DeSoren Family

Wednesday night on June 9^th we got a phone call from our caseworker. She left us a voicemail. She wanted to let us know that if we approve we would be going to committee on a kido Monday afternoon June 14^th. We called her back and quickly arranged a impromptu meeting at our house for 8:30pm that night.

We should add a little background information here. Normally potential families submit their homestudy’s, if the caseworker thinks the family might be good match then the caseworker sends a larger amount of information back to the family to review. Time passes and when the caseworker feels she has a few good matches she then sends one to three families to committee. From that committee one family is picked and one is picked as a backup family. This process takes time.

Well we submitted our homestudy on this kido about two months ago, and were not in the top group picked. In fact we never heard back or got any additional information from the caseworker, which is pretty typical. It seems the caseworker picked three families to go to committee and just this week two of those families dropped out of the process. Our caseworker was able to get the kidos caseworker to look at us again and she liked us enough to offer to send us to committee with the one remaining family. Another family tried to get in for the third spot, but the kido’s caseworker said no to them. So we might not be the top of the list, but we are not on the bottom.

Getting ready for a committee in 4 days is insane. We had to fill out one more questionnaire, which we did Thursday night after dinner and then about 40 emails the next morning back in forth between the two of us, polishing the questionnaire until it shined.

Saturday we drove around and got some last minute photos of some playgrounds and the local elementary school for our hello book (The hello book will be given to the kido IF we are selected Monday).  The rest of the weekend was spend trying very hard not to think about Monday. We played video games, watched tons of TV, even redecorated a bathroom.

Because  of the speed of the this and the emotions that are happening right now, we have decided not to go public with this part of our adoption story until it’s over. We decided not to post on Facebook or tell friends yet. No reason to get anyone excited until we know for sure. It’s not uncommon to go to committee several times before you are selected and this is only our first time.

We don’t get to go to the committee meeting, only the 3 committee members and the caseworkers involved will be present. We did the hand off of the Hello book to our caseworker Sunday night. We could tell she was picking her words very carefully with us not to raise or lower our hopes any. She did say all the hard work was done and it will be down to which family can offer more to the kido. Reading online seems to make us think they can be selected over the smallest things.

It’s really hard not to doubt yourself in a time like this. But we keep trying to push those type of thoughts away. Pretty sure Monday is going to be a hard and emotional day for us no matter what the out come. But we are really trying to see this in a good light, even if we are not picked this will give us some really good information for next time.

Committee meeting is at 1:30pm and should last about 3 hours, so by 4:30pm on Monday the 14th 2010 we should be getting a phone call that may change our lives forever.

We have been fairly busy lately and have fallen way behind in our family blog. So this is our official catch up blog.

In April we had Anthony’s Nephew come up for a one night visit. We did taco night and then went out and watched a movie. One night was just too short and we are all looking forward to his next visit.

His visit would have been longer but we had a preplanned long weekend trip planned. We drove down to Lincoln city for the weekend. We stayed at the Coho lodge. Which was a nice hotel we had a great ocean front room, but we hated the bed. We have become so spoiled on our latex mattress that sleeping on a traditional wire spring bed feels like sleeping on concrete.

Saturday morning after a horrible breakfast at Lil Sambo’s, We normally eat at Pig & Pancake, but we saw this place, it looked family friendly, so we took a risk. We walked in and were quickly promptly ignored by the staff member standing at the podium. Several minutes later anthoer hostess showed up and took us to our table. The restaurant was very very empty (our first warning), the staff out numbered the diners. Turned out the person with their back to us, ignoring us was a new in training waiter, so we let it go.

The hostess asked us if we would like drinks. Anthony ordered a Earl Grey tea, that this dumbfounded look washed over her face, then without asking us, walked away from the table, across the room and started yelling at the head waiter asking what Orange Oregon tea was. He shouted back that he had no idea but would ask us. He the walked over and softly asked us. Then took 3 steps away from the table and yelled back to hostess that it was Earl Grey. The only thing we could think was they were use to louder restaurant, that our they though we were deaf.

Our food came out and was promptly delivered to the wrong table (being one of only 3 tables with customers we stood amazed, in fact we should have stood up and walked out). The waiter realized he screwed up after he the other table complained. He took our food and scampered back in to the kitchen (more yelling took place) then 5 mins later the same plates came to our table.

Our food was stone cold. And the waiter quickly departed and did no follow up checks with our table. Perhaps he was worried about what we would say…. and he would have been right. Anthony’s cold hash browns were burnt, not a speck of white in them. Joshua’s biscuits and gravy was cold kindergarten paste congealed over two flour hockey pucks. We were starving so we forced back what we could off our plates Even if the food would have been hot, it would have been dull cafeteria food at best.

The worst was the name association of the of the place. We were drawn to the restaurant because it looked like a fun family place. Again doing a little pre-check for our future kido. We found out that it used to be called Lil “Black” Sambo’s, they had a little mini newsletter explaining the history of the restaurant. We didn’t take the newletter but here is what Wikipedia says about the book the restaurant was named after: “The book has a controversial history. The original illustrations by Bannerman showed a caricatured Southern Indian or Tamil child. The story may have contributed to the use of the word “sambo” as a racial slur. The book’s success led to many pirated, inexpensive, widely available versions that incorporated popular stereotypes of “black” people. In 1932 Langston Hughes criticized Little Black Sambo as a typical “pickaninny” storybook which was hurtful to black children, and gradually the book disappeared from lists of recommended stories for children.

Shortly after breakfast Anthony started to feel sick. Which was not surprising. So for most of Saturday afternoon, Anthony tried to sleep while Joshua did a little shopping.

Later that night we drove up to the Spirit Mt. Casino and got to see Cyndi Lauper live concert. Our seats were way in the back of the room, but for $15.00 each for a 2 hour concert, it was a great deal.

The show was really loud and focused more on her rock side then her softer catalogue which we both love. We saw at least 10 other people we knew from the Rose Court and Portland GLBT Community, some who we had not seen in years, it was a nice surprise treat.

The end of the month saw Anthony finally getting his iPad. We waited in line for Joshua’s wi-fi version, and hated it. So we preordered Anthony’s 3G version. We both still love them and they are in our hands most of the time.

On the adoption front, since our last post we have sent in about 4 home studies. There really seems to be no kidos out there that fit our target range. Which is a real bittersweet thing. Sad for us, happy that less kids are displacing from their homes.

Saturday morning we got up early and drove to downtown Portland. Plugged the parking meter, entered Pioneer Place mall and then got in line. Yes, we decided to be early adopters of Apple’s new iPad.

We started the day thinking we had been smart. After seeing the long lines for other Apple product launches in the past we decided to do an online reservation to reserve our iPad and make the process easy. Much to our dismay the reserved line snaked all the way down to the food court. Total travel time from the end of the line to the front took us over one hour. And that hour was quite the experience, as it seemed like several of the people inline had decided to save money up for their iPad by not “wasting” money on deodorant, toothpaste or showers.

But it wasn’t all bad, Apple was handing out free water and snacks to keep the crowds happy and there was a huge amount of excitement and energy in the line, It was computer geek nirvana.

When we got to the front of the line we were escorted in by our personal sales person. He asked if we wanted to play with one before we bought it, we said no. We tossed him our list of accessory needs and our credit card. Moments later we were making a beeline out of the mall, to our car clutching our new prized possession.

What is it like? Well it’s truly magical. It quite simply lives up to all of the hype. The iPad just screams to be touched and used. It makes surfing the web brand new. Our laptop has almost been replaced in one fatal move. We spent most of the day learning and exploring our new device. We also watched the new episode of Doctor who. It was a double geek day.

Then that evening Anthony got all dressed up in on of his tuxedos and headed back downtown to co-host the 34^th annual Rosebud and Thorn Pageant. Rosebud and Thorn is the longest running GLBT youth pageant in the world. Back when Anthony was a “youth” he held the title as Thorn 17.

It was a great show, so amazing to see the next leaders of the GLBT community shine and inspire everyone in attendance.

The pageant was held in a all night, all ages dance club. Anthony normally hits the sheets no later then 10:30pm, long gone are the late nights of dancing until dawn. His co-host, the Lovely Suzanne had just flown in from New York City that same day, so both of them were feeling it when the show started late at 11:40pm ended at 2:30am.

