We moved to Ottawa in July. I'm loving Kanata and all its trails for walkies. I'm not loving that I've had to give up my volunteer work in Kingston, or the fact that I miss my friends, but everything else is A-Ok. I've had to start at the bottom of the food chain in this area with my career, but it's been steady, at least.
Although I miss Violet so badly I still cry all the time, Poppy was extremely lonely, so we got her a puppy, Clementine, last year. C is extremely destructive and hates all other dogs in the family, but oh, we love her. We've had a few friends visit with small children recently, and little did they know, they were acting as our guinea pigs to see how the dogs were... turns out, totally fine, as I expected. I'm quite sure they will love having an extra pair of hands to pet them and play with them and someone else to run around with! Just hope Som Kid doesn't mind getting dirty and trampled from time to time.
And Som Kid's two new cousins, William and Taea, arrived safely in this world and are adorable and doing great! And further family expansion: Som Kid's two first-cousins-once-removed are now married and engaged, so more people to love him!
The most exciting thing going on right now in terms of the adoption is that our original dossier is about to expire, so we have to do a bunch of it again. I bought yet another binder for all the paperwork! Forms forms forms, I love forms, and so does Mike with his government job.
We also have to meet with our new social worker, Sandra, a couple of times - yes, it was goodbye Judith. As much as we wanted to keep her, she'd have to charge travel expenses to come up to Kanata, and that adds on even more $$$, so we found local Sandra :(. Not that Sandra isn't lovely, just we really liked Judith! So yes, there's that, plus
- updated medicals
- new photos
- another local police check
- another child welfare check
- another RCMP fingerprinting session
- another home inspection
- mo' money.
Speaking of money, since the last time I did a grand total (somewhere in the $21000 range?) there have been a number of expenses - annual fees x2, membership renewal, AdopTalk travel expenses, and a deposit on Sandra's work, totalling another $3849 buckeroos. Yikes. All of these things are going to add up, too. I still can't believe most people get their kids for free.
At least part of this update was fun - the photos! Last time I struggled to come up with non wedding photos of the two of us - we're not exactly the type to document every little thing we do together, and we don't go out of our way to hand a camera over to someone else and pose all pretty-like, no no no. We had a few from our time in Jamaica, but those aren't recent enough. I was poking around friends and family with cameras to come out and take a few, but schedules just weren't working out. But then, as I was scrolling down my Facebook, one of the dog rescue groups I follow, Catahoula Rescue Ontario was having a silent auction. I'm super-broke, but I'm especially driven to donate lately, what with my aforementioned lack of volunteering, so I scrolled through and noticed a photography package was up for grabs. I checked them out - Elska Productions - realized they were amazing (well, already knew they were, as they were willing to donate their time for this), and bid until I won! My cool new friend Janet (hi Janet! aka my husband's new friend's wife) came out, and made a sweet portfolio for us, including these stunners (featuring apples from Sunnyside Farm):
If you were Thailand, wouldn't you want to give us Som Kid?
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