Hello Myah!

We're looking forward to meeting our brand new niece, Myah Mae. Congrats Dan & Jenny & Madison!

What we do on our days off

Here's us taking off a Friday to go to adoption training class up in Estes Park. Mary is in the back of the first one, she one of the ladies at our agency. Does that make her our agent? That doesn't sound so good. Bonnie, who did our home study, is in the back of the second one. The other couple is planning to adopt from the Phillipines, which apparently takes years. They already have 3 kids though, so I suppose that'll keep them busy in the meantime.

Class actually ended up being pretty good. If anyone is interested in reading up about adoption & what kind of things the kid is likely to wonder about & worry about, we can recommend/lend some books.

Frankie! at work!

Something wonderful happened today: Frankie! discovered her purpose in life. We went to a sheep farm to test Frankie! for sheep herding ability. For the first time since I've had Frankie! .... she passed the herding test with flying colors! It turns out she has really good herding instincts. She has a strong "eye"meaning she instinctually uses her eyes and posture to manipulate the position of the sheep.

She also worked without making any noise and she worked hard to keep the sheep in a group. She also knew to to keep the sheep between her and the people which is what border collies were bred for. It was like a light bulb finally went off in her head.

After all of her craziness over the past three years, it brought a tear to our eyes to see Frankie! in her element. It was like watching your child graduate from kindergarden. For the first time, Frankie! was totally in control (of herself and the sheep) and she actually new what to do with the three sheep she was tested with.

At first, she was a bit confused so I had to go into the sheep pen with her. But, after a few minutes she figured it all out. You could tell she was thinking a lot and trying to figure it all out.

This is a rooster Beth liked:

Mike & Emma Took Some Pictures

They are excellent photographers.

New Plants

New plants have been planted in the yard to hide the compost bin & look pretty & attract butterflies. Courtesy of High Country Gardeners & a gift certificate from Lo & Sean. They're pretty small now! Probably won't get too big til next year.

UCDHSC Graduation

Don't I look like such a professor in my regalia?


Last Saturday my university held spring graduation. About 1,100 studends walked in the ceremony and about 150 faculty showed up to cheer the students on. I was a faculty marshall, meaning I was responsible for helping to direct and seat about 450 students that graduated from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences of which the Biology Department belongs. Attending graduation is a great reminder of why I like to teach. It is great to see students graduate and look so happy. Normally when I see them, they looked stressed out. Nearly all of our students work outside jobs and have family committments. The student in the picture below worked and has a young daughter. As faculty, we are very proud of our students and feel like they truly earned their diplomas.

My master's student Kazu graduated (he is in the above picture). Kazu is from Japan and he is about to return home to earn his Ph.D. Kazu will be remembered as my hardest working and most productive student and the coolest student. As a graduation gift I took to see Iggy Pop and the Stooges and he was SO happy because he didn't have any money left to buy a ticket.

The student below called me her favorite professor. I was very honored by that. She was a student in my human physiology class and hopes to attend medical school next year.

This is the view from my seat with the students:


In the background is our student union which was at one time a brewery. The graduation party, including many faculty, the provost and the CU president were up there facing the hot sun.

--Mike--

Frankie Kitty's New Nap Spot

Whew, the home study is over

Well, actually the whole home study is a report our agency writes based on our home visit + background check + stuff from our references + our psych exam results... but the WORST part, the home visit is over. We cleaned our house like crazy people and were pretty darn nervous, but the visit itself really was not so bad. Basically one of the ladies from our agency, Bonnie, a nice older lady came and asked a bunch of questions about how we plan to parent and that kind of thing. We actually quite like Bonnie, so it wasn't terribly painful. And the dogs behaved, thank god.

Bonnie pretty much told us we did just fine, so now we just wait while the agency writes up their report, and we have one or two bits of paper we're still waiting on.... and then we get matched with a kid! Woohooo!!! When we get matched we'll fly down to Guatemala to meet him or her. Don't get to take him/her home on that visit though... several more months go by for that, but everything is still moving along really well.

More good Guatemala News

From our agency. Carlota is the name of the lawyer in Guatemala that handles everything for the agency. Basically it sounds like the rest of the year should be just fine & that no big, bad changes have much chance, if any, to occur.

For the past week, there have been rumors of the Congress acting once again on the Protocol and another bill that would both cause a problem for international adoptions in Guatemala to proceed as they would both be contested as unconstitutional. Several of our families who religiously read the internet postings, were very concerned regarding the outcome of these two bills before Congress. Absolutely NOTHING happened. The bills were not discussed as the Congressmen know that they could not pass without changes to the constitution. Today (May 3) begins the Political Party Campaign kickoffs and the last session of Congress takes place on Monday, May 7th, after which time, only serious country concerns will reconvene the Congress before the first of next year. Carlota laughingly said: "Adoption is not considered a serious enough concern to discuss during the Congressional recess." Therefore....it is believed that we have until the end of the year without more of these threats of closure of the program.

We are not very good manual laborers

So, we labored. And then we were so very tired we wanted to die.

But we have a very nice yard to show for it. Well, of course it will look even nicer when the plants grow in, but we did all the terrible, heavy, painful work....sprinklers, raised bed building, gravel & flagstone path creation, shoveling dirt & gravel... all the yucky stuff. So now the tomato & basil & straweberry plants are in the ground, or in the fancy raised beds, and we are looking forward to planting lots more.

Before: chain link dog run, two feet lower than the rest of the yard. OK, we didn't take very good pictures of it, so it doesn't look that bad here. Use your imagination...chain link fence... dog poo... dog poo smell. Not that lovely.

Last summer & fall we added the shed and made the dog run end where the house ends. Don't worry, the dogs till have plenty of run. They prefer to stand at the front wondow and bark over running anyway.

So this weekend we did a whole bunch more.

During: Mike was a master builder of raised bed walls. I was terrible at it. But I like to think I carried my share of those stupid bricks and did my share of digging up the sprinklers (right Mikey?) which we had too move around.

After: Mikey figured out how to get the new sprinklers for the raised beds installed and on the right zone, we brought the path level way up, reconfigured the lawn area sprinkers so the zeric areas are not getting so much water, put down new grass seed, and of course, got some herbs & veggies into the raised beds. The big dirt area is lawn (low water grass) and the two smaller areas are raised bads for veggies & herbs. Yay.