The News from Lake Greenbelt

First off, we had snow flurries on and off most of Tuesday afternoon. Pretty! And it's gotten cold. We're learning our living room has some insulation issues. We definitely need to get a good storm door for the gardenside door this weekend!

Tuesday night we went to information night with "our" agency. The presentation was by the director of the infant domestic adoption program. This is the same person who sent the abrupt and upsetting email we got this spring about the huge increase in would-be domestic infant adoptive parents and how much harder it would be (and how much harder we'd have to work) to adopt.

We were not impressed with her. The information night was billed as being for all 3 programs (domestic infant, domestic school-age child and international) and running from 7 to 9 pm. She focused mostly on domestic infant, barely covered international (the main reason we were going) and closed everything down at 8:15 saying she "had to be somewhere at 8:30). Plus she put a rather negative spin on being able to adopt. She could have been more encouraging without actually lying.

The good news: there are still babies to adopt. We met many wonderful prospective parents (it's heartening just to be in a room with other couples and singles in the same boat we are). Plus a lovely couple who recently moved from Massachusetts who brought their 5-year-old son. They'd adopted him from Ukraine through a New-England based agency that was fantastic. I got the name of their agency (since we're encouraged to connect with agencies outside our area to broaden the "available birthparent pool") and gave them my email and our phone number. I loved hearing their adoption story and chatting with them.

Our plan: I'm going to call the international adoption director with my questions about Bulgaria to see if that might be a better option for us. We can't swap to the other agency we liked (I just called this morning) without doing an entirely new homestudy (expensive and a real pain in the rear!)

I'm still in the process about a possible (now likely) new job closer to home (more if it goes through; I should know by early next week).

We'll be having a Quaker Thanksgiving again, at F/friends' home with people from our meeting. We're bringing the acorn squash.

We should be with my family for Christmas Eve (and yes, I'll bring the hummous!), driving to Vermont on Christmas morning to spend some time with Ken's family.

That's the news from Lake Greenbelt, where the women are strong, the men are good looking (Ken lost 15 pounds in the last couple of months!) and the kitty cat is waaaay above average.