The first announcement and last posting on our plans to adopt came almost two months ago. If you missed it, you can read all about it by clicking here. I meant to keep everyone in the know on  how things were going, but I’ve been traveling, working my real job and working my second job a lot, and we’ve been crazy busy. I have a feeling it will increase a bit here if things start happening, so stay tuned!

First off, the big news: We’re in!

That means, as of right now, today, we’re live in the all-important Match Book. We could get presented to an expectant mom at any time. In fact, odds are we may have already been! But I’ll get to that in a little bit.

To recap the last two months…it’s been a ton of work. Seven classes. Over five home study meetings. Personality tests. Lots of writing and question answering. Then designing our match letter. Took a few weeks just for that.

One of the best parts of this process has been the people we’ve met. From Rene, our case worker, to all the families in our classes. In fact, we’ve gotten to know a couple of them so well, we’re going out on a double-date tonight for dinner and a movie! It’s just awesome.

The Match Letter

We wanted to share our letter with you guys. To catch everyone up on this, the letter is what is presented to an expectant mom to help her choose a family for her unborn child(ren). This letter tell the story of our little family…the struggles we’ve had, how we met, all about Lyla and our friends/family.  We designed and laid it out ourselves and are proud of how it looks and turned out!

So if you want to check it out, you can click right here to view it in PDF form.

What’s Next?

Here is where things are getting interesting already. The agency we are using, Christian Family Care Agency, has had an all-time record number of placements this past year, so right now, there are only 14 families in their Match Book, which is very low. It’s not the best situation for them, but for us, it’s good.

In fact, our case worker and one of the other coordinators there actually were hoping we could get our letter done and printed right away. The way they were talking, we may have already been presented on Thursday. We don’t know this at all, but the way things were said, it was almost like they were waiting on us to get it finished.

We may not have talked previously about what kind of child we’re looking to adopt. Basically we are open to pretty much everything, but we would really like a girl.  However, that puts us into the likelihood of the entire process taking a long time.

When they talked about the idea of being presented RIGHT AWAY, it was to a mother who doesn’t know what she’s having. Apparently this is pretty common because many of these moms don’t go to all the appointments and get ultrasounds, and when they are only a month or two away from having the child, it’s very hard to tell the sex.

So today we made the decision to let the Agency present us to this mother despite not knowing the sex.

We’re basically of the mindset right now…if somehow this mother and her child are the one for us, we’ll leave it in God’s hands to decide what we’ll be having.

Of course, none of this means anything right now! It’s not even been a day yet and we have no idea what’s going to happen!

In our previous blog post we mentioned that we’ll be doing some fund raising and having a tax-deductible account where people can donate money to help us with this adoption. The response was overwhelming and completely surprising. So many people, even those that I haven’t met who live across the country, said they would be supporting us.

I mean, it’s almost hard to believe. Thank you so much for the love you all have shown for us through this.

The fund raising stuff is really the next step for us and we’ll post more details later. I’m kind of excited for part of it, so we’ll try not to wait too long!

Thanks so much again everyone and keep us in your prayers!

We’re smack dab in the middle of the process. Awhile ago we decided we wanted to adopt and that decision has evolved and changed until we’re at the place we are now…content and excitedly looking forward to what little baby will be coming our way in the near future.

When we started this journey, we had figured we’d go with the route of adoption through the foster care system. But when we met with Erika at Christian Family Care Agency, we both realized we wanted to instead do a newborn adoption. The idea of meeting a pregnant mom and getting to know her and be there to take the baby home from the hospital just seemed amazing to us!

So now we’ve started our home study process and have gone through six of seven classes through our agency. Once our home study is over in about a month, we’ll get put in a Match Book which expectant moms use to find homes for their unborn babies. There are also other ways placement can happen…such as  safe haven babies, or a mom who decided to give up her child for adoption while at the hospital giving birth. You just never know what will happen.

One of the amazing things about this processed is what we’ve learned about ourselves during it. We’ve come to terms with the infertility problems. That stuff will always be with us, but it’s not weighing us down anymore. We’ve become at ease with our situation. Even the adoption process…which could see us waiting up to a year (or it could take a single day)…we’re not impatient. We’re not stressing about it. We’re just moving forward knowing God has a special child just waiting for us and when it’s time for that to happen…it will happen.

