DeSoren Family

Gobsmacked: A wonderful british word meaning utterly astounded, completely dumbfounded,  shocked, being totally speechless, unable to think of anything to say.  In short a completely and utterly the perfect word to describe our moment of utter panic.

Two weeks ago we got a ebullition from one of the adoption photolistings we use to keep an eye out for potential kidos. But the profile was of a kido who lives in Washington. When we started our journey with our adoption agency, we decided to keep our search confined to Oregon only. But over the course of the year, the pool of available kidos has seemed to noticeably shrink. So we E-Mailed our caseworker to get her thoughts on the matter. We liked the look of this kido and wanted to know if perhaps now was the right time to expand our search into Washington as well.

Last Mondaywe got a long E-Mail response from our caseworker. She agreed that we should expand to look in Washington, and she gave us the 411 on how to do that correctly. Which is great, as we had just found another kido online from Washington that we like.

She also let us know that Oregon has changed the way they do adoption committees and we can now add a personal 1 page cover letter addressed directly to the caseworker from us that will be sent with our homestudy. There were more changes as well as how the meetings run and who approves us. But then the shoe dropped. She told us that she was being reassigned and we would be getting a new caseworker.

A new caseworker, just saying it makes our tummies do a loopy loop. Our current caseworker wrote our home study, has had over a year to get to know us. Not to sound corny, but  she has been there from the beginning.  Our caseworker is the person who champions us to the adoption committee and to the kido’s caseworker. Now we have someone who doesn’t even know us. Changing caseworkers is a scary concept and a even more scary reality. Some pretty crazy doubts started floating around in our heads.

So yesterday we both got off work early and headed down to Boys and Girls to meet our new caseworker. The meeting with was with both our old and new caseworker. In fact our old caseworker ran the meeting and did most of the talking.

She did a small recap on our first committee that we were sent to and then talked about the changes the Oregon adoption system is going through. The 3 panel committee is now gone and has been replaced by a much larger voting pool including the child’s caseworker & lawyer. The 2nd big change is if the kido is young enough and is has low special needs then they might not even call a committee. The caseworker just picks the family she feels is best. It’s all really new so don’t quote us as we most likely just said it wrong, we got the 10 minute version of a much bigger story. As we learn more we will post more.

We had the chance to look in the big adoption profile books and only found one kido to add to our list (maybe, it was an old profile). One of the things we were concerned  we did talk about to both of our caseworkers about was the lack of kidos to match with.  But it seems the pool of kids is not smaller but the pool of waiting families is getting larger and larger. Which is not so good for us, but good for the kidos looking for families. We did talk more about looking into Washington as a resource.

Our new caseworker seems nice,  she is going to stop by our house and do a home visit to get to know us and our world a little better. So we will have more to report on later as we all get to know each other better.  Our initial impressions are very positive and we look forward to working with her.

After the meeting we drove home the back way and had dinner at the old spaghetti factory for a large infusion of carbs and cheese.

Over the winter and cold spring we have eaten every jar of jam in our pantry. Correction: Sam has eaten every jar of jam in our pantry. It seems he lives on jam, nutella and potato bread. So this year we have made a concerted effort to have enough jam to meet Sam’s addiction, any future kidos needs and have enough to give as Christmas presents.

Anthony did a web search and found a place called Rowell Brothers U-Pick. It’s way out down Scholls Ferry road and across the urban growth boundary. So for the past 2 months, every other weekend, we have been driving over to the westside of town and picking like mad. Blueberries 99¢ a pound and all other berries $1.25 a pound.

We now have a HUGE pile of canned goodness. We have: Strawberry jam, Loganberry jam, Blueberry jam, Raspberry jam, Marionberry jam, Apricot jam, Blackberry jam & Boysenberry jam. Anthony also made 3 fun jams this year: Watermelon jelly, Jalapeno jelly and a super hot Habanero jelly.

Not only does this serve to quench Sam’s addiction, making the jam has been a really fun family project. Every member of the family has helped in one way or another. For example; in our most resent last batch we tried to make jalapeno jelly, which we did succeed in. Both of us were working in tandem when Anthony looked down at his foot and noticed it had turned green. Seems when we opened the green food coloring some dried crusty’s dropped on the wood floor unnoticed by us at the time.

As we worked and walked around the kitchen in our bare feet we smeared that tiny amount of green dried crusty all over the floor and all over the bottoms of our feet. So before we could end the day, we had to do a super clean of the kitchen floor. Then and only then were we able to sit back relax and kick up our incredible hulk feet.

Berry season is finally over for us…. but we still have 2 buckets of blueberries to eat/cook/jam. We also have a request from Anthony’s boss for some homemade orange marmalade. But the next big cooking adventure should be apples. Anthony found his grandmothers recipe for the applesauce he was raised on, so we will be picking apples soon.

Our next big travel adventure is a thanksgiving trip to Phoenix. The whole Sorensen clan is gathering for thanksgiving and to celebrate Joshua’s parents 30^th wedding anniversary. So we are taking the whole week off and are flying down and perhaps do a road trip to the Grand Canyon.

We booked our travel via Expeida, probably for the last time ever. Reason one Anthony is going to try and sell Disney travel as a part time thing so he will be booking with commissions for our future trips. Second Expedia totally screwed up our finances. They charged us for 3 trips, yet did not book or ticket anything. Joshua had to call the bank twice and Expedia twice to get the whole mess fixed. So Expedia is now dead to us.

The adoption front has gotten very quiet. We recently had to resubmit our financials and our fingerprints for our yearly update. We all had to get fingerprinted again. This time we did not go to Boys and Girls to have it done, but to a passport/fingerprinting place downtown. So funny to watch this little russian lady with a heavy accent try and take Sam’s fingerprints!

But other then that activity, all is quiet on the western front. Very few kido profiles are even available to review or to match with. We still have a few home study’s out a few kidos that we have not heard back from yet. Heres hoping no news is good news!