Happy weekend!

This weekend was a really fun weekend for us. I graduated from college!!! Yay! Now I get to mark that little box on random questionnaires that says "college graduate" instead of "some college". Happy day :) The graduation went really well - I didn't fall down on that long stage and shook with the right hand, accepted my towel and diploma with the left hand. For those who don't know what the towel is - Crown presents a Servant Towel to remind us of the servant leadership Jesus taught us while He lived on earth.

After the graduation we had a party with our family and friends, and I had such a good time!! It was great to have all of our nieces and nephews running around playing with each other (at one point Dave's niece, Hanna, went up to my sister, Carissa, and said, "Auntie Rachel?" - that cracked me up!!!) I absolutely adore being surrounded by those that I love, so Saturday was the best day I've had in a while. Thank you to everyone who made that day so special!!!

On Friday, Dave and I went to St Paul and got our fingerprints taken at the USCIS. That office is the only place to go to in Minnesota for immigration services, except for an office in Duluth, so it was a busy place! Crazy enough, we ran into another couple who we've been doing our adoption training with. The timing had to have happened just right for us to have appointments on the same day around the same time! We got to sit and talk with them for a little while, and we filled each other in on how far we've gotten with our dossiers. We are in almost exactly the same spot right now - working on getting our autobiographies written before we can schedule our home studies. The timing seems to be working out well right now to get our dossier in on my 27th birthday - July 11th.

Our friends from the Philippines, Andy and Tyler came to visit us a few weeks ago. They have been such good friends to us, and we have missed them very much while they have lived over there so that Andy could attend school over there, and Tyler trained as a midwife. We got to catch up with them on their new endeavors, and while they stayed at our house they presented us with beautiful pictures of children from the Philippines!!! What a special gift!! Andy asked us if it made it harder to see these pictures, and in some ways it did - it makes me a little more impatient to go over there to pick up our children, but it also puts pictures in my mind while I pray for the children over there. They told us that it would be okay if we shared some of those pictures on our blog with all of you, so please enjoy the pictures of these beautiful children.

Now for the hard parts...

So we're getting closer and closer to finishing up the paperwork needed in order to schedule our home study with the social worker. We have to write autobiographies about ourselves, and do a psych eval (with an MMPI) before we can schedule the home study. I started my autobiography, and am about halfway finished with it. I think it's going to be 20 pages by the time I'm done with it!! Dave hasn't started his yet, so maybe we can light a fire under his patooty with this blog :)

It's been an interesting experience writing my autobiography. There is a three page list of questions that we have to answer in our autobiography, and they are thorough questions. I've had to write about some tough times I've experienced in my life, and it hasn't been easy to relive these experiences in writing. However, there have also been some fun things to write about like what is my happiest moment in life? What is my proudest achivement? It's fun to try to think of the absolute happiest or proudest time in my life, because I've had a darn good life.

I had my psych eval tonight, Dave will have his next Wednesday, the 23rd. I was very nervous about my appointment before going in. I wondered what types of things she would ask me about, and what tough situations in my life she would make me talk about. She put me at ease right away, and I found it very easy to talk with her. I did have to talk about one pretty difficult situation I dealt with in my life, but found that she understood what I was talking about - I didn't have to feel ashamed for my views or my feelings. She asked some tough questions about my parenting views, and what it is that makes me a Christian. She asked what it meant to me to be a follower in Christ. It was interesting to chew on that question even after I talked with her about my beliefs. I told her that I'm continually learning what this means, and she told me that that is a great place to be. When we have kids it will teach them that it's okay not to have all of the answers, and to keep learning about something so that you believe it for yourself - not for what someone else tells you.

I had a pretty tough week this week with Mother's Day, the autobiography, the psych eval. I've been struggling with lots of "it's not fair..." thoughts. With losing Marley, and having to wait for our babies, I've been struggling with lots of jealousy and anger at life in general. I was talking with God while on a run the other day, and had the feeling that He was telling me that I need to start drawing on Him. I need to start finding my satisfaction in Him instead of a baby. So I'm working on that.