Sunday – Anthony spent recovering from being up to 4am while Joshua played with his iPad and started cleaning the house in anticipation of a visit from Anthony’s nephew who will be staying over for one night this week.

On the adoption front, it looks like the dry spell for children’s profiles might be over. After months of not having any kido profiles to even look at, today our caseworker set over two new profiles. So fingers crossed.

Next weekend: We will be off to the beach to celebrate our belated anniversary with a weekend in Lincoln city and a Cyndi Lauper concert.

The big thing about adoption that you never really see in the movies or on TV is the waiting. It’s horrible, it can emotionally sneak up on you at any moment and grab onto any insecurity you might have about the process or yourself and give you a good shake. So with our child respite care commitment recently coming to an end. We both were a little apprehensive about what to do on the weekends to stay active and not brood about the the unending waiting.

Several months ago we helped a friend out with a big Estate/Moving Sale. We had a lot of fun holding the sale. So we decided to venture out and try it from the buyers point of view.

Our first Saturday out we spent more on gas and Starbucks then shopping. We quickly found the difference between an a estate sale and garage sale. Completely two different worlds of junk. At the end of the day when we got home and reviewed our pile-o-treasure and we found we only picked up an old metal meat grinder for $1.00 and 1976 Cheese fondue set in wonderful 70’s orange for $9.00. The Fondue pot proved to be the big find of the day, forcing us to buy $40.00 in cheese that night for 2 fondue nights in a row (cheese is king in our house).

Our second week we did a bit better, skipping the garage sales all together we scored a stainless steel Samsung formal chopstick set for $15.00 and some very nice cake decorating knifes for 50¢. We also stopped and treated ourselves to a nice lunch out.

This last weekend we found a 1980’s 1902 Lewis and Clark World’s fair poster/map (50¢), a all-in-one apple slicer and corer device ($3.50) (which means homemade apple sauce this year) and a large stack of choose your own adventure books for the future kido’s book shelf (.25¢ each)

So far we have been pretty picky (like normal) and don’t buy very much stuff. We tend to spend more on Starbucks, Gas and Lunch then we do at the sales. But it’s still fun to see other peoples houses and rummage though their stuff (sometimes a bit creepy). It’s also nice to see all the different neighborhoods in the area.

This past weekend we celebrated the annual anniversary of Anthony’s 21st birthday. After the traditional birthday gifts of kitchen wares and Dr. Who videos, we headed down to Frys. Because not only was it Anthony’s birthday weekend, but it was also payday weekend.

Since moving to the new house we have wanted to condense all of our multiple computers backups and music and photos to one safe location, a home server. This was the weekend we decided to make it happen.

We picked up two 1 Terabyte drives and a powerline networking kit. Because the house is rented and we
do not want wires running around the house, we have been using a wireless network for all of our computers and devices. But since the  home for our server is our bedroom closet, wireless might not be the best way. So we had to find a work around. The answer turned out to be a NETGEAR XAVB101 Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter Kit. We plugged one down stairs into our network switch then the other upstairs with the server. Then poof, a instant 85 Mbps wired connection. We were even able to wire in our bedroom desktop to a wired connection point.

We spent most of the day playing at Frys, drooling over Macbook air’s and super flat TV’s. We then drove home, did a quick change and then headed downtown to the Melting Pot (a fondue restaurant) for Anthony’s birthday dinner.

If you have never been it is a real fun dinner experience. Once you are seated the hostess turns on your own personal cook top with fondue pot, which is built right into your table. We should also mention that our restaurant curse held up here as well. It is a strange curse we somehow acquired, but it seems that every restaurant we go to, we get seated by the bathroom or the kitchen. This time it was the kitchen, but it did not ruin our meal.

We ordered the “big night out” which comes with four courses. It started with an alpine cheese fondue, which was prepared tableside. Then a yummy alpine salad. Then for the main course they bring out a big pot of boiling broth, which goes on your cook top. With the broth we got a large tray of assorted raw meats, veggies and 10 different sauces. You skewer your choose of meat and then stick the skewer the pot to cook for a min or 2. Joshua loved the sausage and Anthony loved the duck!

For dessert we have the flaming turtle. Which starts with a big bowl of melted chocolate. Then the server dumps in pecans and a good helping of 151 rum, which is set aflame. To dip in the chocolate they brought out a large plate of cheesecake, brownie squares, strawberries, sliced banana, pound cake, rice crispy treats and 2 different types of marshmallows. One rolled in graham cracker on rolled in oreo cookie. It was a great birthday feast, we both exited the restaurant stuffed.

On Sunday Shawn came over for his weekly visit. Joshua and Shawn worked on setting up our new home server. Shawn also helped Anthony install the powerline routers and help run the wires to the server home. Shawn is really focused on technology. Mostly in the form known as video games and TV. So we decided a little refocusing of that energy might be good in the long run. The night before Joshua had installed all the next hardware, but all of the software install and tweaking still needed to be done.

Joshua and Shawn hooked up our 61 inch TV (aka the biggest shiny object) in the living room to the server and spend the whole morning installing and playing with the server. After lunch and quiet time we cleaned the house up and then drove over to Red Robin for a surprise party for Shawn to celebrate his graduation from lifeworks into mainstream elementary school.

There was one really bittersweet moment during dinner, echoing our last post on the waiting game blues. The family seated directly across from us (directly behind Shawn), across from the bathroom door (see curse above) was a two dad family with 2 little boys ages 2 and 4. You know that perfect picture of what we want to be/have for our own family.

So there we were celebrating Shawn (and Sara’s) big graduation and each time we looked at them we got a double gut shot of a future we have been working so hard for. These melancholy feelings were of course was immediately masked by application of the short walk next door to the world market. For a large basket of chocolates, bubble up soda and jelly babies.

WAITING: To stay or rest in expectation; to stop or remain stationary till the arrival of some person or event; to rest in patience; to stay; not to depart.

Since deciding to proceed with our adoption, two years have gone by. Months of taking classes, filling out forms, moving and home nesting. We are at the point where all we have to do is sit and wait.  There is nothing we can do to speed the process. Just sit and wait without any time-line.

We have not read much online about what to do with ourselves during this waiting time. All the books seem to make light of. They say it sucks and to keep busy. But that is about it. So far we have found it to be a wibbly wobbly timey wimey ball of emotion;. Fear, panic, happiness, joy and sadness.

We have tried to create little projects for us to work on to keep our minds busy and not sulk. Joshua is building a new house computer server for all of our music & video files. Anthony has been working on a photo filled welcome book for the kiddo and planning a huge model railroad system on paper, “The Samuel Sorensen Memorial Train Set”. Anthony plans building it in the third bedroom, once Sam leaves the nest or we convince/blackmail another family member to take Sam in. But the sheer costs of Anthony’s imagined train set and Joshua’s petabyte server farm might be more then we can handle or afford.

Christmas was another great distraction. We had lots of commitments and busy schedules to fill up the down time. But they were also a big emotional reminder of that large empty kids room down the hall and of the large empty places around the Christmas tree.

To recap, since our home study was completed and sent out, we have had two kiddos’ caseworkers who have shown a little interest in us. But after we had a chance to learn a bit more about the kiddos and talk with our caseworker we realized we would not be a good match either kiddo. Even knowing that this is all part of the process, the emotional impact of these two semi-matches was still a big fast emotional warm fuzzy high followed by a lingering cold prickly low.

We are both becoming a little somber towards the entire adoption process. The hopeful spring matching is looking miles and miles away. Our faith that we will get any matches at all is at a low point. Our caseworker has told us not to worry, that we have a great home study and it’s all just part of the process. But that doesn’t stop of from being nervous, worried and simply hating this stage.

Sam (Joshua’s younger brother) has become the vessel for some of our restlessness. He lost his job right before Thanksgiving, and we have been covering his rent and feeding him for free (sorta) now for 3 months. Money is getting tighter and tighter because of this and Sam has been verbally reminded of his responsibilities more than once. A few times by both of us, at the same time, both guns blazing. But in the end, Sam is not the villain. It’s our own fears, angers and self doubts are running amuck in our little brains.

