glee!), track, cross country, in school plays, and I had the worst hair imaginable.

Places I have lived include:
P:  California, Utah, Costa Rica, and Germany
A:  Nebraska, California, Utah, Idaho, Missouri, New Jersey, and Germany.

My favorite holiday is:
P:  Christmas
A:  Halloween

I play these instruments:
P:  Piano
A:  Piano and guitar

An important thing I learned from my parents is:
P:  To be honest.
A:  The value of education. My dad went back to college when I was in fourth grade and got his Master's degree in Business and my mom went back to college when I started high school and got her Master's degree in Education. It was a great example for me of how important education is.

Whew - that was really a marathon post.  Maybe I should have broken it into two posts.

Fantasy Trips

Today I wore my favorite necklace. I don't wear jewelry often other than earrings and my wedding ring so when I do people at work tend to compliment me on it (maybe in a subtle encouraging sort of way as though I should dress up more often even though the only thing I did different was to wear a necklace). And when the pro bono partner admired my necklace while walking past my open office door, I had to stop myself from launching into the story behind it. I tend to do that - have a story behind things that I love to share (obviously since I am blogging about this), but I restrained myself because it is weird to open up your life to a partner like that (even a super cool one like this particular partner).

But I got my necklace right at the end of law school, 2 weeks after the swine flu broke out. This was back when my littlest sister Jessica was set to start study abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico that summer.  Only it got canceled because of the 'epidemic'. Paul and I had already planned to go to the Yucatan Peninsula in May, and we decided that if we were going to get swine flu, we were as likely to get it in Utah as in Mexico (maybe not true, but we really wanted to go to Mexico and didn't want to cancel our plans). So we invited Jessica to exchange her no longer necessary plane ticket to Guadalajara for one to Cancun and join us.

It was the best trip. Seriously, I feel amazing and happy and wonderful just thinking about it while I am typing this. We didn't get sick and there was NOBODY in Mexico. It is like that dream you may have had (as I have) that you go to Disneyland and you are the only people in the park so there is no waiting in line for any rides, ever, but the whole place is still open and running. Except it was Mexico, not Disneyland. And it was Jessica's first time out of the country.

She is the one who bartered with the necklace seller, entirely in spanish, to talk him down a few pesos so I could get the necklace. She had been a little hesistant to use her spanish when we first got there, but when the transaction concluded and I owned my orange necklace, I could tell she was so pleased with herself and what she had done with the language she had put a lot of effort in to learning.  Now she is in Uruguay and is fluent in Spanish.  I miss her a lot today I guess.

I don't know why, but I think about this experience in Mexico a lot. Maybe because it is a lot like one of my greatest fantasies, which is this: If I had unlimited resources, one of my biggest dreams would be to take each member of my family on their very own trip to someplace amazing.

Since I already got to do this with Jessica in Mexico (even if we didn't pay for everything), I think that I would now take her either to Peru to visit Macchu Piccu or to Thailand and Cambodia. I would take my mom to visit Scotland and Denmark, where her ancestors come from. We would see castles and listen to bagpipe music. My dream trip for my dad is to go to Africa and go on a safari, then go hike Mt. Kilamanjaro together. I would take Jennie to England and we would go see Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare's Globe theater and the crown jewels and all of the palaces - maybe with a trip to Bath and Stonehenge thrown in just because they both sound interesting. I would take my brother Ryan somewhere where he could be really, really warm since he doesn't like the cold very much - maybe someplace like Morrocco. And if my brother Seth, who we haven't heard from in a long time but who I still love and think about a lot, ever decided to talk to me again, I would love to take him to India so that he could see the extremes of what life is like elsewhere and maybe realize how wonderful he had it growing up with parents who not only loved us, but were able to provide so much for us. I would take my Aunt Judy to Disneyland Paris (it wouldn't be a dream trip for her without something Disney but I think she would love the amazing food and seeing the Eiffel tower) and I would take my Aunt Renita to do the Germany, Austria, Switzerland trip that Paul and I did while we were living in Europe for a summer since she took German in school and still remembers a word or two and would probably be fun to take anywhere.

Paul is a whole other story since there are so many places we want to go together.  But if I was doing a trip just for him, it would probably have to involve fishing.  Even one of the National Geographic photography expedition trips would still be just as much for me as for him.  So I think his trip would either be to Montana or Alaska (preferably Alaska).

I'm not very sentimental over many objects, but I'm sentimental over this necklace because it means all these things to me.