Thursday, December 18, 2008

what a day...

Not that anyone is following my blogs. But it's a nice way to de-clutter after a long day.
We finally received our I800A approval today. Barely!!! I called, by chance to find out if NBC had rcvd the last addendum's sent over two weeks ago. "no" they didn't... imagine my utter excitement...NOT!

Long story short...by 4:50 tonight, the noght before our agent at NBC was to leave on vacation...we rcvd her approval. Talk about calling it close.

So, the next step is getting everything translated and registered with the Latvian government. Who, by the way, has put our little Dina at the top of their available children list. So...now every parent out there can view her information. Anyone who already has a registered dossier can secure her before us. So, I pray for God's will. Also, I discovered she had surgery on December 3rd.

Well, I am going to go play with my son for the rest of the night. He is awesome. So is my oldest son...Robert, if you read this...Mommy misses you and loves you :)

Goodnight...
I need to remember to post about the big family event too...Dana.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

In the Meantime

What a cold and snowy day it's been! Carson and I have spent the day playing together. It's been such a pleasant day, overall. He has been such a good little buddy to hang out with. We played games on our favorite game site, bigfish.com. My friend, Sandy is staying here this past month. She is a big internet, sales queen. She has a great bookstore (TSKP books online) and an Amazon store. So, we spent some time with her going thru the house with her new handy scanner. It's so cool!!! It's a PDA that scans barcodes to tell what they sell for on the internet. She found one of our board games to be worth over $60.00. We have played it once. But for $60.00 I told her to sell!!!! We found lots more items that are doing well selling. It's a great way to clean house and earn money for it...my own house:) I'd love to have the scanner to just walk around at thrift stores and flea markets buying to sell.

I'm still playing the wait game with NBC (homeland security). They are the entity responsible for approving international adoption home studies. It's really somewhat of a farce. Basically, we spent the first several months of our adoption process taking fingerprints. Then we send those fingerprints and our home study report to NBC for review and more fingerprints. It took them ninety days to even look at our file. Then it was another week to wait for their request for more information. From that point it was another two months of waiting between the home study agency delays, mailing and waiting to have the file looked at again. Believe it or not, it has now been another month wait because we had one (1) word missing on our home study. The word, ironically, was "emotionally." As in, we are emotionally healthy to adopt. Well, heck...not so much now after waiting almost six months for them to read a few pages and give their stamp of approval. My dear hubby just told me the snow plows knocked our mailboxes down...and he left them down. So, it doesn't look like we'll get anything today either:(

I feel so ridiculously, obsessed with the mail delivery. Adoption has a way of doing odd things like that to you. I think I'll go scan more games and books...at least we could earnmoney for the trip, in the meantime.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Newbie Blogger

Okay, so here it is, exactly one year, almost to the date, that I made the first step in the adoption process. I say "I" because it wasn't until about a month later that my hubby joined me in my efforts. Because it wouldn't be fair or proper to blog on my husband's behalf...you will hear me refer to "my" journey rather than "our" journey. Please know that it is, however, a path our entire family is traveling.

A little ditty about us...

We live just outside Kansas City, Missouri in a town of about 10,000. My husband was born and raised here. We have one, biological son together, Carson James (8-22-02) and my bio son, Robert (11-20-89). We are paperchasing our way to Lativa to add little Dina (3-22-05) . We have three dogs, Pete, a Chesapeake Bay/Retriever Mix, SuperGirl, a beautiful and very large German Shepard, and Elton John, my "designer" mutt...better known as a mini-golden doodle. There are two rats who call Carson's room home...from their cage, of course. They are Sandy and Mae.

Robert is on a journey of his own to Slovakia this year. There, he is teaching ESL to students at a language school. He is a National Award Winning Classical Composer as well as a pianist. As you can tell...I'm a bit proud of him.

Carson James is our feisty, six year old. He is a spitting image of his big brother...looks wise...but couldn't be further away in demeanor. Carson is the honery, little boy I always wanted (when I was MUCH younger). He is in Kindergarten this year at a private school. He is one of the most unique children I have ever had the pleasure to know. He has the will of a locomotive and the heart of a book. Yes, he is THAT complex.

Brent and I have been married three years in January. However, we began dating over eight years ago. We are both in our forties...he's a bit MORE into his than me:)
We share a passion for travel, homes, community involvement and of course...our family.

Which brings me to the close of this intro. tonight. Family is the single most important aspect of my life. I not only have the gretest honor in thw world to be the mother and wife of my family...but also a sister, aunt, daughter and friend to those who are in my life almost daily. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but with those people I call "Family." Don't think that I don't crave "me" time too. My family is the classic, big family with issues and pasts and futures and all sorts of stories to pass from generation to generation.

OOPS...I almost forgot... the rest...

My best friends are my sister, Deanna and my cousin, Sheri. They know me. They let me tell my stories and they don't hang up. How cool is that? In fact, Deanna meets me every morning for Starbucks (Venti-Mocha, 3 pumps hazelnut, nonfat, extra hot, no whip, half caff.). She rocks!!!

My family: Mary, Mark, Deanna, Donna, Danny and Me. Nonna(Mom) and PaPa Jerry, Dad and Harriet. Karen, Chad, Matt (sibling spouses). Lots of nephews and nieces...Cassie, (Robert) Ryan, Brooklyn, Bailey, Noah, Adrianna, Grace, Isabella, Gabe, Ethan, Nash and baby Sammi and Sheri's Granddaughter, Rowan.

I have about twelve jillion cousins...all of them amazing people. Brent has four kids in his family and a slew of cousins to follow. We have his three nephews and two nieces to boot. And, we add in Katie, daughter to one of his best buddies...Brent is her Godfather (darn the luck).

So, you can see(if your not cross-eyed from all the reading) that family just simply has to be first...Wouldn't have it any other way.

Goodnight!!!