• Are we good enough?

• Are we being quietly discriminated out of the matching pool?

• Will we ever get a good match?

• Did we/I do something to mess this up?

There is also a real fear lingering in the back of our minds that all of this work and waiting will be for nothing. Just like a trip to Macaroni grill…

<INSERT GROOVY FLASHBACK SEQUENCE HERE>

About 4 years ago, we headed downtown for dinner at Macaroni’s grill. When we arrived the hostess gave us one of those buzzy light-up waiting sticks and we sat down in the waiting area, directly across from the hostess booth and waited… And waited… And waited… We were not in a hurry, we chatted and relaxed in the nice booth they had there.

After 45 minutes the hunger really kicked in, so we walked up to the desk and asked if they had forgotten us. They said no and apologized for the delay. So we sat down again in the waiting area with our buzzy light-up waiting stick and waited, and waited and waited.  20 minutes later, we started to notice new people being seated in to the preferred leather booth seating area after only waiting a few moments. So we walked up again and asked how much longer it would be.

Then the hostess who had been standing directly in front of us for 65 minutes, and 20 minutes earlier apologized to us, told us that they tried to seat us a long time ago but since we had left it was clearly our fault. “When the stick goes off you need to come up to the check in desk, Sir.” But our stick had not gone off.

But, luckily out of the kindness of her heart, even though “WE” had clearly messed up, she would help us out by getting us seated next. Us being us, accepted it and sat back down and waited some more with the smell of warm Italian butter (go on ask what “Italian” butter is..) in the air around us….

10 minutes and several other customers later the “next table” turned out to be all the way in the back room, in the private party area. They said us down at a tiny 2 top cocktail table, completely filled with restaurant table advertising clutter (and Italian butter) and then proceeded to seat a group of 30 hyperactive vociferous preteen girls all around us at the larger tables.

35 seconds later we were walking out the front door of the restaurant very, very mad. Mad at Macaroni grill and mad at ourselves for just taking it and not raising a fuse. Mad that we didn’t do something highly inappropriate with our defective buzzy light-up waiting stick. After smelling Italian food & Italian butter for 2 hours we ended up eating Taco Bell take away.

The gist of our little flashback is we don’t want Taco Bell this time. The fear of this all being for nothing is very much in our minds daily. That fear doesn’t go away, that fear is always hiding in every conversation and every quiet moment.

But that leads to our other chief problem.  There is no one to be frustrated at. No villain to defeat or overcome to achieve victory. No restaurant hostess to yell at or angry letter to write. Our caseworker has done a great job for us and we have a great agency. We can’t be mad at the kiddos’ overworked caseworkers as they are working hard to protect those kiddos. So we have no legitimate person or thing to loath and project our frustrations on. And that in itself is frustrating.

So we continue to wait.

Our Christmas tree is up and decorated, the front yard is ablaze with thousands of LCD lights, the holiday season is back. Anthony has once again turned our home into a Fudge, Divinity, and Fruitcake factory. If that wasn’t bad enough, this year Anthony has shamelessly stolen the classic Sorensen family chocolate chip pumpkin cookie recipe and has added that to the production line up as well. There is no doubt that Christmas as come to the house.

We have had a big full year. We have moved out of Portland, survived Hurricane Rick at sea and managed to keep a roof over Sam’s head for another year.

But our biggest news this year is that our adoption home study was completed in September and more importantly paid off.

We have made it though the classes and background checks and all the inspections. We are right on target for adopting a kiddo or kiddos sometime in 2010 and have made it to the matching stage. Our caseworker has been sending our home study to potential kiddos caseworkers that we have an interest in. If the kiddos case worker likes what they see in us, then we get some more information about the kiddo sent back for us to review. It’s like exchanging business cards. Right now we have our home study out for about 12 different kiddos and sibling groups. So far we have had additional information come back twice. Sadly both times, the three of us (us and our own case worker) did not feel it was a good match.

So far the waiting & matching process is proving to be a very hard and emotional process.

We have been keep trying to find adventures and projects to keep us distracted. The biggest adventure was a 7 day cruise to Mexico. Neither of us had been on a cruise before and neither of us had ever been on a cruise in the middle of a hurricane.

So we were able to check two items off our bucket list. You can read all about our adventure with Hurricane Rick and our Mexican cruise at our family website (click here). We had quite the adventure!

Now is also a good time in our Christmas letter that we should also mention that we have made very good progress this year in disproving the slanderous rumor and lie that has been spread among our family and friends that “we” have some sort of Disney theme park “addiction”. Just so you all know and for the record, we did NOT make our fall pilgrimage to Disney World as we have been doing annually for the past few years. Furthermore, we only visited Disneyland twice this year, only once in the spring for our anniversary and only once in the fall as a tie in to the cruise. Clearly, we have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, that we don’t have a mouse addiction. And the rumor that Anthony has already started planning our future kiddos first trip and we are hopeing to have as many family and friends with us for a large grand gathering is also just a rumor.. until we send the invites out.

During the Spring we took a long six week parenting class in Love and Logic. Our caseworker recommended it as it would give us some great parenting tools to us with our future kiddo. We loved the class! If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher or babysitter you need to take this class!

They teach a real innovative way to help your kiddo make little mistakes as kids when it’s safe. Rather then big mistakes when they are older and it is much more life shattering. It also helps parents let the kids to the hard work when it comes to parenting, meaning make the kids think and learn from their actions and behavior rather then having the parents worry, fret and helicopter over the kids which only helps on setting them up for failure as adults.  We find ourselves using the techniques every week, and they work!

We have been very blessed this past year to have been able to provide some child respite care on our weekends. Our adoption caseworker got us connected with a young mother and her son who was recently placed with her.

Every Sunday we have had an 8 year old boy dropped off at our front door and the fun begins! We get to play games, go on hikes, cook, go swimming, work on science projects, go to OMSI, or work on spelling words. Sometimes we get more then one kiddo. Recently, we had three at once, a 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old.

Helping out and being apart of this kiddos life has been a great learning experience for us. A lot of our posts online at www.desoren.com this year have been based on the experiences we have had with him. It has been very rewarding knowing that we are helping while getting some hands on experience with special needs adopted kids. More then once we have been able to draw on some experience with him when looking at potential kidos profiles. That and he is just a super cool kid, we have been very lucky!

At the beginning of the year, Joshua received a promotion and new job position at Banfield as a Jr. Pricing Analyst. He is currently in the process of moving positions again at Banfield. The company apprently thinks of him as upwardly mobile and a good key player.  Joshua also has about one and a half years to go still on his degree in accounting from the University of Phoenix.

Anthony is still working at Minuteman Press as a production designer. He recently step-downed as Speaker of the House for the ICS International Parliament. Anthony was one of the key founders of their new Parliament which is comprised of 70 non-profit chapters within the International Court System. The I.C.S. is a GLTB non-profit group that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity annually across Canada, Mexico and the USA.

June 2010 will be mark 2 years of living with Sam. His short stay seems to be getting more and more permeant. Right now, Sam is looking for a job. A few weeks before Thanksgiving he was laid off from Safeway. Which is currently being looked upon as a mixed blessing. It has made things bit harder for us, as we had to cover everyone’s expenses. But he was stuck in bad job, so it really is for the best. The goal is for him to get in to a better job with more pay and hours or at least enrolled in school by January.

Our latest big adventure was having to move to a new home. Right after we booked and paid for our Mexico vacation, our landlord called us and gave us the bad news that she needed to sell the house. This set us into a real panic. With our home study freshly completed and paid for, moving was the last thing we wanted to do. Getting a good home for our kiddo was something we had really invested a lot of time and energy in to the first time around. Trying to do it again and quickly, was a huge task to hit us with.

Luckily, we quickly got a great real estate agent who was a friend and she got us in touch with a great loan officer. With their help we looked into our options and the possibilities of buying the house from our landlord and/or buying a new home. But in the end we just did not have the time to get together the financing that we would need. Home ownership is in our life plan, it just wasn’t expected right after paying for a holiday and adoption.

