New computer desk!

We decided that we want to start getting our nursery ready and at least painted and looking better! This meant it was time to move our computer downstairs to the family room. The only problem is the other computer desk would not fit down the stairs to our basement. We were searching LDL for another computer desk and finally found one for an excellent price that we liked. We put I together last night and I went and purchased the cables that I needed and transferred the computer downstairs! We really like it! We should be painting probably within the next day or two so keep an eye out for pictures and a blog!

Christmas decorations are up!

Yesterday an today we put up our Christmas decorations! We were excited this year cause we bought a second Christmas tree so we could have one upstairs that looks great and then the other downstairs for our presents! We Love this time of year!

Thanksgiving 2011

What a wonderful thanksgiving! This morning I woke up early and went to play football with a friend and some of his family. It was so nice to get up and run around. One thing I am certainly thankful for was no broken bones! :) After, i came home and watched my green bay packers kick some trash and get to 11-0! Just after approximately 2pm we left to go to my parents house to get together with family and celebrate our thankfulness! I may be a little partial but I have the best family in the world. E had a great time but I do have to say that we missed Kimberly, Jason and dj very much! They were certainly in our prayers! We just look forward to adding another member to our family! Alex, we are so excited to meet you! As you can see in the pictures we had the annual ginger bread house party which my nieces and nephews absolutely love! Thank you for reading our blog and sharing our experiences with us! Love ya...

Thankful nights

As I lie awake this evening I had the impression to let everyone know how thankful I am for the gift of adoption! It is so near and dear to my heart! Shaileen and I are so excited because my sister is leaving today to go pick up her new son from Ohio! We are so very excited for her and know that heavenly father answers prayers in mysterious ways! We look forward to being able to have the same opportunity!

New Holiday Schedule!

Yesterday at work I found out some great news. As you may know we work four 10-hour shifts each week until we adopt. On a regular week we work every day but have Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays off. But, when a holiday comes around they used to make us work from 10:30 - 7pm everyday except for the holiday itself. Now they are allowing us to keep the day we have off and have 10 hours of paid vacation on the holidays themselves. So, this next week with it being a holiday week I only have to work Monday and Wednesday! woot woot!

New Button

I had some time tonight so I made this blog button that you can see at the top right corner of our blog that shows a picture of us and says that we are hoping to adopt! Anyone that has a blog is welcome to put our blog button on their blog so others may see our profile on itsaboutlove.org. When they push it it directs them straight to our profile. If you need help feel free to ask! The more people that know about us the better! THANKS EVERYONE!

APPROVED!

We are so ecstatic because we are APPROVED and online finally! We are so happy because it is a long busy road to get to where we have come. The fun part is ahead in the waiting/finding stage! This is where we need everyone's help. We have learned that most placements take place when someone whether it is us, friends or family actually find a situation for us. This is why we ask everyone to keep us in your constant prayers and conversations with others. Please do not be afraid to tell others about us because maybe that will help bring a child into our home! We love each of you and appreciate your support. Feel free to check out our profile online. You can find it at https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/26485508/ourMessage.jsf !

I am Thankful too!

Here is my list... top 50 things I am thankful for!

1. My best friend and the man of my dreams Kurt
2. My Savior Jesus Christ
3. My membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
4. The beautiful blessing of adoption because without it we would not be able to have a family in this life
5. Having a roof over my head
6. Having a good job
7. Being able to provide for ourselves
8. My beautiful mother who taught me to be a strong independent woman
9. My dad and my wonderful step-mom for always being a support to me and loving me no matter what
10. My 3 awesome sisters
11. Fluffy blankets to cuddle with
12. BYU football... season tickets every year and priceless memories made
13. My wonderful inlaws... I love that I am so welcome in their family
14. My super awesome primary kids that help me to remember to Chose the Right
15. Sunshine
16. The convienience of my own kitchen to bake whenever I please
17. For everyone fighting to keep our Freedom
18. The blessings of going to the Temple
19. Our neices and nephews
20. Our AWESOME blog
21. Kurt's amazing ability to take pictures
22. My three AMAZING girlfriends and their husbands
23. Birth mothers and fathers
24. Mac & Cheese
25. Music
26. L<3VE
27. My slippers at work
28. Food to eat and water to drink
29. FSA (families supporting adoption)
30. The ability to choose right from wrong
31. SUSHI
32. Christmas
33. The basic gifts to walk, speak, and see
34. The ability to easily carry on a conversation
35. Church mints
36. Pinterest.com
37. My grandparents... all of which are looking down on me
38. An extra day off each week to spend with the love of my life
39. Oreo cookies
40. Having a washer and dryer
41. Crock Pots
42. My beautiful wedding ring that reminds me everyday of the Eternity I am looking forward to
43. Grey's Anatomy
44. The Green Bay Packers
45. My scriptures
46. Our cars
47. Birthdays
48. Knowing that there is a little one out there just waiting to join our family
49. Kurt's hugs
50. Knowing that the rest of Eternity will be spent with my BEST FRIEND!!

