Fingerprints, Camping, and Grandparents

This blog isn't much of an adoption blog if I forget to document our adoption steps.  We are about to renew our homestudy and before our SW (social worker) can/will work with us, we must send our fingerprints in to the FBI to prove we haven't done any crimes since our last fingerprinting (as if we haven't seen enough T.V. crime shows to know to wear gloves).  We'll have to do our fingerprints again for DHS (Department of Homeland Security), this is just our background check for our homestudy.

On Thursday, September 2, while the boys were in school, we took Sunflower to the downtown LESA office and put our money order in with our digital prints and sent if all off to the FBI.  Then we went out for a late brunch.  I don't really mind having to do our fingerprints again after 4 years.  After all, this wait might turn some people to a life of crime (not me since God gave me better distractions then throwing my life away, but some).  However, I'm am not looking forward to doing this again in 3-5 months when we complete our homestudy, especially since those fingerprints "expire" 15 months later, and we are probably 24 months away from traveling.  I don't mind them running my prints again, but since it is all digital, can't I just e-mail them to them every year and not pay all the fees to go with it?

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we spent at our church's church camp.  There was not real planned events, just a potluck and campfires, but it was a great time to fellowship with friends and make some new friends.  We were very close to not going at all since the kids had been cranky all day, I had woken up at 4 a.m. and never gone back to sleep, and the one friend I was really looking forward seeing was not going.  However, we did go, albeit a little later in the day than intended, and made some great connections and had a blast playing games in the evening with the kids asleep in the tents.  A lot of people came in RV's etc., but we don't have one, so we stayed in tents.  It wasn't too bad--no different from when we usually camp.  However, our eyes were open to a new level of tent camping.  Our neighbor across the way had crock pots, rice cooker, percolator, and lights--all plugged into the RV electricity.  I'm going to so try that next year!

Sunday we came home, showered, changed, and rushed out again to go to Oak's mother's birthday party.  It was quite lovely with the family from this area, cake, ice cream, and a few presents.  Oak's Mom was doing fairly well, though Sunflower was exhausted and kept bumping into things.  

Today for Labor Day we went to visit my dad.  He seems to be doing a bit better after losing my step-mom last January to cancer.  He was very pleased to have talked to my sister and my brother on the phone in the last few weeks.  Oak hooked up Dad's CD player he had fixed, worked on my dad's toilet, and threw out a bag of trash.  Then we took my dad to lunch at a new fast food restaurant in town, Herfy's.  So glad to find another restaurant, since my dad only wants to eat at this outdoor hamburger joint or the Mexican restaurant in town (both fine restaurants, but I am soooo getting tired of their food).  Unfortunately Herfy's doesn't seem much different from the other hamburger joint, though it is a huge plus that the tables are inside, I guess.

All to say, a pretty nice four days even if my house does look like an RV threw up in it.  I would post pictures of our weekend, but I didn't actually take any!  I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the over 800 pictures I took during our beach vacation late July and have been using my camera less since then.