After we got back from our hurricane cruise, we had about a month to look for a new house that would meet our needs and our future kiddos. We found a great new-construction corner two story townhouse in Happy Valley. Happy Valley is just outside the Portland city limits in Clackamas county near Oregon’s largest indoor mall Clackamas Town Center, just north of Oregon City and the end of the Oregon trail.

The house has amazing views, 3 bedrooms & 2.5 bathrooms. Gas everything and the cats love the carpeted second floor. Their new favorite spot to lounge is the top of stairs, it gives then a good view of the whole house.

The new house is the furthest from downtown Portland that we have ever lived. Seems each time we move, we move farther away from downtown. But, one of the big plusses is it is right on the new Tri-met greenline lightrail system. So both of our workplaces and downtown are just a short train ride way. We also found out that our new elementary school looks to be a much better school for our future kiddo. It scored outstanding in every category on it’s 2008-2009 school report card.

Our new house has many plusses over our old house, the biggest being it’s cheaper! The new little worry is that because this place is so nice we might get spoiled and have a hard time finding our next place. But it’s something we are willing to risk!

So from our new home A.K.A. the fruit cake production factory… from both of us to all of you

Merry Christmas!

Joshua & Anthony

Looking for that perfect Christmas present for our family?

Sunday brought us our weekly visit with Shawn. Shortly after 9:00am the door bell rang. Anthony walked over to the door and opened in. In walked Shawn, followed by Donny (Shawn’s 5 year brother) followed by Ram (Donny’s adopted brother age 3), followed by a weary looking Sara.

It was her weekend to host Donny for one of his regular visits with his big brother Shawn. Donny lives with his forever family up in Seattle. On this visit he came down with his new adopted brother Ram.

After we got all the coats and shoes off, Ram announced that he was hungry. All three had already eaten breakfast, but Ram was still hungry. Something that would be a theme all day long.  So we quickly got three table settings out and a fast breakfast of cheerios and juice.  Ram had his with milk, but Donny preferred them dry which was fine but he had a hard time keeping the dry cheerios on his spoon. So as each cheerio slid off and on to the floor, Claudius (one of our cats) sprung to action. So picture this if you can, 2 cute boys eating a 2^nd breakfast while a large fat cat is batting and chasing dry cheerio’s underfoot on the hardwood floor much to the amusement of both of them.

After 2^nd breakfast Shawn headed off to Sam’s room to talk Star Wars while other two boys discovered the kiddo’s room and more importantly the Legos. After about an hour of Legos and books, we got the boys downstairs and started to roll out some gingerbread dough. Joshua and Shawn loaded up in the car and headed to Fred Meyers to get some icing while Anthony, Donny and Ram all played with the cookie dough and cut out gingerbread men.

Once they were cooked and cooled we sat each kid at the table and the frosting adventure began. Each of the boys did a great job.  But keeping the icing tip out of Rams mouth was real trick. After all the cookies were decorated, they were put away harden up and Joshua started to make lunch of everyone. Anthony took the boys and they all curled up and watched 101 Dalmatians while lunch cooked.

After a great lunch and seconds and thirds for Ram, we headed off for quiet time. We divided the boys up into 3 bedrooms. Ram in the master bedroom, Donny in the kid room, and Shawn in Sam’s room. Anthony read to Ram who cried a few tears because he didn’t want to take a nap, he wanted to eat cookies. It took about 10 minutes of reading and Ram as snoring up a storm. Joshua read to Donny and he too was out like a light.

When quiet time was over Shawn played with Sam’s game boy for his video game time. But both of his brothers were dead asleep and way too cute to wake up. Ram as also a little sick so the extra sleep time for him was a good thing.

We woke the boys up one at a time, first Donny, then Ram We gave them a snack, made sure everyone had restroom break, got shoes back on and coats zipped up. We then matched single file out the car and began the loading and strapping in process. 3 kids & two booster seats later, 3 plates of cookies load each with a special one each child had picked for Santa. And we were ready for takeoff.

Normally this is where our weekly blog ends. But not this time… Because of the seating arrangements there was only room in the car for one adult. The sucker.. err..  lucky person was Anthony.

Right past Oregon City on I-205, Ram from the back seat announces in a clear LOUD voice, “I need to go potty!”. So Anthony took the next exit and unpacked the kids and snuck in the backdoor of a McDonalds and marched them quickly into the restroom. Shawn ran right in to the only stall and locked himself to do his business. The two younger boys both instantly became nude… They dropped their little pants to the floor yanked their shirts both up to their chins and begin the bound leg penguin wiggle dance over to urinal, both boys fighting for who gets to do number 1 first. Anthony quickly tried to shut the bathroom door, to block the view of the nude review while laughing uncontrollably.

We had a wonderful time with the 3 boys. It is defiantly a day that will help us on our path to adoption.

Looking for that perfect Christmas present for our family?

Saturday became our official unpacked day. We got the kido’s room bunk beds rebuild and opened and put away the last moving box. Yeah we are here at last!

Sunday morning, Joshua woke up sick. So when Shawn came over for his normal Sunday we have to quickly come up with some non-Joshua activities.

First thing we worked on was Shawn’s spelling test that he had the following day. He came with a list of works and Anthony and Sam worked with him for a good hour on learning the spelling of the 10 words on his test. We made a game of it.

After the spelling we all bundled up in heavy clothing and headed outside. In our old neighborhood holiday lights were a mandatory event.  The whole HOA became a lighted Christmas wonderland as each house tried to outdo each other. Last year we spent a small fortune trying to keep up with the Jones. Well this year in our new HOA, a few people put a few lights out… which meant we would at last be the Kings of Christmas.

Anthony and Shawn carried out the 3 huge red and green plastic storage bins. We popped them open and started to inventory our goodies.

Sam untangled the big net lights and with Shawn’s help they wired up a big evergreen tree in our front lawn. Anthony ran the ground curb lights and decorated the smaller bushed. It was really really cold. So we took a break inside and Sam and Shawn made some hot coco for us all. After are break we headed outside to finish up. We got all the lawn decorated, but it was just too cold to work on the house lights, that and Joshua really wanted to do them. So we decided to wait on the house light for when Joshua felt better and we headed inside for some video game time and lunch.

After a nice lunch of Anthony’s homemade burritos we had quiet time. Quiet time was a bit harder for Shawn this time around. Shawn refuses to take an afternoon nap, so we invented quiet time were everyone goes to their bedrooms for 30-40 minutes to read or nap. Since Joshua was in the master bedroom being sick Anthony stayed down stairs.  Normally Shawn listens to read along books or reads some of the kid books we have.

But Anthony, being down stairs, proved to be a big temptation. So we had several trips downstairs to get a sneak peek at the TV… ahhh I mean to use the bathroom and ask about headphones and ask how long it has been  and to use the bathroom again.

On the last trip down the stairs Anthony headed up with Shawn and gave him some legos to build, which did the trick. After about 20 minutes longer than normal quiet time Anthony checked in on Shawn and he was intensely building. The two of them played for a bit before Shawn asks “When is quiet time over?” it was very cute.

We headed down stairs and watched an episode of Wallace and Gromit, The wrong trousers. We then worked a bit more on the spelling words.  Several of the words he knew all of the letters, but just had a hard time getting them in order. So we moved over to our big dry erase board and he wrote each word he missed out and we tried different letter combinations until he got it correct.

By the time it was time to go Shawn had each word down pat. Fingers crossed for his test!

UPDATE He only missed one word!

This month ended in a bang for us. First we helped out a friend by holding a huge estate sale for her, and then we had to move ourselves to our new home. It feels like we have been packing and moving for 4 weeks now…

Our friend could be considered a border-line hoarder. But she hoards good stuff, rather than garbage like some of those poor people on Hoarders (A&E TV Show). Just like us she had to move and was already dealing with enough stress in her life. She asked us if we would help out. So she took what she wanted to keep and left the rest for us to sell.

The sale was a huge amount of work and involved several long drives. Her house was out in Gresham, and even from our old house on 102^nd in Portland, it was a 35 minute drive each way. It took us 4 days (a few hours every day after work) to get the house completely setup for the sale. The biggest task was discovering and sorting what was there. We setup the master bedroom as a huge clothing boutique. Racks and racks of clothing and a large assortment of designer and designer knock off bags.

