Trick or Treat!

I can't believe that October is over. It literally flew by and I'm not entirely sure where this whole month went. Maybe it was because the weather was unseasonably warm. Maybe it's because we were still so busy taking care of our puppy, Roz. Or maybe it's because a lot happened during the last weeks of October. I hope that I'm able to do it some justice.

Let's start with the puppy. I know that we have nothing to complain about when it comes to her. We feel so sad that she's been in this cone for just over 8 weeks. But, she's been a trooper. She literally has taken well to having to wear it and still be a good puppy. Because of her severe separation anxiety, Seth and I couldn't leave her alone in the house with her wounded paw. (Even despite the cones). So, Rosalind was spending her days at doggie day care at our vet, Colmar Animal Hospital. The nurses and vet techs there are AMAZING! We honestly can't thank them enough for loving on Roz and watching her while we were at work. To be honest, we are pretty sure that Roz REALLY liked going there too! *puppy tail wags and barks* Due to her care at the vet, she's finally out of her walking boot and down to only one cone. (To be fair, she doesn't even wear the cone when we are home with her). What is even greater is that her wound is healed enough that she has been deemed clear to stay at home with her cat overlords during the day when Seth and I are at work. She still needs to wear her cone, but, she's able to snuggle in her kennel, or her bed, or most likely the human bed. 😉 Since it's been just about 2 months, Roz was itching to rid herself of cabin fever. Because of that, Seth and I took her for a 10 mile hike through Forbidden Drive in Philadelphia. This hike was probably a bit ambitious for everyone involved - but, we totally made it through! Roz's tail was set to super wag the entire time. She only zonked out on the car ride home. Needless to say, it was some much needed medicine for our pup.

OMG!?!?! No cone?!? No boot?!? CAR RIDES?!?! There couldn't be anything better than this! 

Nevermind, THIS IS AWESOME! 

Dad, this is not happening. I do NOT want to do my training here. I just want to feel the leaves under my paws! But, fine. I'll sit once for you. BUT THAT'S IT! 😜

This hike was mainly for Roz. She definitely needed some time that was dedicated just to her and not about how sick she's been after her surgery. We think that it definitely helped her spirits and is encouraging her continued healing. But, that's not to say that the humans didn't have time to take a selfie or seven. 😎

It was cold. Don't judge my winter hat. 😆

Although it would be great to report that everything in October was sunshine and rainbows - it wasn't. To be completely honest, October has been exceptionally hard in terms of our adoption journey. There were two opportunities at the end of October. For those of you who may be just tuning in to our story, an opportunity is a birth mother/birth family that is in the process of making an adoption plan for their child. This made our hearts grow! The prospect of finally putting our names in for an opportunity was FANTASTIC! So, we did.

If we thought that general waiting was hard - let us tell you! The waiting after placing your profile in for consideration by a birth parent is EXCRUCIATING. You essentially go through a billion emotions at once. (If you've seen the Pixar movie, Inside Out, it was as if someone went wild and crazy through both of our emotional centers.) You start second guessing what you put in your profile - if the birth parent will think that your silly jokes were funny - or lame - or embarrassing. You dread any new email that you get in your inbox because it could possibly be an email of rejection. But, then again, you check your email like a crazy person because the next email could be a good one, telling you that the birth family chose you! 

And then you get the email. Only three days later - but it might as well have been an eternity. But, the email isn't good news. We were not chosen by the birth family to be matched with the child. We were heartbroken, sad, scared, overwhelmed, and just confused. Let me make this clear though, we are not upset with the birth family. The decision that they had to make cannot be easy and we will never understand their emotional struggles in picking a family. Their decision is by no means easy or taken lightly. But, we are just sad that it wasn't our time yet. You always want to believe that your family is awesome and capable of anything. But, this wasn't our opportunity - and that's OK. But it still left us sad - and we think that's OK too. This is definitely uncharted territory for us and keeping our emotions in check isn't easy. But, that's why we have each other and our family and friends. We aren't sure that without those people in our lives that we would have made it through our first rejection as productively. 

