I feel like i'm moving away a bit from the major questioning stage of "are we REALLY ready to move ahead with adoption and all?" "is this for sure the right thing for us to do?" to a more peaceful or "matter-of-factly" it's time to mail our applications, and within a few days we should hopefully be able to make our appointment to begin our homestudy. (Not that i don't question it at all, but not as much... it's more settled in my mind now, i think).

We are, for the moment, once again out of our line of credit. The last time we made it to the plus side of our account, I don't think it lasted the day; and by tomorrow I'm pretty sure the next transaction will have gone through bringing us below 0 again. BUT, by the end of this week we should be clear again... and by the end of the month, we "should" have more than enough to pay for our homestudy. (Btw, we decided to put off buying a new bed until Boxing Day ~ and hope for a great deal at that time... but we haven't done our vehicle work yet ~ tires on one, and shocks on the other).

Darwin is getting a bit tired of his job. It IS physically demanding ~ he's just not big enough and strong enough to do the job really well yet. Plus, the air/dust seems to be bothering him a bit ~ he says he's always coughing later. We're not going to make him stay... it's totally up to him. It's been nice for him to have a source of income, but if it's just too much, it's just too much. So we'll see... he's talking like he'll go til the end of the month.

Brenden's chore this month is washing dishes (just the ones that don't typically go in the dishwasher)... but he really dislikes the chore. So he offered he'd make meals if i did dishes for him. It's been ... interesting. (I've done a lot of "helping" and pinch-hitting). Today he was really stressed because he has a habit of turning on the wrong burner, and today he did it twice for one meal. Of course, he turned it right up to max (trying to boil water). The "wrong" burner had a dirty frying pan, so it cooked on real hard (and made a lovely smell ~ not ~ lol). There were a few other little issues that just made for an overall "less than pleasant" experience in the kitchen today, but i think he's more stressed at the idea of possibly having to do dishes than the stress of cooking. I think he'd do better with a stove top that has the dials right beside the burners.

Oh, btw, we did mail our applications to the agency and to community resources (provincial application for international adoption). I was a bit surprised at Reagan's reaction when I mentioned that we'd mailed them... so far he's been sounding very interested and excited, but today he sounded different. He's been really certain about wanting a brother, and the rest of us have been thinking we prefer a girl & boy, but would consider two girls... so because we talked a bit about that earlier, he might be reacting to that... unless it's the "baby of the family" thing... not wanting to give up his spot ??? Not that he was really bothered by it, but just didn't respond with the enthusiasm that i've been used to hearing from him. I'll be chatting with him about it more...