The sale ran for two days, Saturday and Sunday from 8:00am to 4:00pm both days. The first day we were awash in nonstop people. The second day it was fairly slow but a few big repeat customers came back to help clear us out. In the end, we sold most of the items and got a nice little commission check.

In the run up to the sale, we had an adoption update. We said no to two boys, as after reading their expanded profile, we just didn’t feel we were a good match for their needs. This was much more emotional than we thought it would be. Our “No, thank you” came at very early stage. They were not close to even offering a placement. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like we were saying no to our only chance at the adoption process. It isn’t of course, but it was an unexpected stressor, in a sea of home moving stress.

Our moving day was planned for Black Friday, November 27^th, just five days after the estate sale. So we spent most of Thanksgiving Day taking apart furniture, and loading boxes in to the garage. Anthony cooked up a nice mini thanksgiving dinner. Turkey (loaf), mashed potatoes, candied yams, fresh rolls, homemade stuffing, and two wonderful pumpkin pies.

Moving day started at 7:00am with the drive to the U-Haul for truck pickup. We got the 17 footer. Imagine Anthony driving a massive truck…. Yeah it was pretty funny. In the end it only took us 3 loads to get everything moved.

We moved from Portland to Happy Valley. We are still on the MAX line, green now rather than blue. The elementary school in our area just got a great report card so our future kido’s school is an upgrade from the old one, which did not score so well.

Our new house is larger, but smaller. The living room, dining room and kitchen are all in one huge open space on the main level along with a half bath. Gas stove, Gas heat and Gas hot water! Upstairs, we have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a nice sized laundry/cat room).

Our new master bedroom is huge, about 3 times bigger then what we had. It has its own master bath and huge walk in closet. We immediately splurged on a fancy new rain shower head for our shower. This was worth every penny. We keep taking longer and longer showers. It was a real god sent for our aching muscles! (Getting out of the shower has become an issue.)

The big change is this is a townhouse. No yard work to worry about, but no raspberries growing the backyard. All of our old neighbors are upset to see us leave, while our new neighbors seem upset to see us take up a parking space. In fact the day before we moved Joshua had to ring the door bell of almost all the other homes to get someone’s car out of our driveway so we could get to our garage.

The move is over and we are 100% in our new place now. Handed over the keys last night and our old landlord was shocked how clean the house was (She gave us 100% of our deposit back!).

So for now we are living a sea of boxes, but hopefully in the next week or so everything will find a new place in time for our Christmas party.

We had a pretty busy Halloween weekend. With about a month to go before our move date we drove around Saturday morning and checked out two condos. All three of us like both of them, but one in Clackamas seemed to be the favorite so far.

Saturday night Anthony and Joshua drove over to Sara and Shawn’s house and then from drove over to Sara’s old neighborhood and took Shawn trick or treating. Shawn was dressed up like Superman. Which seems to be an important hero for him. He showed us his outfit before our trip and he explained to us that Superman was adopted, just like he is.

It was a cold night, but dry. We were out canvassing the houses for about 2 hours. A lot of the people we visited mentioned that they were not getting many trick or treater’s. So Shawn make out like a bandit getting handfuls at many of the houses. Afterwards we drove back to Sara and Shawn’s house and sorted out the candy, giving Shawn a chance to count every piece and a chance for the adults making sure it was all safe.

The next day we had a big house cleaning. Between our vacation and Sam’s vacation the house has not had a good cleaning for about a month. With two cats in the house that means several tons of fur under the tables, chairs, sofa and hiding in corners.

To start the day right Anthony made fresh biscuits and cream of wheat! Shawn came over for his normal Sunday visit about at about 9:30. By then Sam had all the dinning room tables moved and was in full cleaning mode. Anthony cleaned the kitchen while Joshua took care of the bathroom.

Sam and Shawn hung out in the back room for a bit. Shawn has taken a real shine to Sam. They spend an hour looking at Star Wars facts and stories on Sam’s laptop. Sam is going to be a great uncle for our Kido.

Anthony made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with a little help from Shawn, and then we all had a nice lunch of fresh salmon with rice. After lunch we had quiet time, which Shawn is getting better and better at. We told him it was quiet time and he sat in the kids room quietly reading books. He came out an hour later and asked if quiet time was over. He will not take naps, but quiet time seems to be a success!

All four of us played UNO after quiet time. Shawn didn’t seem to get the point of the game, he tried to collect as many cards as possible, and did so with pizzazz!

We drove Shawn home and helped his mom build a corner table kit that she purchased for their new kitchen which looks great! We then headed home starving.

We had never been to the cheesecake factory before, and since it was on the way home we stopped by for dinner. They have a HUGE menu, we were a bit worried that trying to do so much would mean so so food. But we got the chicken and biscuits and shepherds pie and both were hot and yummy. So me might have found a new place to have Sunday night dinner.

DAY ONE

We rented a car from Enterprise, which was nice as they picked us up from the Cruise port. Joshua used his phone to navigate us to our hotel. Which worked out pretty well, but it took us via side streets rather then on the freeways. So it took us about 40 minutes to get to our hotel.

We booked the Fairfield hotel in Anaheim. It was the same hotel we used on our prior visit. It was about 10:30am when we got to the front desk. We had locked all our bags in the trunk of the car, we figured we would have to come back later in the day since we where checking in so early. But we were in luck, they had our room ready! Check in was even a breeze. Much better then last time. Total time from hitting the front counter to walking into our room only took about 10 minutes.

After a week in our ship’s stateroom, our room felt like a mansion. Standard king sized bed, standard size tub with standard sized toilet and standard sized sink. All felt like luxuries! We tossed our bags down grabbed our park tickets and headed out the door. By 11:00am we where on Disney property. One of the reasons we like the Fairfield is it’s great location. From the hotel’s front door  to Park turnstiles it’s actually closer then the Disneyland hotel and about $300 a night cheaper.

The first this we noticed was the whole park is decked out for Halloween. The big flower patch Mickey head has been halloweened and pumpkin jack-o-lantern version of Mickey, Donald and Goofy are displayed above the turnstiles.

We headed down Mainstreet USA and walked into tomorrowland making a beeline to Space Mountain, now called Ghost Galaxy. Wait time was 90 mins! So we grabbed fastpasses and then headed up towards Strollerland/Fantasyland and had lunch.

After lunch we boarded the Mark Twain for a boat ride around the lagoon and then did the haunted mansion holiday edition. We then left the park and headed over to California Adventure.

The Blue sky cellar was open and we got to see a little of what is coming to CA in the next few years. CA is still under major renovations. The lagoon area is still drained, but now they have several million dollars worth of pipes and water canons installed on the lake bottom. The water show called “The Wonderful World of Color” should rival Fantasmic.

Next we headed to muppet studios and watched Muppets 3-D (still a great show) and then did the Monsters Inc. ride. We checked out the Italian restaurant in the park, but the food did not look worth it so we headed over to Downtown Disney for our traditional first night dinner at Tortilla Joes. Dinner was ok, nothing great and not as good as we remembered from before. Looks liked they have a new management team with a new menu. Which was seemed to be more tame for the white man’s palate. Salsa was watered down ketchup. But the meal was not bad, just a bit boring.

After dinner we took the Mono-rail back into the park. The Disney Monorail is tiny compared to the DisneyWorld ones. But these seem to be more a ride then a legitimate transportation option. Once back in the park it was time for Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy. Which ROCKED! We grabbed a second fast pass for it, a very nice temporary overlay to a classic ride.

Fireworks that night where a bit of let down. First, Mainstreet USA was standing room only from the front of the castle all the way to the railroad archway. People where packed in like sardines. So we watched the show from the backside at it’s a small world. They use lights and video on the white panels of Small world and it’s kinda a secret show. Even with that special show, the show turned out to be a watered down and poorly copied version of of Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party in Disney world, which we love! We were really looking forward to seeing what the west coast mouse had come up with, and the result was just a sad imitation. They used the same songs and same orchestration of the music, so both sang along perfectly with the show and more then one towny looking at us wondering how we were doing it.

After the fireworks the park was open until midnight so we headed over to see the second showing of Fantasmic. Which was pretty good. We then did  Strollerland and then headed to bed. After a week of being pampered and napping all day, a full day at the parks nearly killed us!

