Making Progress!

We had a little bit of a break through yesterday when we got a phone call from our assigned social worker to set up our first meeting!  She is the same person who has been working on another family in our neighborhood's homestudy and they say she is great.  We can't jump right on having her over because of Matt's work schedule, spring break, etc., but she'll be coming on the 7th, so that's not too far away.  This will be a fairly short meeting just to help her get to know our family a bit.  I think in future meetings she will do more specific things like check safety stuff and talk to the kids??  I really think the hardest part will be scheduling the visits since Matt is gone from early morning till bedtime on his dayshift days and certain days of the week are much better for our social worker.

In other news, we have been thinking about how we will get our new little girl settled in Julia's room, figuring bunk beds are the only thing that won't take up the entire floor.  Matt mentioned making some with scrap wood we have in the garage, then later thought that might be too big of a project and he'd have to buy more wood for sure.  So last week I decided to start pricing beds, looking on craigslist, etc, but first wanted to check with our neighborhood just in case someone was thinking of getting rid of theirs.  Sure enough someone is moving next month and wanted to sell them for cheap.  She had been just about to list them on our site.  They are white, which is what I was hoping, and did I mention cheap?  We'll pick them up in a few weeks and start rearranging the room.  Julia can't wait!

We have continued to try our hand at Mandarin, with interesting results:)  We listened to a cd on the way to school, so as we rolled into the car line, we are all practicing the four tones with the lady on the cd, going "yeh, ye-e-e-ah, ye-e-e-e-e-ah, yeah" and totally cracking up because we sound like cowboys, not Chinese.  Oh well, we're trying!

And our puzzle fundraiser keeps rolling along.  It looks about halfway done, though I loose count every time I try to see how many pieces are left.  Some of our donors have been anonymous/just wanted their name on one piece and some donations weren't in $20 increments, so I hope I'm doing the math correctly when I say we have about 140 pieces left.  We have definitely raised $4710, which is so great!!!!  Still hoping to fill up the puzzle and will be able to start applying for grants once the homestudy is finished, which is maybe a month or two from now.

In the meantime, we have a week of fun and celebrations ahead--Matt's birthday, Easter, Gray's birthday, and lots of visits from my side of the family during Spring Break.  Lots to be thankful for!!