My goal is to keep everyone updated on our progress. Some of you probably remember how nuts I was about writing during the time Jina was pregnant with Lyla…and while I’m just a lot busier than I was then, I want to make an attempt to do the same thing for the adoption stuff. We have some awesome stuff to show Lyla someday about the journey to her being born and I want to do the same thing for the new little baby we’ll have soon.

One more thing. Adoption can be expensive. Right now the government gives pretty significant tax credits for families that adopt, but there is still a big chunk that we need to come up with. We’ll be brainstorming some ideas to help raise funds for this, as is pretty common with people we know who have adopted. We want to ask our friends and family to pray about whether or not they want to be a part of this journey by helping out at some point financially.

More to come…if you have any questions, please ask below or email myself or jina: mikeolbinski @ gmail . com OR  jinaolbinski @ gmail . com.

Did he ever have one?

You let your girlfriend pull you around town? KNOWING this will be on TV at some point?

Holy crap.

Jina sent me an article today with a guy questioning how much fun the Race is when people cheat and form alliances like they did tonight. The poor Cowboys had no chance when everyone else was helping each other out.  I don’t know how I feel, but while I don’t mind teams helping each other out, there should be some kind of rule against stuff like what happened tonight.

Now, on to the contest:

Previous Standings

1. Ryann 96
2. Mike 92
3. Adrian 92
4. Steve 92
5. Heather 74
6. Seth&Lisa 57
7. MJ 56
8. Jennifer 52
9. Jina 50
10. Nicky 45
11. Tracy 44

So another leapfrog moment for a few of us…Ryann lost her lead and got passed up by myself, Adrian and Steve.

However, this was the first official NON-ELIMINATION round (unless I’m mistaken, I went back to double-check and didn’t see anything other than the “keep racing”  legs)…so Steve holds the tie-breaker over myself and Adrian, so that basically puts him on top.

Current Standings

1. Steve 114
2. Adrian 114
3. Mike 114
4. Ryann 98
5. Heather 88
6. MJ 88
7. Nicky 70
8. Seth&Lisa 65
9. Jennifer 54
10. Tracy 54
11. Jina 52

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

Ryann was way ahead for a bit, but the gap has narrowed!

Only bit of scoring worth noting…the Globetrotters went worst to first last week, thus got a 10pt bonus

Previous Standings

1. Ryann 78
2. Mike 59
3. Adrian 59
4. Steve 59
5. MJ 39
6. Nicky 36
7. Heather 36
8. Tracy 31
9. Seth&Lisa 26
10. Jennifer 25
11. Jina 23

Current Standings

1. Ryann 96
2. Mike 92
3. Adrian 92
4. Steve 92
5. Heather 74
6. Seth&Lisa 57
7. MJ 56
8. Jennifer 52
9. Jina 50
10. Nicky 45
11. Tracy 44

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

Love the Globetrotters.

Crazy ol’ Amazing Race keeps screwing us around with all these “You’re the first team to arrive…but you’re still racing. Here’s your next clue.”

Argh!

You can see the teams physically droop whenever they hear that.

So without the elimination, Kent and Vyxsin are somehow still alive, something that annoys me. They can go anytime they want for all I care.

I loved the basketball game on this episode…while I love all the racing, I think it’s fun to see these guys hang out a bit.

Also…Margie…she’s got to be the baddest woman contestant ever on the show. While teams were helping each other carry those solar rods up to the top of the roof…Marge slaps one on her back and busts her way up the stairs like it was nothing. And she’s a grandma!

Don’t have a ton of time, so let’s talk about the crazy contest happenings!

The Contest (or Ryann’s World)

Pretty sure it’s a record for one of you guys to have the top 3 teams TWO weeks in a row. That’s just silliness.

First off, it should be noted that people got points for two weeks ago despite it not really being a pit stop. Phil still tells them what place they are in so it counts in my book.

Also, THREE weeks ago Flight Time/Big Easy had a penalty that I never applied to their score…so that’s another -5 pts there.

Ryann has basically come from way behind to take a commanding lead because of the bonus points that come with having the top 3 teams two weeks in a row. Amazing stuff, makes the contest a lot more fun! Congrats Ryann!