DAY TWO

Big shock…. Anthony woke early. Dragging Joshua out of bed. The first thing we needed to do was find coffee and breakfast. Which proved to be a task. The prices at the little coffee shop and diner in Dowtown Disney has got thur the roof, $17.50 for pancakes. We nearly passed out when we saw how much they have jacked up the prices.

So with our normal breakfast spot now off limits we entered into the park with a empty belly and no ADR for breakfast. Plaza cafe was packed and we didn’t feel the need for a character breakfast, well not until we have a kido. So we had breakfast burritos at the tomorrowland fast food station. Which were fresh and not bad.

We grabbed another Space Mountain fasspass for later in the day and  headed off to do the park. We had a great day in the park. But  rather lousy time at dinner. We have officially given up on the Blue Bayou. We got poor service, cool food and horrible seating. Just not worth all the money they charge, this was our 2nd and last visit!

We watched the Fireworks from Main Street USA and got our addict’s fix of Disney Pins. We found all four of the haunted mansion stretch portraits done with disney characters in pin form. Very very cool. And only got about 3 stitch pins, which is a new record for Joshua!

The commute home the next day was pretty un-event full. Our non-stop flight was a bit late getting in to pick us up in longbeach. But other then that it was a short 2 hour flight. Sam was nice enough to pick us up.

Next Disney trip is going to be Disney World. We miss our big castle, the better customer service and much better food. Not to mention our EPCOT!

A few people have emailed us and wanted to know how much this cruise cost. We paid $549.00 each plus airfare (which was cheap as well, LGB is the best LA airport!). Which worked out $69.00 a day per person. The price covers room & board and all onboard activities. It has been to date the cheapest vacation we have ever taken together. It’s pretty easy to see why people like cruising so much.

Our last few days on board the Norwegian Star were spent relaxing. We got into the habit of heading down to the Blue Lagoon restaurant and ordering dinner and lunch and then hiding in our cabin.

Having the balcony was a HUGE plus for us. It became Joshua’s default position with a book in hand. While Anthony started to work his way though the stack of DVD’s he packed. Most of the time we had the sliding glass door open, day and night. If we ever do another cruise a balcony will not be optional but a requirement.

The last two days were really non-eventful for us. We did a little onboard shopping for trinkets and gifts. We have continued our tradition and got a magnet and coffee mug from each vacation destination we traveled too. The on board market covered that little need nicely.

Anthony attended the future cruise planning seminar, which turned out to be a plug for the new NCL Epic cruise ship. Again nothing helpful other then “Go to our website for more information…”. Onboard internet was free only if you traveled to the NCL homepage. Anything else was a scary 75¢ a min! We checked out the NCL homepage and the speed was terrible for the rate they were charging, their own homepage took over a min to load. We kept looking for the commodore 64 300 baud modem that just had to be attached to the ship board computer.

Joshua became a fan of the cigar lounge and visited it nightly for a cough/cigar and scotch. He even bought a Cuban cigar while we were in Mexico and tried it while on board. Anthony made it every clear that this was a vacation only event and this dirty habit would not come home with us. Both of us are ex-smokers and know how easy it is to start back up.

We attended the on board magic show, which was really funny… but not like you would think. We sat in the side balcony and were able to see how the magician did most every trick. It was pretty funny as we debunked each trick to each other.

We did the Asian restaurant and Anthony had his first taste of Sashimi. Joshua who is a huge fan of Sushi was not impressed.

Thursday night was the Chocolate Buffet. We both got a full plate of chocolate goodies and headed off to bed as the buffet was at 10:30 pm (that’s about hour past Anthony’s bed time).

Disembarkation day was the most “exciting” part of our last 2 days. We woke early again as we wanted to get off the boat during the first wave of debarkation. The process turned out to be a mad house. Half the ship seemed to have the same idea. We are going to a separate blog on the horrific personal behaviors we saw on this trip, debarkation day was the highlight of the selfish nasty behavior we saw in our fellow passengers.

Joshua broke the handle on his suitcase as we tried to take our luggage down the stairs rather then the elevators, which were packed with rude unbudging passengers. It took us about 30 mins to get off the ship, from cabin to customs, which was about 15 mins longer then it needed to be. All because of our childish fellow passengers

Customs was by the way a huge joke. Don’t understand why I have to take my shoes off and x-rayed and scanned if I get on a plane, but take a cruise from a foreign port and they just wave you through. They didn’t even look at our passports!

We had kept the tube that Joshua’s Cuban cigar came in for a kept sake and were worried we might get questioned or have it taken away. They did not even look in our bags. So much for Homeland Security. We could have brought back a case or two of Cuban cigars, or even a global thermonuclear device.

We got picked up by Enterprise car rentals, as we had booked a car for our 2 days in LA. The rental shop was close by and we were driving off to Harbor Avenue in Anaheim within 30 mins. Yes, that makes 2 trips to Disneyland in one year.

OK WE KNOW WE HAVE A PROBLEM…. admitting it is the first step to recovery.

1:30 am ship’s time, we have reached the edge of Hurricane Rick. Huge swells all night had the ship is rocking and rolling like an amusement park ride. According to the ships travel information channel, the ocean water is 86 degrees, the TV did not list the wind speed or swells so we knew it was bad. We should be safely in our sheltered port in 6 hours, but it looks like it’s going to be a bumpy ride. The view of the storm from our balcony is AWESOME, you can see and feel the power of the ocean and the storm, it was a bit scary. We found out later before we arrived back in LA that this night the ship was hit with 70 mph winds and 18-20 foot swells.

After the Joshua had woken up, a 30 min process, we headed to breakfast then de-boarded the ship, into the pouring rain and wet but beautiful Puerto Vallarta Mexico . Luckily we walked right on to our waiting tour bus. This was mixed blessing. It was nice to be out of the rain but this tour was so not our cup of tea.

The tour guide spoke just enough English to lead the tour, but no more. The speakers on the bus were set at 11, normal buses volumes only go up to 10, but this bus goes to 11. So we were deaf about 10 mins into the tour. Once off the bus the tour guide did not have any megaphone so we missed about 2/3rds  of what he said.

First stop was the old town sea wall and then up to the Parish church. Dedicated to the Queen of the Americas. Built by a gentleman named Ramirez.  If you’re a ICS member this should ring some bells and raise an eyebrow or two. The church’s name is the Church od the Lady of Guadalupe..

The parish was lovely, but they only gave us 15 minutes to visit it. They then took us to a jewelry store and gave us 45 minutes to shop. Both of us hated this and wanted to go back to the parish. So we walked around and explored some of the “non-kickback” shops and we found and wonderful working mans restaurant, it smelled amazing!

Back on the bus and off into the jungle to see were “Night of Iguana” was filmed. The movie that made the town what it is today…. apparently. Our next stop was for a free drink before we headed back to the ship. The free drink was offered in a…. Jewelry shop and another 45mins wasted.  We again ditched the group and headed to a drug store and got some soda’s and hit the non-kickback stores for some little items. We did buy a hat for Shawn in the kick back store, and kinda regretted, we paid to much, but he will love it…. We hope.

We both were very unhappy at the commercialism and the spending push NCL sold us. Our tour of the city highlights was more a tour of kick back shops and stores then a tour of the city itself. We would not take the same tour again. If we travel to Purto Vallarta again we will do it alone, rather then with a tour group.

Once we got back to the ship we stood in the rain and got soaked as we re-boarded the ship. We changed clothes and had a sit down lunch on board. After lunch the weather was looking better outside so we decided to go for a walk around the port area. Most of the stores were nothing but tourist  crap-o-la, but just as we had decided to head back we found this little store run by an elderly gentleman and his wife. The items inside were nicer art pieces. And we found a nice vase as a gift for ourselves for LESS then we spend on Shawn’s cheap Mexican hat. It was a real nice find.

We re-boarded the ship changed clothes again, and headed up to deck 13 for the sunset. The weather finally was working in our favor. It was clear and amazing. Joshua got some wonderful shots. Check out all the photos HERE. The mountains and port looked wonderful and we had the deck almost to ourselves.

