Merry Christmas!

This has certainly been a Christmas to remember. We started last Friday morning with an ice storm and a power outage that lasted until Monday afternoon. We tried spending the first night in the house with a fire going in the fireplace, but decided we weren't going to do that again. At the coldest point, our bedroom got down to 16 degrees! Unfortunately all of Michael's fish died and one of our pipes froze, but other than that, we were very lucky to have been able to stay at Tom's house for the weekend.

Our tree after the ice storm.

Michael "enjoying" the balmy temperatures.

We also enjoyed spending Christmas with our families.

"Santa" Audrey.

"Rudolph" Dan.

Check out those socks on Brayden. (Go Hoosiers!)

Bryce... I mean Spiderman.

A gift for Michael.

This is a puzzle we had made from an old photo of Tom. He's #35.

Michael and Dalayna.

To Michael, from Alison. (Boiler up!)

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Closer to Christmas

It is getting closer to Christmas. I sure hope I get a bone for a present. I had a fun day today. The neighbors' little beagle named Barney came over to my house to play for a while. We just ran around and chased each other all over the place. This last Sunday David was out hunting and shot a dog. I was a little worried that he might try and shoot me because I am also a dog. He then told me it was a coyote and that I have nothing to worry about.

Yesterday Michael and Mandi went to the Purdue vs. Ball State basketball game. That's right, Mandi went to a Purdue game. Michael says she wanted to watch a winning basketball team play. Purdue won 68-39.

Michael and Mandi enjoying the game.

Uncle Bob, Aunt Bonnie, Uncle Maurice and Tom watching the game.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Michael and Mandi had a good Thanksgiving holiday this year spending time with family.

Apparently the tryptophan kicked in from Uncle Bob's turkey.

Michael with his desserts.

Audrey and her "hat."

Brayden and Grandpa Dan. This was after Brayden threw up and was feeling much better!

Judy came over and took our picture for our church Christmas card.

With all the snow today I decided to make myself a new friend. I like to chew on his arm.

Winter is here!

Hello, it's me, Kramer. Winter is here and Mandi tells me the new heat inside the house is nice and warm. She says they get to have it above 65 degrees! Too bad I'm not allowed inside. Michael and his dad have been working in the woods by our house to clear out the dead trees and small bushes. I like it because I can see more animals to bark at. Michael hopes to make a nature trail in the Spring once he has it all clear. Mandi was a chaperone for the Winter Ball at White's again this year. Here are some pictures of her and Jill and some of their students. (She had to blur out their faces... you know, privacy issues.) As you can see, it was just as much fun for her as it was for the kids!

Mandi also got a new shirt.

Merry Christmas...a little early!

I am writing this on my Christmas present- a new laptop! Michael was very cute; he couldn't wait to give it to me.

And, the final baby name poll is over, and of course Olivia was the big winner. Thanks for voting! Now we will just have to wait for the baby to see what name he or she will really have.

On Thursday night some friends and I went to Make It Your Own Pottery in Wabash. We got pizza, painted our pottery, and had a blast! Here are some pictures of Mary, Christine, Shelby, and me.

Happy Halloween!

We had two trick-or-treaters tonight. Dalayna was one of the characters from High School Musical and Bryce was a cowboy. Aren't they cute!

As for the baby name polls, we have reached the end of the second round of voting. Mya was the run-away winner with 7 votes this time. We thought, just for fun, we would do one last poll with the top girl names and see who the overall winner is. Now is the time for all of you Olivia -lovers to do your thing!

What is wrong with you people?!

Okay, so we apparently have some rebels among us. We get that you like Olivia; that is quite obvious, but... there are other perfectly good names out there. What happens if we choose Mabel or Gertrude? You all will just have to get over it!! (And I say that with as much love as possible!)

It was a tight race...for second place!

Well, Kendall was the favorite name this week with 7 seven votes. Tied for second place with 4 votes apiece were Kamryn, Keira, and Olivia. Lily was in third with only 2 votes. Hope you enjoy the next round of girls' names!

Our friend Jill gave us this adorable gift. Isn't it precious?

And the winner is...

All you faithful blog watchers have voted on our baby names, and the winner is... Evan with a whopping 7 votes! Patrick was in second place with 6 and Aiden came in third with 5 votes. Too bad Michael's favorite, Elvind, didn't get any votes at all. So, we are moving on to the girls' names. As we said earlier, we have lots more girls' names picked out, so we'll have to split them up this time. We hope you are having as much fun voting as we are having looking at your choices!

New Heat!!