Previous Standings:

1. Mike 45
2. Adrian 45
3. Steve 45
4. MJ 28
5. Nicky 24
6. Heather 16
7. Ryann 12
8. Seth&Lisa 12
9. Jennifer 12
10. Jina 11
11. Tracy 1

Current Standings

1. Ryann 78
2. Mike 59
3. Adrian 59
4. Steve 59
5. MJ 39
6. Nicky 36
7. Heather 36
8. Tracy 31
9. Seth&Lisa 26
10. Jennifer 25
11. Jina 23

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

My poor wife was the only one who picked them as one of her teams and above that, she just loves those guys. She may have cried along with them. I love them too, although they really make lousy Race runners. At first I had to wonder if Mike was the one giving up too soon…kind of pining everything on his dad for his wanting to stop doing the challenge…but then his dad’s quote at the end about having to quit for him…perhaps his dad actually would have searched until he died. I dunno.

What you can tell is that those two love each other insanely and it’s been fun seeing them race twice now.

So Zev and Justin are looking like the team to beat right now with two first place finishes already. They are a fun team to root for too….they are just likable.

Also…is it me or did Mallory kind of get an idea that her goofiness from her season was something viewers enjoyed, so now she’s going overboard? It’s either that or she’s on serious painkillers, drugs or something.

On a final note it appears the producers of the Race are out to humiliate these people All-Star style. So many get-ups, so many silly costumes…curious what’s coming next.

The Contest

So Tracy was the only on who lose a team the first week, so she envoked the Adrian Rule and lost 15 points while picking up Zev and Justin. The net result is she went from 4 points to 1, but at least has three teams.

Adrian, Steve and myself built upon our lead as Zev and Justin of course got 10 points for finishing first.  Here is the order of the teams finishing:

1.    Zev & Justin
2.    Gary & Mallory
3.    Ron & Christina
4.    Kisha & Jen
5.    Flight Time & Big Easy
6.    Jet & Cord
7.    Kent & Vyxsin
8.    Margie & Luke
9.    Jaime & Cara
10.    Mel & Mike

Last week’s standings:

1. Adrian – 33
2. Steve – 33
3. Mike -33
4. Nicky -12
5. MJ -12
6. Jina -9
7. Heather -9
8. Seth&Lisa -9
9. Jennifer -9
10. Ryann -5
11. Tracy – 4

Current Standings:

1. Mike 45
2. Adrian 45
3. Steve 45
4. MJ 28
5. Nicky 24
6. Heather 16
7. Ryann 12
8. Seth&Lisa 12
9. Jennifer 12
10. Jina 11
11. Tracy 1

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

Sadly for our contest, that means Tracy is already without a team. Tracy, remember you can do the following:

“If you lose a team in the FIRST week, you have the option to continue with only TWO, or take a -15 point deduction and choose another team before the second week of the contest.”

Let me know what you’d like to do!

So…it’s always hard for me to remember what happened a few days after the show airs, but how amazing is it that the Cowboys still ended up third after all that? Certainly all of them catching up helped, but it’s still crazy how they are always in there.

Of course, they probably owe that to Kent and Vyxsin who somehow thought they needed dancing children to help them finish, and whilst doing that watched 2 other teams finish and leave.

I love All-Stars…so much fun, can’t wait to see where it goes.

The Contest

Okay, first off I want to acknowledge that I give Adrian a lot of grief for not doing too hot the last few seasons…even going so far as creating an “Adrian Rule”, which is the one Tracy gets to use this week if she wants to.

But Adrian is off to the best start you could possibly have which is joining two others (including me…of course) with the top three finishing teams…which gives you a 15 point bonus on top of the normal points for finishing a leg.

Definitely a huge lead right away, the rest of you guys will have some work to do to catch up!

Current standings:

1. Adrian – 33
2. Steve – 33
3. Mike -33
4. Nicky -12
5. MJ -12
6. Jina -9
7. Heather -9
8. Seth&Lisa -9
9. Jennifer -9
10. Ryann -5
11. Tracy -4

Below is the list of picks from the start of the season:

(Please make sure your picks look right!)

Wow, where to begin?

