One down, one to go!

This weekend I finished my autobiography. Yay!!!! I rode with my mom and my grandma to my cousin Matthew's wedding this weekend (Congrats to Matt and Holly!!). On the way down I just buckled down and finished the last of the questions I had to answer. It is a great feeling to be finished, but I don't think Dave appreciates that I am finished and he is not. I guess I am being a bit of a nag, but I wanted to have these done two weeks ago. Dave has almost finished his, and as of 9:00 tonight he only had 10 questions left to answer (out of about 75)!! Thanks for your prayers.

The next step is that Karin (our adoption coordinator/counselor) has sent us copies of our referral letters so that we could pick out the ones to be sent to the Philippines. It shouldn't take us too long to finish picking those, we have some awesome referrals. After that, we will get our home study scheduled, and finish up the last piece of paperwork with Karin that needs to go in our dossier for the Philippines. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is getting exciting. It's feeling more real now, so we've been more excited to talk with people about it!

Lots of people have been asking what the next step is... After we have our home study, it will take about 3-6 more weeks to have the home study results finalized, and the rest of the paperwork ready to send in to the Philippines. After that, we wait to be approved for adoption by the Philippines. We are hearing that takes about 1 month. After that, we will wait for a match - which could take anywhere from 12-24+ months. We have no idea how long that will take. That's going to be the toughest part of this whole process. After we are matched, we will have to wait a couple of more months for the details to be finalized in the Philippines, then we will travel over there to pick up our child/ren!!! We will only need to be there for 7-10 days. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers, we really appreciate them!!!

The suavest siblings ever


The triplet cousins (Chad, Rachel and Matt)

Autobiographies

I know I haven't been great about updating this little bloggy-blog lately. When I sit down at a computer to write something right now, it's my autobiography for the adoption. We did get some good news... we got our psych eval results on Thursday! The psychologist went through the report with us, and she did a great job. She wrote great comments that the Philippines will love to read about our passion for family and thoughts about our faith in Christ. The results from the MMPI showed that I am a slightly fearful person, and it showed that Dave avoids showing frustration when angry or upset - nothing new for either of us to hear. It also showed that we don't suffer from any mental illness - YAY!! This means we are one more giant step toward finishing our dossier to submit to the Philippines. I have a feeling we won't be able to submit it on my birthday as we have yet to finish our autobiographies, but it will be soon after that. The autobiographies are the last step before we can schedule our home study. After the home study it's smooth sailing to finish the dossier. Please pray that God gives us the focus that we need to finish these autobiographies.


Dave and Joel on our golf outing for Dave's b-day

Maddie's spaghetti face at Olive Garden

Gracie's face when she found out Dave turned 29 on Saturday

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.

Marley J. Ribar (04/01/2004 - 04/17/2007)

Warning: This blog is really long, and very detailed about Marley's last days.


Marley Jack Black Ribar. Marlito Conchito Consuelos. Marlino Bambino. Bubba. Boo. Professional Criminal. Mister Boy. Marley.
On Tuesday night, we had to put Marley to sleep. It was the hardest decision that we have ever had to make, but we know we made the right decision. It all started four weeks ago when we started noticing that Marley seemed depressed - he wouldn't eat, and he was very lethargic, and didn't enjoy playing with his best friend Porter like he used to. He had had episodes like this before that he snapped out of after a few days. He'd return back to his fun-loving Marley self.
I miss my little boy. Since we don't have the children that we so desire right now, Marley was our baby. I swear Marley was a real boy sometimes.