So just like the day, dinner was a real let down as well. We ate at Aqua, and both ordered the lamb. Both of us were served very very very pink, and Joshua likes his meat pink…. that is medium rare, but this was raw. Worst of all it was served on a bed of cold semi cooked lentils (Joshua hates cold lentils with a passion). It was so bad we walked out and never returned to Aqua for the rest of the cruise.

So we ended the day in our room, Anthony watched a Dr. Who episode on the laptop and Joshua read on the balcony. We have two more ship days before we return to LA, and we are hoping for smooth waters and a speedy trip. We are both looking forward to visiting our favorite Disneyland hotel and of course Disneyland itself.

After a night of huge swells and a constant rocking of the ship, we woke to the lights of Mazatlan in the distance. By 7am we were at breakfast and the ship was slowing entering the port.

We dashed back to the room and packed our travel bag.  We booked the old Mazatlan walking tour the day before. So we put on our hiking shoes and headed down to deck 4.

We were met by our tour guide, Shelia. She was is an American who moved to Mazatlan back in 1981. We boarded a little shuttle that took us to the main port building. Mazatlan does not have a cruise port, the dock area is a commercial dock so we had to be escorted by shuttle to a safe area.  Once in the port building Shelia got two cab vans that took the group down to the sea wall.

The weather was warm, but overcast. It sprinkled on us for most of the day. But it was nothing for two Oregonians.  We walked along the sea wall. We got to see a cliff diver, who swam to shore and asked for money. Then he started swearing at the crowds who did not tip him. There was another gentleman who was collecting tips for the diver, and we are not sure that they were together. From the diver’s reaction and the hasty retreat of the other guy…. We are guessing not.

We then walked down to the old town area and stopped in a little shop. We got a free drink (soda pop) and had our first restroom break. We didn’t buy anything.

The tour continued thru the old town area. Shelia explained the history of the mansions that make up the old town area. Most are greatly in disrepair. But a few looked kinda cool, either of us are ready to move there.

We stopped by the oldest working bakery in Mazatlan. Joshua bought some gingerbread cookies.

We then stopped by a museum, overlooking a nice little square. We then headed over to the opera house and then walked over to the cathedral. From there we visted the city market and the senior frog store where we picked up some cool board shorts and a t-shirt for Anthony’s nephew.

After shopping the tour ended and we headed back to the boat with Mike and Mike, a couple from Canada that we met on the tour. We did a little more shopping at the port shops and then reboarded the board.

We had dinner at the buffet market and then it was NAP time!

After our nap Anthony headed down to the spa, on our first day aboard the ship Anthony won a free foot and ankle massage. IT WAS HEAVENLY!

We headed down to dinner at about 7:00pm, which was ok.  We headed back to the room and watched DVD’s that we brought and then headed to bed early.

Oh we got a letter on our door, since they canceled our day in Cabo San Lucas they credited our account $9.01 per guest…  not quite $20.00 bucks wooopie!

Our photos from the day can be found HERE, should be good as we had dueling cameras.

Day three started at 3 am with HUGE swells. Both of us jumped out of bed to look for the tsunami that surly had just hit the ship. After not finding it we both went back to be bed.

We woke up and headed down to Versailles for breakfast. Again, window seating and a wonderful breakfast. Joshua had waffles & corn beef hash and Anthony had the French toast.

We walked the deck again and headed back to the room for a nap, yes we are being very lazy, but it’s our vacation.

Right before we had to get ready to meet up for our tethering group for our walking tour, the captain announced that due to safety concerns he was canceling Cabo San Lucas. The waves were ok now, but with Hurricane Rick heading in the waves were only going to get worse. So it would be too dangerous to tether the boats back to the boat in the afternoon. The captain was worried about re-boarding us safely.

So we had a second sea day. This translated to a bed day for us. We watched TV and slept most of the morning. Then had lunch, then headed back to the cabin and slept until dinner.

The Captain had the ship moving painfully slow all day. And the waves pounded the ship over and over. The hurricane was 350 miles away, but boy could we feel its presence.

We had dinner at the Endless summer Mexican restaurant. It was mostly horrible. It was the first time we had a white server; he was even from the United States. He was mostly horrible too. He was way too into a large party next to us to pay us any attention. Anthony ordered the chicken fajitas and they delivered without any of its condiments. He just had a hissing hot plate of chicken for about 5 minutes. Anthony refers to it as his on-board Chicken Steam Facial.

After dinner we walked around the ship a bit and then headed to bed.

Anthony didn’t get seasick, but was feeling poorly all day due to the waves, Joshua was a rock.  The waves were quite bad and did not calm down until almost dawn the next day. Luckily we purchased some sea sick pills before we left Portland.

Our first full day at sea. We woke early, before dawn. The sea was all dark and mysterious, a very cool view from the balcony. Light from the ship lighting the waves so the faded from a light blue to dark black.

We showered and walked the decks before breakfast, alone. No one was up, it was a ghost ship. We headed to the Versailles dining room again, but this time for breakfast. This time the view was wonderful, and we were the third couple in the dining room. So 6 diners, 20 staff members, we have never had a more attentive servers. All we had to do was look up from our food and 2 servers were

After breakfast we headed to the shore excursions talk in the theater. Which like all the programming on board turned out to be infomercial. We decided to book the walking tour, since we have never been to Cabo San Lucas. We will find out tomorrow if we wasted our money or not.

We spend most of the day being very very lazy. We slept a lot.  Anthony stripped down to his underwear and sunbathed on the balcony. Joshua wandered down to the Havana Cigar bar and had a scotch and cigar.

We had lunch at the buffet restaurant. It was ok, nothing to great. But dinner was very nice. We ate at the Italian restaurant, which is the buffet restaurant converted at night. They hang curtains and move in new table decorations. Anthony had veal shank with polenta; Joshua had the salmon with navy beans. Joshua bought a bottle of wine. The cool thing is the bottle will follow us from restaurant to restaurant during our cruise.

After dinner we watched the “Music of the Night” a salute to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  It was mostly horrible. A few of the singers nailed it, but most of them should have just been nailed up for the horrific butchery they performed on the “Music of the Night”.

We turned in after that.

Take a look at our photos from on Board the ship HERE

Our vacation started at 5:00 am with the alarm clock blaring. We had packed everything the night before, so we both took turns showering, before driving to the airport.

We parked the car in the economy parking lot as Sam’s plane from Phoenix was scheduled to arrive later in the afternoon. So we left the car, with some money and some peanut butter cups, for him to drive home.

We got through security easily and headed straight for coffee and chai tea, then down to our gate A-11.

Our plane was a tiny little Horizon Air jet, which only holds 40 people and we were all packed in like sardines. Thankfully we were seated in the third row, so we were last on and first off.

We arrived at Longbeach airport two hours later. The sun was out and shining and it was a big temperature jump and we both quickly started to take off layers and got into our sandals. It was a beautiful day, our vacation had truly started.

We collected our luggage and walked over to the shuttle van area. Unlike our last trip to Longbeach, this time the van was there on time and we had no issues, other than waiting for the other passengers to show up. But for $38.00 bucks, which included the tip, it was a great cheap way to get to the port.

The shuttle took about 15 minutes to get us to the port. Upon arrival we were promptly met by porters who took our checked bags off to security for us. We then walked over to main entrance to the port.

The Norwegian Star was docked and it’s HUGE! We were met at the door by NCL representatives who checked to make sure we had our passports and check in paperwork. We then walked through a security checkpoint and then right up to the check in desk. We had no real wait. We got our room keys, had our photos taken, got our boarding card number and then headed over to the waiting area.

15 minutes later we were up again and heading to the ship, and 10 minutes later we were onboard the ship. With free champagne in hand we explored the ship for a bit. The unwashed masses all headed up to the buffet. In fact, all the crew kept directing everyone to the buffet. We ignored them and waited and hit Versailles, the fancy free restaurant. We where the third customers in the doors and got a wonderful window seat with an amazing view of the dock area. Ok it was not that great of a view, but the lunch was wonderful.

Just as we were leaving the restaurant they announced the rooms where ready. So we headed up to our room, 9086, ninth deck, with a huge balcony. There were two twin beds, which we quickly merged into a queen bed. We had everything we could need, but our luggage, which had yet to arrive.