I haven’t written a This and That since December 14th and that is an awfully long time ago. I feel just horrible.

We have a lot going on these days, some of which I wont mention right away but stay tuned!

On February 1st I started working at Ch2M Hill after having been with my previous employer for over seven years. That’s a heck of a long time to work somewhere, especially for me. I haven’t worked anywhere for longer than 3 years and that was back in my AMC Theater days when I was around 20.

CH2 is a fantastic company, they are huge, international and boast around 24,000 employees worldwide. We are in charge of the London Olympics and the Panama Canal expansion.

I of course will be steadily working on some projects in Henderson, Nevada.

Jina is doing great. Her job has kind of changed up a bit on her, so she’s not working with the same guys she’s been accustomed to helping for the last many, many years, so it’s been a hard adjustment for her.

I don’t know if you guys know this or not, but Jina is pretty amazing. My photography business keeps growing and growing, and at the core of it all is Jina. Not in the way you might think, but in the way she supports me, helps me and takes care of not just me, but our entire family. She’s simply perfect and I am fairly confident I wouldn’t be near the man I am right now without her.

I know for certain I wouldn’t be into photography. I think all of who I am is because of her.

Now we have some Lyla to talk about.

Everytime she does something, I want to save it in a notebook so I can write about it later because I always forget when it comes time to write one of these. Ugh.

Before I get to the fun stuff, I should talk about her first visit to the emergency room

Sometimes she can be a brat (although since this incident she’s calmed down a bit), but on my birthday we were trying to meet my mom for lunch. Jina had her hands full and Lyla ran off, so Jina tried to grab her arm to walk her back to the car.

Of course Lyla goes LIMP and Jina tries to hold her up, which results in some screaming and crying. We had no idea what was up, but she suddenly was a different kid and holding her right arm like it was broken. We skipped lunched and went to Phoenix Children’s Hospital which is right down the street.

Turns out she had Nursemaid’s Elbow, a little dislocation of one of the long forearm bones. Yikes. This amazing doctor walked into our room, looked at her arm, said he knew what it was and BOOM…he twisted her are this way and that and suddenly it was fixed. Within 5 minutes she was back up, waving and running around.

It was definitely a crazy experience and we were just happy it was nothing worse. Apparently this type of thing is hugely common and they see kids all the time for it.

She saw snow for the first time when we had that crazy winter weather in the last week of December.

Now on to some fun stuff.

She’s just so smart. She’s talking like crazy now. “What doing daddy? “What’s that?” Asking a lot of questions. She can open all the doors in the house so we have to be careful. She’s awesome at carrying her little plate of food to the living room without spilling anything.

Lately she’s been a dream sleeper. Not like she sleeps forever, but she’s actually asking to go to bed a lot more. She knows when she’s tired in the middle of the day and actually says “Mommy, bed.” It’s amazing. At night she asks to pray and then just lays down quietly to go to sleep.

Whenever there is dance music playing, she forces us to dance with her. She’s getting better at her numbers and colors.

Lately she’s been saying “Hey!” Like if I take something away and she doesn’t like it…”Hey!”

She loves going to church and she loves the nursery and the music. It’s just such a blessing to have her excited to go with us…makes it all easier.

I can’t remember much else to say about her other than she’s just the joy of our lives. I honestly couldn’t count the number of times a day I think to myself “Oh man, she is ours and she’s the cutest thing on the planet.”

We’ll be writing again soon…

Of course, awesome is only relative. They weren’t very awesome last night. In fact, they were on my must-pick list before the episode started and plummeted all the way down to “Will ANYONE actually pick them this week?”

Just a few words about the teams. I would have been fine without the Goth couple and whoever the ones are that got the U-Turn and finished second at the not-a-pit-stop mat.

Mirna and Schmirna would have been awesome. Heck, even Rob and Ambuh (although Rob is busy on Survivor). For it being All-Stars, I think they could have done better. Makes you wonder who turned them down.

Also, wouldn’t it suck to work for this show and have to place thousands of flags, only to have teams pluck 12 of them and leave? “Ugh, now we gotta pull these all out…I just got done putting them in the ground!”

I love Phil trying to scare everyone at the beginning with “You think you know the race…but YOU DON’T! BWAHAAHAHAHAAH!”

