Random comments on Homestudy, Quilts, and Hockey in the U.P.

whew! what a week this had been! We had our first homestudy visit last sunday, our second monday morning, and our third (and final) on tuesday morning. Our homestudy social worker, A~, was great and quickly put as at ease. Truthfully, we both found the process quite enjoyable and informative. I especially appreciated the handouts A~ provided with websites, articles, and books about international adoption and adoption in general. Signed up and took the "Conspicious Families" online course monday: a good course and gave us both some things to think about, especially in regards to strangers possible questions and how to respond to those questions. The walk through of our house took place monday morning- all that cleaning my mom and we did and A~ spent about five minutes tops on the walk through! ha! that will teach me to freak out over THAT particular part of the homestudy process.
R and I asked to be approved for 2 on the homestudy. Yes, I know, a bit crazy and hopeful on our part, but we are not getting younger and would love to have twins or a sibling group so that our children will allways have someone in the family who "looks" like they do. And, of course, most importantly, we would love to have 2 children!!! The odds are probably against us, but we can dream, can't we?
The rest of the week was a blur: wednesday I had to pick a friend up at the airport, thursday we had our drs appointments for the medical needed for the homestudy and I had a meeting to attend, and Friday I had a meeting in the morning and then a ton of things to do at work (it did not help that the darn computer was not working at work AGAIN!). Saturday I finally forced myself to take the time to get my quilt sqaures and wishes put together for the 100 Good wishes group I joined on one of my vietnam adoption groups: Dec DTV 05. So, if any of my list mates are reading this, your quilt sqaures should arrive this week!
After all the craziness of the week, R and I decided to do something fun together- so off we went to the inaugural home game of the Marquette Rangers Junior A hockey game against the Alpena Ice Diggers. It was a good game, and the Rangers all but had it in the "net", until they lost steam (partly due to their captain getting into a fight and getting sent to the locker room) and gave up 3 goals in the last four minutes of play. Oh well. Maybe next time, Rangers!
The funniest part of the game came right at the beginning when the audience was asked to stand for the national anthem- all THREE of them. Two of the anthems did not surprise me, as I grew up around here and its not uncommon to hear the Canadian national anthem (Oh, Canada, my home and native land- see I even know most of the lyrics!) and the United States national anthem (that lovely ditty by Francis Scott Key that is so hard to sing in "key"). But the very first national anthem sung at the game was an unknown to even me, a native yooper. Can anyone guess what country's national anthem was sung first?