I am Thankful!

This time of year is so wonderful and I am always the person that complains that people start celebrating Christmas too early but I am truely guilty of forgetting about Thanksgiving. I have really been thinking of what I am truely thankful for lately and how many blessings I am truely given. It is hard to recognize them sometimes with going through the trials that Shaileen and I go through but I have found that it is important to recognize them because it certainly makes each trial bearable. Because of this I have put together a list of 50 things that I am thankful for and I want to share them.

1. My most beautiful wife Shaileen
2. My Savior
3. Adoption...without it we would not be able to grow our family
4. A warm home to sleep in at night
5. Employment to be able to provide for my family
6. Overall Health
7. This blog to be able to speak my mind when needed :)
8. A loving mother and father that raised me to be the man that I am today.
9. Great brothers and sisters that support me
10. Birth Mothers
11. Birth Fathers
12. Families Supporting Adoption (FSA)
13. Our primary children that remind me to choose the right weekly
14. Panda Express (just cause it deluctible)
15. BYU Football
16. The LDS temple... I love going there to be able to remind myself where my mind should focus.
17. My ability to sing (this probably sounds conceided but I love to sing)
18. Ward Choir... we went almost 2 years without it!
19. Good friends that support us.
20. Great Inlaws
21. The quote "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" because it keeps my perspective that I have to work for for I get and nothing will be handed over.
22. Being able to work a 4 day work week only with 4 ten hour shifts because it gives me an extra day off with my best friend.
23. My extenable back scratcher at work :)
24. My Iphone 4s because without it i have a hard time remembering the things I am supposed to do.
25. A Journal. It is nice to see progression from year to year
26. Our cars so we are able to easily get to where we need to go
27. Joseph Smith for restoring the gospel
28. Never going hungry (a little too much though, lol)
29. Green Bay Packers
30. Utah Jazz (when they are not on strike)
31. Photography
32. youtube so i can watch and learn about photography and other stuff
33. my nieces and nephews
34. President Monson
35. debit cards (cause its a pain to carry cash around)
36. warm clothing
37. the ability to think and choose for myself
38. the opportunity that we have to travel
39. Wedding ring to remind me of the eternity that I get to spend with my wife and future children
40. Personal computer at home to be able to do my photoshopping on.
41. The ability to have a possitive attitude most of the time
42. Health care provided by my employer
43. My testimony of the gospel
44. A grandma and grandma that show by example how I should live my life
45. The general ability to hear and see
46. Love
47. Thanksgiving :)
48. The freedom in our country and the soldiers that fight everyday for it
49. Knowledge that there is a little boy or girl somewhere that is meant to be with our family
50. Being able to sit down with my wife every night to relax and spend time together

Dj and Carson Birthday

It was DJ's and Carson's birthdays so we decided to PAR-TAY! It is crazy to think that DJ is 2 years old already and that Carson is even that much older! We are so happy to have them as our nephews and we love them both! It was also nice to see Brie and her family as well which is DJ's birthmother and her parents. With us going through the adoption process it is cool for us to see the relationship between Kimberly and Jason and DJ's birth parents. I know that it has nothing to do with the post but we are very excited that this week we should be fully approved and on the Itsaboutlove.org website!

What a great Saturday!

Yesterday we had a really fun day. It started out by waking up and going to both of my nephews championship little league football games. Unfortunately they both lost but they played really well. It was really fun but absolutely freezing. The wind was blowing very hard and started to rain/snow at the end. Later that night we went to the BYU vs Idaho game. It was really fun. It started at 7:30pm so it was a really late game. BYU spanked Idaho and the final score was 42-7! If you have not found out by now we are huge BYU fans! We had to be with going to that game last night because it was way late and super cold!