We finally are done transitioning from gas boiler heat to all electrical. Thanks to Michael's dad for doing so much work. It was much appreciated. Now all we have to do is clean up and dust the whole house again. Over the next few weeks we thought it would be fun to have a poll and let readers of our blog vote for which baby name they like the best. We have quite a few girls' names picked out, but not too many boys'. We will start off with boys' names. Please vote and let us know what you think. Disclaimer: the winning name is not necessarily the one that will be chosen! Oh, Kramer says Hi.

It's me, Kramer

I don't know if you noticed or not, but I have been on hiatus for awhile. Mandi has taken over my blogging. I guess she has lots to say these days. I just thought I would say hi and let everyone know that I am doing ok. Here are some pictures Michael got on the trail camera of some deer. David can't wait to get a shot at one of those bucks. I sure hope Michael doesn't put that camera up somewhere around the house to see what I do when they are gone.

I thought some of you might enjoy a couple of pictures of me when I was little. Everyone tells me that I was so cute back then.

Go IU!

I saw these today and just couldn't resist! Sorry, Michael. Maybe Alison or Uncle Bob can help you out.

What a relief!

A big thank you goes out to all of you who have been thinking about and praying for our home study today. And thank you, again, to my mom and to Judy who helped clean! Thank goodness it's over! It really wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. (You were right, Jennifer!) Of course Michael was confident all along; I had more trouble believing it. Our social worker was here for 3 1/2 hours. She interviewed us together and then each of us separately. She asked about everything from our lives growing up to what our marriage is like. Then she went through the house, room by room making sure we have fire extinguishers and smoke alarms on each level and that we have a space at least 5x10 for the baby. She even looked in every closet! The last part was filling out just a little bit more paperwork. She also looked through our scrapbook and told us it was good. (Whew!) Before she left, she said she would make sure our criminal history checks are in and our paperwork is in order. As soon as that is done -within the next few days-she will put our scrapbook out so that birthmothers can look at it! This means she liked us, and approved us, and everything is good to go. What a relief!

Here are some more pictures of the baby's room, now that we have furniture in it.

And here are some cute pictures of Brayden and Audrey from this weekend.

Whoa Nelly!

Remember how I said once our adoption homework and scrapbook are finished, we can schedule a home study? Well, we aren't done yet, but we have a date for a home study! Eek! I know, you 're thinking, WHAT? (Any of you who have heard Brayden say this, insert sound effect here.) That's what we were thinking too when St. Elizabeth called us to set a date. It's complete craziness. Nothing happened all summer and now it is happening all at once! We are incredibly excited because this is the last step of the whole process, we just weren't quite ready yet. So, the homework is done. Good news, right? Right. But the scrapbook isn't even started. Bad news, right? Well... that's why we have Shelby. Anyway, September 22nd is the big day. Pray for us!

Adoption Meeting Info

Just a quick update about our adoption meeting on Wednesday. It was at our agency in Indianapolis. Besides us there were 10 other couples and a single woman there. It lasted all day, but we learned a lot. Mandi took 4 pages of notes and Michael asked several good questions. We now have lots of "homework" to do. Both of us have to do an autobiography in essay format (Michael's thrilled about that!) and fill out a questionnaire. Then we also have to make a scrapbook. It includes pictures of us and our lives. This is how a birth mother chooses us to adopt her baby. So, as soon as our "homework" and scrapbook are complete, we can schedule a home study. Needless to say, we've been working very hard on all of this to get as much done as possible before school starts on Monday!

Summer Update

Good news! We have a date for a meeting with our adoption agency. Next Wednesday, August 6th, we will be going to Indy to spend the day with the director. This is a big step we've been looking forward to all summer. We'll learn more about what we'll be going through in the next several months.

Speaking of baby news... here are a few pictures of the baby's room, before and after we remodeled. Michael did a great job from demolition to drywall and Mandi did some awesome painting.

And we want to thank Eric and Alison for loaning us a whole carload full of baby stuff! It was like Christmas in July looking at everything. Cooper certainly enjoyed it when he and Shelby were here the other day!

We love our nieces and nephews!

We've been lucky to get to spend some time with Dalayna, Brayden, Bryce, and Audrey recently.

Michael thinks he can show Brayden a thing or two about cooking after watching Mandi's favorite tv station, the Food Network.

Apparently Mandi has a very comfy lap. Here she is with Audrey and Brayden...

And again with Bryce and Dalayna.

Bryce's favorite thing is tractors. He had a stow-away on this trip.

This is one of three new posts, so make sure you look at them all!

4th of July

We had another fun weekend at the lake this 4th of July.

Sunset on the lake, how romantic!

As you can see, several universities are well-represented in the Rigney family.

Corn hole is a favorite way to pass the time.

The games occasionally get competetive with a little bit of trash-talking.