Friday before Camping Trip

The photo: Home sweet home for a few days! It's the tent we "splurged" on last fall. It's a Family-Sized tent (4 or 5 person tent... but most importantly... we can stand up in it. We need to pack tonight so we can do our final shopping tomorrow. (It's set up in the back yard here because we wanted to see if all of the parts were there before we got into the wilderness.) Did I mention where we were going?! Cumberland Island. I've been wanting to go there for years. Some friends of ours go fairly often, so we're tagging along with them. You have to take a ferry over to the island. It goes over Monday morning and the next ferry doesn't come to the island 'til Thursday. There are no cars. Probably very few people. Lots of wild horses. etc. SO EXCITED!!!!

We also found out about our latest adoption opportunity yesterday (valentine's day): the birth mother from Oklahoma chose another family. I had my physical earlier in the week and I went this afternoon to pick up my final paperwork and take to the social worker..... but..... she wasn't at the office this afternoon -- so it will have to wait 'til we get back. I think that's it for the homestudy on our end. Seriously. (Unless this doesn't pan out within the next few months... and we have to start doing some of the paperwork over again. (State of GA requires that it be updated every 6 months. Some of the stuff we stared in December, so it will be outdated by June.)

Finally - I'm about to place the order online for the custom-sized organic sheets for the bassinet that my grandpa made. Had the custom chem-free mattress made. I got a couple of orders in that I had placed a week or so ago -- and have a number of org onsies (they are so soft) and a slew of org baby lotions and potions (burts bee, baby avalon organics, and earth's best products) after i placed this order, i found out that this stuff will last a long long time. I probably didn't need several different brands of diaper ointment AND shampoo AND lotion etc. I thought it would be good to get a variety / see what brands we and the baby liked... but looks like we'll be "trying" these things out for a year or more!

Oh well. That's ok. I've read (for the 2nd time) that the hospital will give you a bag of baby stuff... but that these companies have paid big bucks to get their products in there because parents have this thing called the "Halo Effect" -- they feel euphoria and anything that they come across in the first few days seems to become a permanent part of the baby's life. So the products that have lots of chemicals in them and diapers that have bleach in them, etc will get to stay at the hospital because I have PLENTY of natural products to take with. I guess there is some benefit to being over-prepared!

I should go / order the sheets / do some laundry etc. I don't think I'll post before we go on the trip. The next post should have some amazing photos of our trip!