Just when you think that you are currently experiencing an emotional overload - life just keeps giving. We were given another opportunity to consider. So, before we even climbed out of our sadness - we shot back up to excitement with the prospect of a new opportunity. However, this opportunity was a bit different. There were some extenuating circumstances attached to this opportunity that made our decision incredibly difficult. But, because we are extremely type A people and scientists for that matter, we researched the situation until we could have been deemed experts about it in a court of law (well, OK - that may be a stretch, but I promise that we probably know more about this than we ever thought that we would need to know). So, again, we climbed into the emotional rollercoaster. After long discussions about our options between ourselves, our case worker, and some trusted friends/family, we had to ultimately turn down the opportunity to submit our profile to this birth family. This was, by no means, easy. In fact, to this day, we still are a bit crushed that we do not believe that we could provide this child the best life. And in the end, that's what it all came down to -- our family situation did not have the means by which to provide this child the best life he/she could ever have. We do not want to fail the birth family or the child. So, with a heavy heart, we declined the opportunity. 

We can't even begin to describe all of our emotions. To be frank, I'm not sure Seth or I can sort them out yet either. But, we push on, because we know that when it is our time to be chosen, it will be perfect. 💕

So with our emotions at least collected - we continued on with day to day life. Which brings us to Halloween! 👻This is probably one of our top 2 holidays if we had to rate them. We always have some sort of family costume as well. One year we were Mrs. Frizzle, the Magic School Bus, and Liz the lizard for Halloween. (Roz was obviously Liz). 

Happy Halloween! I believe this was in 2015. I think. 😁

Last year, Seth and I were Gene and Louise Belcher from Bob's Burgers!

This one still makes me chuckle a bit. 😆

This year, Seth was "Jake from State Farm" and I was "Flo from Progressive Insurance". I think we did the costumes justice. Hopefully!

I wish we had taken a photo of our entire costumes, but here we are!

Roz may have reused her lizard costume and was a Dino Dog!

Roz the Dino Dog - Protector of the Candy Bowl! 

We got so many little trick or treaters! Not to mention, I think they all liked our full-sized candy bars! 😉One little boy was so thankful that he grabbed his Hershey bar and ran screaming to his dad, "Dad! Dad! It's a full-sized Hershey's bar!!!" It pretty much made our night to see so many happy and smiling ghosts, vampires, super girls, and batmans come to our door! We even got to meet some of our neighbors. We loved the fact that our entire neighborhood is really into decorating and celebrating Halloween and other holidays! There was a haunted house on the block, some skeleton horses and soldiers that made scary noises, as well as our contribution, some projected ghosts in our windows!

The last thing that rounded off our October was that we finished re-flooring our basement. For reasons that I'll leave to the imagination, (our cat, Fermi really hated the carpet down there), we removed the carpet squares that we had down there (which were then later moved to our covered patio)  and laid some laminate flooring down. These floors are supposed to be water-proof AND life-proof. I'm not sure what they mean by life-proof but I hope they stand up to our crazy cats! It's so nice to have this little theater room in the house to watch movies and binge on Netflix. (No, we haven't seen Stranger Things 2 yet -- we haven't had time!! Ahh!) We can't wait until we have some time to just enjoy the comfort of our new basement! Plus, it was actually really fun to work as a team to get this done. (That does not mean that it went smoothly the entire time we laid that floor! HAHAHAHA! Not by any means! There was a big learning curve, but when we figured it all out and got into a rhythm - it was actually fun!) 

That's Fermi, inspecting the project. 😀

That's about it for a recap of our last two weeks of October! We hope that you all had a wonderful and sugar-filled Halloween! Thanks for checking in on our journey!! As always if you have any questions or comments, let us know!

All of our love,

Shana and Seth