It all started about 4 weeks ago. We noticed Marley was acting depressed – he was lethargic, and not eating as much as he normally did. He has had episodes like this in the past, but a couple of days later he would usually bounce back from whatever ailed him. This time we noticed that this “depression” persisted, and wasn’t going away. He wouldn’t play with his best friend, Porter, which was not like him at all.
After a while, we noticed that he would wince if we picked him up the wrong way, then one day he yelped while jumping off of our couch. We took him into the vet to get him checked out. Of course, when we took him to the vet they could find nothing wrong with him during the exam. He didn’t wince when we held him and he just wagged his tail at all of the other dogs around the vet’s office. We learned, though, that dogs will mask their pain when they are around strangers, so we figured that’s what was going on. They did blood tests on him and called us back later that day with the news that Marley tested positive for Anaplasmosis antibodies. Anaplasmosis is similar to Lyme disease – it is transmitted by ticks and has similar symptoms. As we read down the list of symptoms for Anaplasmosis, each one of them matched up with what Marley was acting like. We were so glad to have found our answer (or so we thought). However, the next day the vet called us back and told us that another blood test revealed that the antibodies had not turned into the actual disease yet (kind of like HIV not turning into AIDS). The Anaplasmosis antibodies were not what were causing Marley to act this way. We still decided to keep him on antibiotics to try to kick whatever was going on in his little body.
After the couch episode, Marley never jumped onto or off of the couch or our bed again. However, one day Dave was working at home when suddenly Marley yelped loudly. Dave looked over and saw that Marley had fallen off of the couch. When Dave went to help him, he noticed that Marley would not put any weight on his front right paw. We took him into the vet again that day, and again Marley acted as if nothing was wrong. He walked fine on his paws, and wagged his tail at the other dogs in the vet’s office. The vet asked if we would leave him there for daycare for a couple of hours so that they could just watch what he does. At one point, they set him up on a bench to see what he would do Thirty seconds later Marley attempted to jump off of the bench and did a face-plant. He couldn’t even catch himself with his legs, so he fell flat on his face. The vet concluded from that visit that Marley had something neurologically wrong with him and he gave us a referral to the neurologist at the U of MN vet.
During this time, we noticed that Marley would walk almost sideways to the right. When the vet gave us pain medication to keep Marley comfortable, we would fall over while he was going to the bathroom. We took him off of the pain meds, so he was just on his antibiotics. Most of the time he would lay around – he would yelp if he moved the wrong way. But there were times when he would see people or dogs that he loved and look almost like himself wagging his tail and sniffing them (sniffing showed he loved you). However, sometimes he would also stare off into space for long periods of time, and his body would just freeze up. He wondered if he was having seizures at those times. One Sunday morning, we woke up at 6:00 am to find Marley having a full-on seizure. It was really scary, and we brought him upstairs to sit on the couch with us to try and relax with him. Around 9:30, he had another smaller seizure. We talked with our friends Shane and Julie to see what we should do. We had an appointment with the U of MN vet the next day (which is where Shane works), so he recommended that we just keep Marley comfortable and if he has another seizure we should bring him to the emergency vet and get valium to calm the seizures down. Marley didn’t have any other seizures that day.
We took Marley to the U of MN vet on Monday, April 16. Marley was nervous – he threw up in the waiting room of the vet’s office, but he still wagged his tail at other dogs in the waiting room. When we went back for his history and physical exam, he yelped when the vet student turned his head all the way to the right. He walked with a sideways list to the right during the exam, but other than that there was nothing else the vet noticed. He gave us choices between doing testing like CT scans or an MRI on Marley to try to see what was going on with his brain or his spine. Another choice was to try steroids first to see if that helped, then if those didn’t work we could try the other tests after that. We decided to try the medications first, so they gave us Prednisolone.
We got Marley home that day and he was really tired out from his day. He curled up and slept the rest of the day, but we noticed that with the Prednisolone he perked up a little bit that night and even wagged his tail at us and tried to jump up onto the couch. We were encouraged. However, the next day Marley looked pretty bad. He curled up underneath the desk in our office and we couldn’t un-curl him. We would try to bring him outside, and he would just fall over and curl up into a ball. He didn’t go to the bathroom at all that day. Our neighbor was outside and tried to help Dave get Marley to stand up to go to the bathroom, and he just couldn’t do it. Our neighbor told Dave that she needed to go inside before she started crying. She said it was just too hard to watch Marley like that.
Dave spent a lot of time with Marley that day before going to work. He lay on the floor next to him and petted him and talked to him. Dave wasn’t home when I got home from work, but I also spent some time lying on the floor next to Marley, hugging and petting him. I went out for supper with some friends that night, and when I got home around 9 pm, both Dave and Marley were there. Marley didn’t lift his head when I came into the house, but he did look at me with his pretty brown eyes and gave a small wag with his tail. About fifteen minutes after I got home we decided to try together to get Marley to go to the bathroom outside. He couldn’t stand up, and he started paddling his legs like he was uncomfortable and trying to get into another position. We couldn’t get him to go to the bathroom, so we brought him back inside.
We got him back inside and he lay on the floor for about five minutes when he suddenly lost bladder control and peed on the carpet while laying there. We were sure that this meant he was about to die. We put a blanket underneath him to make him more comfortable. He started panting heavily, then suddenly he started having a seizure and convulsing. Every couple of minutes his breathing would change, and we would think that meant he was going to go any minute. After 15 minutes he was still convulsing, so we decided to call the emergency vet in Eden Prairie. They told us to bring him in right away. As Dave was on the phone with the vet, we saw Marley’s convulsions get so violent his entire backend of his body was springing off of the floor. We wrapped in up in a blanket and Dave held onto him in the backseat while I drove us to vet’s office.
We got into the office, and immediately the vet tech came over to us, took Marley and ran into the back room with him. We filled out the necessary forms, and waited for them to come get us. When the vet tech brought us into the exam room, she let us know that they had given Marley valium and phenylbarbitol. The vet came in and explained our options. They could keep him there overnight to observe him, or send him to the U of MN for an overnight observation and testing, or we could make the decision to put him down. The only option the vet would not let us take was to bring him home, which we didn’t want to do anyway. He also explained to us that Marley’s temperature was 104.9, and when dogs’ temperatures go to 106, there are signs of brain damage. Marley’s temperature could easily have reached that high while he was convulsing so violently. He said that since Marley hadn’t responded to the antibiotics or the steroids, he didn’t know that there would be anything else the vets could do for him. It sounded to him like it was brain cancer or some other untreatable disease.
He went to get an estimate for how much it would cost to keep him there overnight, but when he came back in we decided that our option had to be to put him down. We cried so hard as we were telling them our decision. My heart and my stomach hurt so bad, I could barely talk. The vet told us that he appreciated our decision, and they brought Marley in so that we could say goodbye. He was still twitching – the medication hadn’t even done the trick to totally take away his convulsions. They left us alone for as long as we needed, but we only took a few minutes. We had already had our times with Marley earlier that day, and he wasn’t even responding to our voices or our touch.
We told them they could come back, and the vet explained how the procedure would go, and told us we could stay there if we wanted to. We did stay there, and held onto him and petted him as the vet injected the medication. We felt his whole body relax as it worked through his system. For the first time in a month, Marley’s body finally relaxed. The vet left us with him alone for as long as we needed again, and we cried together while we gave him kisses and hugs goodbye. It was the last time that I got to smell his “Marley scent”. I loved the way he smelled – especially his paws. The vet and the vet tech told us how sorry they were for our loss, and they were so kind. We were so appreciative of them that night.
We talked with all of our parents on the ride home to let them know, and when we got home we called Aaron and Nik. We felt bad because it was so late, but we knew they would want to know. They asked if we wanted to come over, and we said we wanted to and that we needed some bug hugs. We spent lots of time crying with them, and hugging Porter (Marley’s best friend). Then we told some funny memories of Marley, and they made us laugh with their great stories. It was exactly what we needed. On our walk back to our house we saw the bunny that Marley was always trying to catch in the bushes by our house run off. It made me smile, thinking of how desperately Marley had always chased that bunny – he even broke one of collars off while he tried to catch that bunny while he was on his chain one day. I'm sure dog heaven is well-stocked with bunnies, and that makes us smile :)

