Home study and lawn bandit update

I am pooped.  I am covered in mud.  I had a worm crawling on my arm at one point (which I think is entirely gross).  Not exactly how I planned to spend my Sunday morning.

We have not identified the lawn bandit.  But the lawn bandit morphed into the lawn returner, as we came home on Friday to sod laid into the portions cut out previously.  Very professionally, I might add. Honestly, if these guys could figure out how to read an address on their work order, I'd rehire them in a heartbeat.  Too bad we still have no idea who they are.

The issue that arose is that T and I eventually would want some landscaping there.  Not necessarily for the whole portion that was cut out, but still.  And apparently, cutting out your lawn is the hardest (and most expensive) part of the whole landscaping process.  So we decided the best recipe for these lemons (see what I did there!) was to take the sod back out and mulch the area for later planting.  Still an expense to us, but should theoretically cut into any later landscaping expenses.

Turns out rolling up sod and putting it at the end of your driveway is hard, messy work!  I mostly did the rolling and T did the wheelbarrowing, but whew I am TIRED.  Good news is we have free sod available.  We put a quick ad on craigslist and on facebook, but anyone in town is free to stop by and help yourself!  We might as well all partake in the positive side of lawn banditing!

I'm trying to eat some lunch to rejuvenate, because we still have a big day ahead of us.  We are painting our nursery today!  Now that we know a baby will pop a squat (or more accurately "poop a squat") in there eventually, we thought the painting would be both fun and symbolic.  We chose a pretty yellow, so all of our prep work will be gender neutral, but have picked out bedding, accessories, etc that will be more girl or boy once we know which gender our lovely child will be.  I'll post pics once we are done!

Our home study visit was super nice and laid back.  The home study specialist, CB, has adopted four children herself, so she has been on both sides of the equation.  She first came yesterday, since Cam would be there, and then will come back on Tuesday.  Yesterday was spent doing individual interviews with both T and me (we could both be there for them) and with Cam on her thoughts of being a big sister.  (I realized I'm not sure if I've referred to her by name.  Oh, well -- my initials are the same as her name which is a funny thing here).  Anyway, it was pretty easy and we laughed a lot, and luckily CB didn't mind the dog pretty much licking and smelling her whole body.

Next steps:  We have a phone conference call with our agency tomorrow to discuss our questionnaire answers.  We have our second (and likely final!) visit from CB on Tuesday.  Then we need to finalize our online profile with both the text portions and pictures.  We realize we don't have nearly enough current pictures - they want 50-100 in various categories - so we need to get busy picture taking.  We also have to do a video profile, but we're trying to get these other parts wrapped up before we get wrapped up in that.  Then it is go time!  CRAZY!