At 3:30 they announced the muster drill. We headed down to our assigned spot with our life vests. Sorry no photos. Right after the drill they announced the cast off BBQ party on deck 12. We walked up to the front of the ship and got a great spot right at the center of bow of the ship. We watched a huge cargo ship come into the port and several smaller ships sailed by. Then just when we thought the ship would never set sail, it did.

It was at this point we had our only negative moment of the day. And it came from a fellow passenger not NCL. Just as we were having our romantic setting sail moment, Anthony was shoved out of the way by a short rude man and his ugly girl friend.  Fearing criminal prosecution for double homicide, we chose to LOUDLY express our displeasure and left.

We walked to the aft of the ship and were all alone and it was 100% more romantic and special. We watched the coast guard escort us out, and watched the port of LA slip away. We then headed back to our room and napped until dinner.

Dinner was an interesting event as well. The ship is really moving now so this was our first meal with motion. We ate a light dinner and had a yummy coconut soufflé for dessert. After dinner we headed right to bed.

We too lots of photos and you can see day one HERE.

Desoren.com (AKA Anthony and Joshua)

Is on vacation aboard the Norwegian Star for 7 nights. October 17th – 26th

Watch for posts from our vacation, fun photos and more soon!

Until then please enjoy this 80’s flashback:

Shawn came over to the house Sunday with a large pumpkin in tow. Friday his class took a field trip to a pumpkin patch, and he of course got the biggest one.

Dressed in his Superman outfit that he just got at Target, he proudly showed us his new super suit and his new Pumpkin carving kit that his mom had picked up for him and then he listed out the priorities for the day. Video games (he had had a good week so got a full hour) and carving his pumpkin.

We all played UP the video game for a while and then had bangers and mash for lunch with peas….. which are not Shawn’s favorite food item. But to his credit he ate them all.

After lunch we had quiet time. Shawn does not take naps… don’t belive us, just ask him. BUT 45 mins of quiet time, he will tolerate. This time he read long with 3 disney books we had; Wall-e, Meet the Robinsons and Leo and Stich.

After quiet time the pumpkin butchery begin. The kit that Shawn presented had several plastic pokers and 2 dull saw blades. It also came with a book that had about 10 patterns. The patterns ranged from a easy traditional smiling face to a 1 hour nightmare witch’s face….. he of course HAD to have the hard one.

So Anthony cut the top off and Shawn started scooping out the insides into a big bowl. Then under intense supervision by Shawn, Anthony was allowed to start the carving or at least the tracing. The tracing took about 30 mins to trace the pattern out. Then about 45 mins to actually carve the pumpkin. Shawn would do the easy lines and the harder parts he would “instruct” Anthony on how to do it for him.

While the cutting & drilling took place, Joshua cleaned up the pumpkin seeds and roasted them for a yummy afternoon snack.

Joshua had a Tri-met flashing badge and that with the LCD orange lights we used last year combined to do a very cool effect inside our witch pumpkin. Shawn wanted photos, so we marched into the backroom closed all the window shades an did a photo shoot. Which you can see at HERE

After our photo shoot, Shawn asked for us to cut his hair. Something his mom had given the ok for in advance. So Joshua grabbed the clippers and shaved his head with a #2 clipper guard Joshua did a great job.

Then while Joshua and Anthony cleaned up the loose hair and pumpkin bits Shawn took a quick shower and then redressed himself in his superman outfit. We have no proof soap was used, but we do know he got wet and he looked super cute with his new hair cut and his new super suite.

It as been a while since we have posted. We have been dealing with a bunch of grown up issues and it is creating a bunch of stress. As we mentioned before our landlord is putting our house on the market. But she is offering it to us first, something that we are now looking into.

Our adoption caseworker would like us to do this before the spring as she is hoping to have us to committee by then and moving close to or after placement could really screw things up for our chances of a placement. On top of that President Obama wants us to do it before November 30^th so he can give us $8,000.00 that we could use for our down payment or for closing costs.

Our options are to:

1) Buy the House

2) Move and rent a new house or apartment by Christmas

3) Or buy a different house and close before November 30^th, then move before Christmas

And just to add to the fun we are 9 days away from a vacation that will take us out of the country and unreachable for a week. A vacation that we booked and paid for in full prior to the present crisis. A vacation we where taking only because we really really needed a break due to the stress. AAGHGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

A realtor friend of ours pointed us to a home loan guru. Gary at Mortgage Monkey www.mortgagemonkey.com. Joshua had a meeting with him last week and turned over all of our information and taxes. Some time this week we should know what we are pre-approved for and what we could offer on the house or a different house or on nothing at all.

Since then we have been in full red alert panic mode. Trying to be prepared for any outcome we have been driving around for the past two evenings looking in the windows of houses that are on the market. Which sounds fun but it has only depressed us more.

Our guess is we are house snobs, that or the housing market here in Portland crazy. Everything is so pricy for so little. On the plus side we have found we can rent nicer homes then what we have now cheaper! So if we have to rent and move, it looks like we will be ok and might even come out ahead.

Further on the plus side we had a great visit last Sunday with Shawn. Since the weather was lousy we stayed home. Anthony and Shawn cooked breakfast then played UP the video game. Then before lunch they cooked 2 pumpkin pies! We then all spent the afternoon reading from the Dangerous Book for Boys.

September is normally when we take our vacation. For the past 2 years, we have gone to Disneyworld on the free dining program. However, with all the adoption expenses we decided back in June when the vacation offer came out, not to go.

Which was a mistake, the stress from the whole adoption process and other issues has really worn us down over the past few months. So perhaps late to starting gate and with permission from our caseworker we started to look for some cheap vacation options.

We had hoped to have a family retreat with the Sorensen clan for a week at the Oregon Coast, but the Sorensen clan had some scheduling issues.

So we started to look for cheap vacation ideas for just the two of us. (We really need the alone time.) Anthony found a cheap cruise out of LA to Mexico for a week in October. It had some pros and cons; we would miss some Portland events but the cheap price and the desperate need to get away from it all won us over. So we booked a 7 day cruise on the Norwegian Star.

A few days later, we got a call from our Landlord. She wanted to come over to talk with us, which she did last night. (insert life changing Boom here)

She is having some financial issues and she wanted to let us know that she has to sell the house.  The house WE live in, the house our home study is based on, the home we have worked to make perfect for our kiddo for 2 years.

Our lease is up in June, if she sells the house, the lease would travel with the sale of the house. So in the short term world we are ok, sort of, but long term we are a bit worried.

She also mentioned that she wanted us to have the first option in buying the house. But we really are not sure who to call or who to help us with buying the house. And we are not even sure we want to buy the house…

We have just finished our home study and had just sent it out to 12 different kiddos’ caseworkers.  We had just booked and paid for a vacation. Our caseworker is on vacation in Disneyland (oh the irony), So of course we are in a dead panic.

Sunday we picked up Shawn, then went home picked up Sam and all 4 of us drove out to Multnomah falls. Multnomah Falls is the second-tallest year-round waterfall in the nation. Along the way we stopped and had breakfast at Shari’s (where Shawn got to eat for free).

In the past, we have taken Joshua’s parents out to the falls and had breakfast in the lodge at the base of the falls. This time however, we decided to attempt the death march to the top. It’s only 1 ½ miles to the top of the falls. Sounds easy, but it is uphill at a 25° incline with no guardrails and thin trails clinging to the side of the mountain.

We had a great time once we got to the top, we walked in along the longer 6 mile trail and rested on some great boulders in the creek bed. Joshua and Shawn walked up the creek while Sam and Anthony tried to recover.

We then walked back to the main trail and followed it to the waterfall edge for an amazing view. Check out the photos online now in our photo gallery.

On our way down (1 mile to go) Shawn announces that he needs to use the restroom. We found a side trail and a good tree for him to use… but he was not ready to be that much of an outdoors man. So Anthony and Shawn raced down hand in hand to the restroom, and made it without any accidents.

After a short visit to the gift shop we climbed back in the car and headed down the winding road of the scenic highway. Sam doesn’t deal well with heights and curves so he was a little carsick. We stopped at Crown Point and Vista house which is an awesome little rest stop.

The views were stunning and beatific, but we are all a little sore today.