Stahlke Adoption

Helps for Our Life with Kids

Every morning as I start the day, I wonder how we would get by without certain appliances, machines, and other helps in our lives. Here is a selected list of things that we did not own in our life before kids. Many of them were gifts from people who knew we needed them.

One big difference between the 2005 adoption and the current adoption is that everything in the list below is already in place, and we're not spending time now shopping at stores and garage sales, or living through the dust and noise of renovations. We have a few other things to occupy our time!

Vehicles
Van (with eight seats and extra length for luggage)
Parking pad for our two vehicles

Electronic Devices
Cell phones
Digital camera
DVD player
Electric pencil sharpener

Furniture
Second couch in living room, with hide-a-bed
Large dining room table with eight chairs
Three sets of bunkbeds
New desks for Jonathan and me (with doors that hide everything)

Renovations
Renovated bathroom on first floor
New bathroom on second floor
Ceiling panels to make the crawl space in the attic usable for storage
New plumbing throughout the house

Basement
Washing machine with extra-large drum
New storage units in the basement
Locked furnace room to block access to the heater
Multitude of plastic storage bins of every size

Kitchen
Dishwasher
Second frig/freezer
Many large pots and frying pans, as well as lots of spatulas
And lastly a coffeemaker--we have always owned one, but now it's the FIRST thing I turn on every morning!

posted by Stahlkes @ 12:15 PM