Results

Well yesterday we received results from Marley's necropsy (autopsy). We discovered that Marley was suffering from GME (granulomatous meningoencephalitis). The vet told us that this disease normally affects pugs or small poodles, and usually occurs in female dogs. He was pretty baffled that it turned up in Marley. He also told us that it was actually affecting his optic nerve, which is rare. But it makes sense, it seemed that Marley was having a hard time seeing toward the end of his life. No one knows what causes GME, so we hoped that Marley helped the U of MN get just that much closer to figuring out this mysterious disease. It was hard to read these results, I know after researching it that there was nothing we could have done for him, but we still miss him a lot. We read up on GME online, and it was like watching his symptoms all over again.
We keep thinking of our favorite memories of Marley. We want to get them down so that we remember all of them. He filled up memories to last us a lifetime, he was such a funny dog!! There were the little memories, like how much I loved the way he smelled when he slept, or how his right ear sometimes stuck straight up in the air (especially when he was a puppy). He would hide his bones whenever we gave him one, and we'd often find them in our bed when we'd go to sleep in it. We always got a good laugh out of his various hiding places for his treats. We loved saying, “Lily?” “Porter?” “Lily?” “Porter?” “Lily?” “Porter?” (his two favorite dogs), and he would tilt his head a different way each time we said their names. And who could ever forget how repentant Marley always was when he had done something naughty? We would walk in the door, or in the room, and find him lying on his back in the submissive position with his eyes pleading, “I am so sorry that I was so naughty!!” All we had to do was spank him and scold him in our naughty-Marley voices, and he would feel like he could be normal again.
One day we went out for lunch with my parents and decided to leave Marley and Lily (my parent’s dog) in the house while we went out. My mom had a brown bag of yarn in the living room that she was keeping her crocheting yarn in. We got home and Marley had gotten in the bag and unraveled each of the balls of yarn. In the midst of getting all of the yarn out, Marley somehow got his head through the handle of the brown paper bag. He ripped a perfect half-circle off of the bag, and it was left hanging around his neck. We got home and he came running up to us with his tail down and this thing around his neck. We laughed so hard when we figured out what it was, and my mom wrote “I’ve been naughty” on the sign. Marley wore this around, and we got a picture of him looking very repentant with this around his neck. Soon after that picture was snapped, Marley got away from us while we were outside and ran down the rode with this sign around his neck. We laughed so hard thinking of my parent’s neighbors finding Marley with this sign on him.
Another Marley/yarn story is from our house. One of my favorite pictures of him is from when he was a puppy, and he was playing upstairs by himself while we watched television in our living room (never a good idea when you have a puppy). We had a ball of yarn that he loved to play with (we think he was part cat), and he decided to push it down the stairs to watch it unroll and bounce down the stairs. Once it was completely unraveled, he decided to roll in it and growl at it and attack it. By the time he was finished, he looked up at us and he had the yarn wrapped around his head and tilted his head, looking at us with his irresistible puppy eyes. We snapped a picture, and I am so glad that we did!!

When Marley was a puppy, we tried leaving him to roam free in our house while we were gone at work or wherever. Every day there was some new trouble that Marley had found that he could get into. After about six months we finally bought him a large wire kennel that he stayed in whenever we weren’t around, and he loved his kennel – it was his safe place. Some of the stories from before we had that cage are hilarious though.
One day I got home from work to take a quick lunch and let Marley out to pee. I walked in the door and found that an entire large bag of toilet paper that we had just bought at Target the night before had been torn to shreds – toilet paper, plastic and all. The upstairs of our house looked like a tornado had ripped through it leaving toilet paper in its wake! I scolded Marley like you wouldn’t believe, but left the mess for Dave to see when he got home. We were amazed that one small dog could make such a mess, but we got a good laugh out of it.
I discovered one day that Marley created his messes within the first five minutes that we left the house. We had my grandma with us for a weekend, and I wanted to show her where I worked. I discovered a coupld of minutes down the road that I had forgotten something on my way there and turned the car around to pick it up. When I got back into the house, I found that Marley had tipped the garbage can over and ripped up everything that was inside of it. I couldn’t believe his quick work.
Marley also figured out how to open refrigerator doors that had towels on the handles (I still don’t know how he figured this one out, he was so darn smart!!). One day we got home from a trip to the grocery store to find a box of pizza sitting in our dining room. Marley had gotten it out of the fridge, and ate all of the topping off of the pizza. He was thirsty for a long time after that one. He also ate half of a Tupperware container of enchiladas one day. At my parent’s house he also did this (along with Lily) and ate a package of hotdogs, and a package of cheese. It was almost hard to get mad at him after these episodes because we were so amazed at how innovative he was with his naughtiness.
It’s hard to look around our house and not think of the many memories that we have of Marley. I keep expecting him to come running over to us when we walk in the door. Today I have a bad cold and have been resting on the couch, I miss Marley curling up beside me when I’m sick – he could always tell when Dave or I didn’t feel well and would curl up beside us. It always made us feel a little better. One day I was laying on the couch crying about something and Marley crawled up my belly up to my face with a concerned look in his eyes and licked my face. Sometimes I think Marley was not only part cat, but also part human. He was the best therapy we could have had through our infertility struggles, and we will miss everything about him.