Weekend Review

Well, the state's not so silly after all. We received the vet records yesterday, and wouldn'tcha know that all of the cat's shots except for two of Kira's are overdue... by almost a year. My reasoning is this: our last visit was in March of 07. We moved in July 07. When we were at the vet's in March, we asked if we needed them done and the vet said, "Oh, they're 3 year shots, it's not needed right now." Apparently 'not right now' meant 'come back in November', but no one made that clear. Now it's November a year later. Oops.

Note to people in transition: Don't lose your copies of the vet records.

So we'll be vaccinating the cats after the holiday. Gotta find a vet first though.

Had lunch with my cousin on Friday. She loaned us a baby gate and some outlet covers, and gave us an extra pack of beach toys they had and a kid's hymn cassette. Of course, we have no cassette player, but I'm thinking we'll try to find someone who has a machine that can burn the CD... or, now that we own the cassette, maybe we can legally download in mp3 format.

Play structure & pets

Flossy asked why we'd have to dismantle the play structure. There's a picture of it; on the left is where the slide attaches and in the middle we have two swings, a chin up bar, and a set of rings. All those parts are in the shed; this picture was taken when we were preparing for 'Never-Became-a-Hurricane Hanna'.

If you look closely, you will notice that the left corner where the slide attaches is broken, and there are a number of slats missing in the upper level. The upper level is a square shape; and yet, it is braced by a center beam. So when you stand on the end it rocks very unsteadily. The ladder stairs are spaced quite far apart, (it's hard for me to climb up,) and up-close real life observation (not shown in the photo) you can see where some of the wood is splitting. Most of the concerning bit is up on the top level, so our choices right now are to either repair the whole thing, remove the upper level and shorten the swing section (it also takes up a lot of the yard, so I'd like to make it a bit smaller) and repair the slide and ladder, or just tear it all down. We honestly can't decide, so we want to get our social worker's opinion on whether not deciding right now is going to harm the inspection results.


Additional update information: after half-heartedly tearing the house apart looking for the vet records, new copies are now in the mail. For whatever crazy reason, the state wants proof that our pets won't spread rabies if they attack the children. Silly state. :)

State, if you're reading, that there was sarcasm. As far as logic tells me, our cats are up to date on vaccinations and never ever bite, unless... ya know... the toy you're taunting them with is small enough they get fingers by mistake.

Safety dance

We're doing the Safety Dance. For me, it's a dance of joy that people love us and we now have a bag full of donated supplies to child proof the house! Yay!

Loads of thanks to Heather Jackson at church and anyone else who may have donated to this cause.

My cousin has offered us a baby gate or two and the remainder of the outlet covers we need (minus the snazzy ones I want), so I think we'll be all set pretty soon.

Home visit & Update

Bert will come and do the final home study meeting here at our house on December 4th, around 10:00 in the morning. We need to have as much completed for the inspections as possible, since she'll be serving as sort of a pre-inspection as well as doing other things. She'll offer her opinion on what things we may have to deal with for the inspection, like whether or not we have to dismantle the play structure for it, that kind of thing.

The head of Women's Ministry at church emailed me that there's a bag of child proofing things waiting for me there. Yay! Support is wonderful. I'll pick that up on Friday when I go for Bible Study, we'll put it all into action, and then see what we have left. I also need to see when Nancy can have me come down and pick up the baby gates from her, now that Lanse isn't in the office predictably enough for them to exchange at work.

We also got Bert's approval for the online classes we found at Foster Parent College, so we'll be signing up for some learning as soon as we can sit in one place together and decide on which class we want.

Adoption Blog Creation Day

Welcome to our new Tryon adoption blog. I've spent the last few hours transferring all my previous adoption-related blog posts to this one. If you want to start at the beginning, here's the first official post.

For today's update, I sent an email to Bert yesterday for a status report. I gave her mine, and I'm waiting to hear back to schedule her visit here. In the meantime, we discovered Foster Parent College, where we can take the required training courses and get a certificate for reasonable prices. I've also created a profile at Foster Care Central.* I'm excited to get started, but this week we're heading to Charlotte to see CR and Rachel and Kaylee, so when we get back hopefully we can tip the ball down at least a little of the hill.

*Yes, these all say 'Foster Care'. We're now sort-of-officially-but-not-really on the 'foster-adopt' track, and all the resources are shared freely between all of the different areas... but the majority of what I've been able to find so far have been filed under foster care. So we're going for it. I mean, like-minded parenting support is like-minded parenting support, wherever you get it.

About Us

Lanse began life as an Army brat and then became a normal angsty kid, born in Alaska, passing early elementary years in a farmhouse in Michigan, and then settling in Rochester, NY, with the rest of the Tryon clan. He graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, where he met Jessica, married her, moved back to Rochester, and now they live in Charleston, SC. He's the oldest of three boys, works in the computer field (which was self-taught from childhood, along with most of his family), and enjoys reading and playing with metal toy soldiers. He also passes hours hitting weeds with sticks and throwing rocks into bodies of water.

Jessica had a rocky start in a Western suburb of Chicago, but managed to pull through just fine. In Second Grade, the family (Mom, Dad, she and her little brother) moved to Minnesota, where they stayed until after she had gone to college, met Lanse, got married, and moved away to New York. She enjoys reading books and blogs, hanging out at church, painting metal toy soldiers, quilting and knitting, playing the piano, and playing with kids. She has a degree in Child Development, with a concentration in Preschool, and is enjoying applying her knowledge to help her kids.

This family would not be complete without the "furbabies" they love. Colin is the oldest, but also the smallest; white, with orange spots and orange rings on his tail. He is very independent, but likes to curl up under the covers at bedtime and purr very loudly. He also has started to play more by throwing toys in the air and doing flips trying to catch them. He also plays soccer with Spook. [Colin passed away in December, 2010. We miss him dreadfully.] Spook is the middle cat, but he's the largest, grey and lightly striped. He's sort of like a clueless gentle giant; he loves being snuggled and loved, but tends to squish smaller things by accident while loving them. He's also the hunter, and likes to catch small animals if he has the chance. He enjoys being in the room with his people and eating. Spook will eat almost anything. Finally, Kira is the youngest. She's all black except for a white patch on her tummy, and a few white individual hairs around her neck. She's shy and likes to spend most of her time on the screened porch watching the birds, mostly because the old folks (boy cats) tend to smack her when she tries to play with them. She's delicate and prim, but does have times when she likes to interact with her people. She also likes to talk a lot. All of our cats are very gentle with the children, and grateful for having two such dedicated humans to be such wonderful servants, though sometimes they can be a little snooty about it.

Tryon Adoption Story

Like many folk, we're on the road to adoption! It's been in process now for a few years, in one form or another. Our thoughts and experiences have been scattered randomly across the internet, so I thought it was about time to condense it all into one location. I'll be posting as much of it as I can find from my livejournal account so that everyone can start from the beginning with us.

Welcome!