Time to focus

Well I did it! I finished writing 13 credits worth of papers for college by April 2. That was my deadline in order to be able to walk in the graduation cermony at Crown on May 19th. Phew!! It's such a relief :) I will still have a couple of credits to finish up after graduation, so I will be taking sign language courses next fall. I'm excited to learn sign language, as we feel that this will help our children to better communicate with us. Plus, it will keep me busy while we wait for a match from the Philippines!
Now that I'm done with school, we will have more time to focus on finishing our dossier. This weekend we will start working on our autobiographies and finding a psychologist for our psych evals. We have about three months until we want to have our dossier finished. We set our deadline as my birthday, since I will turn 27 and we can't turn in the paperwork before then. I'm looking forward to having the paperwork complete and getting that call that we are approved to adopt from the Philippines!! We will see how the waiting goes after that.
So there isn't much new with the adoption process on our end, but we did get an e-mail from the Philippine Program Director with Hand in Hand. It's fun to get these e-mails to see what is happening with the Philippine adoption program, and all that good stuff. Here was what we were excited to read:
"...as most of you know, the Philippines used to have a "two-year nurturance rule" which said families needed to wait two full years after the adoption or birth of a child before their dossier could be submitted to the Philippines for an adoption. Well, recently this rule was changed to a one-year rule. We are very excited that many families who have had such a wonderful adoption experience from the Philippines can now reapply that much sooner!"
Some other news in our household is that our crazy dog, Marley, isn't doing so well. For over three weeks he hasn't been eating or drinking much, he's been very sensitive, and lethargic. Last week he starting yelping when he would jump off of the couch or bed, and also if we try to move him. We took him into the vet this week, and they did some blood work. They found that he was positive for antibodies of anaplasmosis (a form of Lyme disease), but another test the next day showed that he doesn't have the disease in his body yet (kind of like having HIV without AIDS). So we thought we were getting somewhere with a diagnosis, but now the doctor is just as baffled as we are. As most of you know, Marley is a funny little dog - he can open the fridge, likes to play chase (especially with bunnies) and just keep us laughing. Now he sleeps all the time, winces when anyone touches him and isn't super duper gentle with their touch, and he bares his teeth at any dogs that come near him (even his best dog friends!). It's hard to watch him hurting, but there isn't much we can do right now. I don't know what God's view on praying for pets is, but we have been praying for Marley to get better.
Coming up we have our next adoption group training on April 21, so we are looking forward to that. Thanks for all of the prayers and encouragement coming our way, I can't tell you how helpful it will be during our wait!!!

Rachel (for both of us)