Only to find out they just had to work for a clue and someone was getting a U-Turn right away. It’s still pretty much the same. Yeah, they didn’t exactly have a pit-stop, but that’s been done before. Nothing new there.

I kind of wonder if they realized the Cowboys were sucking it up, so they quickly changed things up to keep them around if possible.

And I really enjoyed Phil having to tell Mallory to get going.

Well, that’s it…certainly makes things interesting as far as the contest goes.  Quickly again, here are the rules and you make your picks below!

The Contest

This year the prize will be either a choice of any one of my photos at a 12×18 print size, or our standard $25 gift card of your choosing.

Also, this is kind of big in terms of the game itself…but I may possibly throw out 1-2 mid-season pop quizes…like “Who do you think will go home the next leg?” and stuff like that. They will be worth points that can help you get something extra when you may be trailing a bit. Or increse your already gigantic lead (me and Jina last year).

So keep checking back every week for the recaps.

General Scoring:

• Finish 1st on a Leg: 10 pts
• Finish 2nd on a Leg: 5 pts
• Finish 3rd on a Leg: 3 pts
• Finish a Leg: 1 pts
• Win the Amazing Race: 25 pts
• Complete a Fast-Forward: 15 pts
• Get Yielded: MINUS 10pts
• Yield someone: +5pts
• Last team on a Non-Elimination round: 10 pts
• Any time penalty: MINUS 5 pts

Additional Bonus-type Scoring:

• Bonus: 15 points for having the top3 teams on a leg
• If you lose a team in the FIRST week, you have the option to continue with only TWO, or take a -15 point deduction and choose another team before the second week of the contest.
• Worst to First: If a team goes from LAST to FIRST in a single episode, that is a 10 point bonus
• First to Worst: If a team goes from FIRST to LAST in a single episode, that is a -10 point deduction.
• Tiebreaker: Pick the first week that you think there will be a Non-Elimination Leg. There are 11 episodes, so specify which episode from here on out.

So pick your three teams below!

I am pretty excited about this whole thing, but I am not completely in love with all the teams or their choices, but it’s still going to be a blast. Still, I am loving Flight Time and Big Easy being back, plus Mel amd Mike and the Cowboys.

Plus for the first time ever, it’s in high-definiton. It’s needed this for so long…if you think about all the amazing places they go…seeing all that in HD is going to be awesome.

Okay, below is all you need to know about the contest. I thought about making us all pick BEFORE the first episode, because we should all know the teams already, but I just ran out of time. Oops!

The All-Stars Contest

The object: Watch the first episode and then pick THREE teams that you think could make it to the end of the season, plus a tiebreaker (specified below). You can meet the cast for reference by clicking right here.

This year the prize will be either a choice of any one of my photos at a 12×18 print size, or our standard $25 gift card of your choosing.

Also, this is kind of big in terms of the game itself…but I may possibly throw out 1-2 mid-season pop quizes…like “Who do you think will go home the next leg?” and stuff like that. They will be worth points that can help you get something extra when you may be trailing a bit. Or increse your already gigantic lead (me and Jina last year).

So keep checking back every week for the recaps.

General Scoring:

• Finish 1st on a Leg: 10 pts
• Finish 2nd on a Leg: 5 pts
• Finish 3rd on a Leg: 3 pts
• Finish a Leg: 1 pts
• Win the Amazing Race: 25 pts
• Complete a Fast-Forward: 15 pts
• Get Yielded: MINUS 10pts
• Yield someone: +5pts
• Last team on a Non-Elimination round: 10 pts
• Any time penalty: MINUS 5 pts

Additional Bonus-type Scoring:

• Bonus: 15 points for having the top3 teams on a leg
• If you lose a team in the FIRST week, you have the option to continue with only TWO, or take a -15 point deduction and choose another team before the second week of the contest.
• Worst to First: If a team goes from LAST to FIRST in a single episode, that is a 10 point bonus
• First to Worst: If a team goes from FIRST to LAST in a single episode, that is a -10 point deduction.
• Tiebreaker: Pick the first week that you think there will be a Non-Elimination Leg. There are 11 episodes, so specify which episode from here on out.