Infertility night

While I was at work today I had a strong feeling that it was important that we go to the infertility night with Friends supporting adoption (FSA)! I am very glad that we went because it was something that we needed! It is so nice to get with others that have the same issues as we do! The speaker was excellent! She mostly taught us the things that will help us become more successful with dealing with infertility! We recognized how we can do things both physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually! I have personally taken some things from that class that makes me want to be consistently a better person! We have grown to love FSA!

Adoption celebration date

So, if you follow us at all you will have known by now that we had our home study this past Thursday and we passed! As I say in the video above I was reading an adoption blog about a month or so ago and it said that when we finish we need to do something to celebrate all of the work we did to get approved. So, I took Shaileen out to The Roof which sits atop the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We had the best seats in the house and were right in front of the temple. It was nice to sit down and reflect on what we have done. We also had a fun time discussing what names we love for both boys and girls. We should be fully approved in about 2 weeks approximately so as always we would appreciate everyone keeping us in their constant prayers because everyone certainly helps. We are just so excited to be able to bring a boy or girl into our home and be parents!

We Passed!

Tonight we had our home inspection! Our caseworker came by and did a walk through of our home to make sure that is a safe place for a child to live (which of course we passed with flying colors!) and then we just discussed our profile. She said everything looked great and that she wouldn't change a thing (but maybe a few spelling errors... lol)! We were so excited when she said she would be able to finish our home study this next week and that we should be all approved and ready to go for our profile to be online through www.itsaboutlove.org in TWO WEEKS!! It feels like it has taken forever for us to get to this point. I feel like Kurt and I have grown so much by going through this. I know I at least have such a greater love for him now than I ever thought imaginable! Kurt is my ROCK and I am so lucky to have him. I am so excited to be in this new finding phase of this whole process! As always we ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers! Thanks!

Scott's 50th Surprise Birthday

On Tuesday night we had a surprise 50th birthday for Shaileen's Dad. We had a pretty great time. Over 50 people met up at Red Robin and we had a great time.

This past Sunday we celebrated his birthday party and we gave him his birthday present. He was kind of bummed because he did not get any peanuts. You better believe that we did not forget the peanuts! He was pretty excited to see them.

This is Shaileen's over the hill cake that she made. It was pretty hot there so the frosting started melting and the letters started falling off but I think it turned out pretty cool!

Hey, look I really was there! :)

Shaileen loves her sisters!

Me and Nelson!

Nelson and his alfalfa hair!

Yes, the cake was that good!

Cindy and one of her good friends!

Preparing for our home study!

It's time for our home study finally which is pretty much our final step of the approval process that we have to do! It has been a long time coming and we are excited to finally get our names out there. We bought some child door handle safety thingys! (yes that is the technical term) door opening stoppers, a fire extinguisher, we already had a carbon monoxide and smoke detectors but we decided that we better be safe so we got a couple more! After out caseworker comes over tomorrow and we hopefully get her approval she will give us some things she may like us to change on our profile. Then she will take us to a caseworker panel an they will make sure we are ready by an overall vote (the way I understand it anyways)! It is so nice to see all of this work come to fruition kind of. We have some more waiting and searching but we are happy of the accomplishments that we have made! It is cool that we are completing the application process during the national adoption month! We have grown to love adoption! This Saturday we are going to a party with Families Supporting Adoption ( FSA) at boondocks. We look forward to meeting more adoptive couples, adoptees, and birth mothers!

2011 Cline Halloween Party

It was our annual Cline Halloween party last night. We always look forward to it because Bret and Hil go all out! As you can see from the pictures below they make loads of food for pretty much the whole neighborhood. I really was there just always have the camera! :)

I love when my grandmother comes!

Kim and DJ... we are so excited because we found out that Kim and Jason were chosen by a birth mother last week and are hopefully planning on traveling to Ohio the end of November to get little Alex. We are SOOOOOO excited for her.

I am going to run the Gagnar with bret this next year! I think I am one of the new sponsors!

Jason was all decked out as a biker (too bad the picture turned out crappy)

Shaileen's cupcakes in action. They were a total hit...

Shaileen loved playing with DJ last night. He kept wanting to count the pumpkins outside! It was super cute!

See...I told Ya that it was a hit with the kids!

Grandpa and Grandma!

Madison is such a cute little girl. My Mom made the costume for her so she could be PippyLongStockings!

DJ and Grandma playing!