First round of inspections

Sunday night. I remembered that I forgot to talk about what happened this week. It was a few small steps, but with every step this is becoming more and more real. This week has been full of inspections and prep for what is to come.

Late last week, we had our Fire inspection. The assistant fire chief of Belton came by the house (cost me $25). He was looking for smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc. It was super easy. I had to buy a five pound fire extinguisher and the kid-proof plug covers for the whole house. The inspector asked me to get a working flashlight and first aid kit. I had them, but they stay in my truck mostly. So, as soon as he left, I went and bought them.

We had done some pre-prep for the health and safety inspection. We bought a big tool-box to keep all our medication in. We locked it up and put it on top of the refrigerator. We also bought a little plastic cabinet to keep out in the garage. We lock up all our cleaning supplies out there. No biggie, especially for me. I rarely use the stuff. That happened on Tuesday and we passed with flying colors. It was free. Took all of five minutes. Belton inspectors are like that.

Cary, our instructor, came over on Friday to do our first home visit. We gave her the tour but what we were really interested in was to talk to her about "our situation" and our wants and needs. Lori and I have a bit of frustration because we want concrete answers to our questions. I think Cary wants to give us those....but she knows she can't. When will we get a kid? She don't know! We know that....but we want her to know. We didn't know what to do with the empty room. Crib? Bed? Disco Ball? We're signed up for 0-7 years old. Anything is possible. All in all it was a nice visit. We have most of our paperwork. We're missing a few little things but it should be able to be taken care of with a few phonecalls and some doctors visits.

After Cary's visit, we decided to take a stand or two. We went furniture shopping all yesterday. The price of a kid's bed is freaking unreal. We paid quite a bit for our cool king sized bed and mattress that we will never outgrow. Some of the beds that we looked at were as much or MORE than our king sized bed. That ain't right. My brother and sister-in-law have one that my nephew outgrew. We went over to look at it this morning. It's nice. I'm all for it. But, give my wife an excuse to shop.....

We went to IKEA first thing this morning. We ended up with a nice twin bed frame ($140), mattress ($120), and night stand ($40). All that was less than most of the "cheap" frames we saw the day before. It's all white, which is why we went with it. It'll be easier to decorate later. And whatever child I get, I can't WAIT to go through IKEA and buy some of the kid stuff we saw. If our kid likes frogs, we're SET! We figured, if we have to get a crib, we'll get one quickly. We'll need the bed sooner or later anyway. Oh....and we drove 50 miles to IKEA and 50 miles back only to find out that we didn't buy the "slats" to put the mattress on. So another 100 mile round trip to buy $20 worth of slats. ARG!

So....we're about ready for the "REAL" home-study lady to show up and grill us. I think, through everything that we've been through and we think we're going to go through, that home-study is the biggest day. That'll help everyone determine what child we end up with. Like I said, every step is an exciting one. Having people come to the home to see it is important. So far, nobody has looked at us like we're crazy.