One year ago today!

It was one year ago today when the courts in Ethiopia decided we were ok to be the parents to this beautiful little boy!  What a time it has been.  We have had him home for 10 1/2 months.  It has been amazing!   I will do our year in review when we hit the one year mark...  But for now, the only pictures we had of our sweet baby boy at that time!

As to the new adoption:  We have reviewed a rough draft of our homestudy and it has been sent off to West Sands for review.  We hope to get it back for the final review soon!  We are so excited to get our dossier off in the mail.  We can't wait to meet the next two little Simmons!

Homestudy - Check!

Home visit done!  One more thing on our adoption list marked off.  All we have to do is wait on the report, which hopefully will come in the next week or so.  Once the report is done, we can mail off the dossier.  To finish the dossier, all we have left to do is print the power of attorney form and sign and notarize three copies.  We will then go and copy the whole thing a couple of times.  Finally - our dossier will be in the mail.  The goal has been to have it in the mail before Christmas.  We'll see if we make it.

When it comes to Mason, we finished our last post placement visit and already have the report.  So, our social worker visits for Mason are done.  We are a little frustrated with the USCIS.  We are trying to get his COC done.  The fees went up as of Nov. 23 and worked really hard to get it in before the fee change.  Got it done, and was told to send it to the wrong place.  We got it back in the mail, which, to be honest, ticked me off!  I was so mad!  I called them again, and the lady said to send it to the right place with a new cover letter explaining what happened and that they would honor the original fee because the whole thing was their fault.  So, of course, today in the mail, it came back again!  Me - ticked off - again!  I will call again tomorrow and get this thing fixed.  I am determined now to not pay a penny over the original fee for this.  Unfortnately, we are just paying postage, over and over, and now over again.    I will keep you updated on his COC progress. 

My cute niece Macy had her bi-annual Nutcracker performance this weekend.  It's fun to see how she has improved over the years.  Here are some pictures from the show: 

Moments memories are made of...

These are the moments memories are made of... hanging with daddy on the kitchen counter eating an after dinner - dinner

On the adoption front:
    We have our homestudy visit Saturday and should have our report in a couple weeks!  Then the dossier gets turned in.  Hopefully before the new year!  That's the goal!

This past week!

  Things in our life have been great!  We had a wonderful first Thanksgiving as a family of three!  We enjoyed our time together and our somewhat odd traditions.  We got up, made a huge breakfast of all sorts of yummy stuff, and attempted to watch the parade.  Mason didnt make it through much, but he liked the music and dancing.  He then went and took a nap shortly after it started.  It had been a long night and I ended up falling asleep as well and missed part of the parade.  We both woke up in time to see Santa at the end.  It is a fun thing and it the official kick off for the holiday season for me.  Later that afternoon, we brought up all the Christmas stuff and started setting up the tree!  It was so fun!  It is our first holiday season with Mason home!  It is fun to see him excited.  he doesn't fully understand it all, but it's great when he looks at the tree and says 'pretty'.  It's great.  We decorated the house a bit and it's great.  It's fun to decorate a house that you love!  We figured that outside we would add a little more each year.  I will post pictures later of the decorations.

Mason helping daddy bring up the decorations

Mason and Mickey checking out the talking snowman

Mason in front of the tree (pre-beads)



Mason trying on Dan's old Mardi Gras beads.  We cut up a bunch of the white ones and hung them on the tree! 



Saturday night we had some great friends over!  We walked down to the park and watched the lighting of the park.  There was a large group singing and free hot cocoa.  It was great!  Then they all came over and we had dinner and just enjoyed the company!  It's nice to have a house big enough to have friends over! 

the singers

Dan and Mason at park

The family

We are anxiously looking forward to next weekend!  It is our final post placement with the social worker for Mason as well as our homestudy visit for the new adoption!  We are so excited! 

Here are a couple other fun pictures of our weekend!



Mason showing off his underwear (he is semi-potty training).  He did pretty well over the past five days, but is not quite ready to go full time.  Soon though!



Mason just being cute!



Panic Strikes!

Panic has stricken this house!  The fee for Mason's COC (certificate of citizenship) goes up $180 on the 23rd of this month!  I did not realize it was that soon.  I knew the fee was going up, but just thought it was later.  So, low and behold, guess what I did tonight!  I have finally finished Masons N-600 application for citizenship, have a list of all the papers I need to copy.  They are all stacked together, waiting for the morning when I can get them copied and in then everything in the mail.  Next thing is that I have to call tomorrow and find out what office to send it to.  I remember when I sent in his application for immigration, I sent it to the wrong place first, with the deadline approaching, I want to make sure it goes to the right place first.  So, once again, plans for the evening changed; and, thank the Lord, what needed to get done, got done. Also, a shout out to my blog friends who reminded me it was coming due and to my blog friend Sarah for answering my pleading email for help!  Couldn't have done it without her! 

The state of things now...

We officially have running water!  We had to dig a little deeper than we had hoped, but we were able to take showers this morning.  We finished up the little project at 11:40 or so last night.  My bathroom is a little bit in shambles, but we can shower, so that is what is important.  I told Dan that through this he helped us solve a problem.  Now we know what room we are going to start in when we start reworking the inside of the house.  Here is the picture.

This is where our sink once was.  The vanity had been built in this place piece by piece.  It was a pain to take apart and is not in pieces out the back door.  I'll update someday when we have the bathroom redone.  But, at least I can take a shower! 

Busy-ness

We have been so completely busy lately!  Hopefully, things will slow down a bit now. Crazy to think that the holidays coming will slow us down, but that is the sad reality. 

Dan is frustratedly (I don't know if that is a real work, but I am going to use it) fixing our shower tonight in hopes that we have water again before bed.  Let's just say, sometimes an old house isn't all its cracked up to be.  It was leaking (a lot) last night, and he went to replace a little part today and a big part broke off.  He has now had to redo pipeing and all sorts of stuff.  He is working on it through the little hole in the shower.  If he has to cut a hole in the wall, it would mean tearing out a built in vanity, cutting the hole, patching the hole and putting a brand new sink in (which, incidently, we actually have one sitting around).  Basically, it wouldn't happen tonight! 

I have been working on the house in an effort to still get it settled.  We are down to about 10-15 boxes of books and videos (which is not many really - I like to read), and about 12 boxes of random stuff that needs gone through, sorted, put away, and gotten rid of.  We are going through things witht he idea in mind that we are going to do a garage sale in the spring.  We still have to work upstairs in the new nursery, and I have to get the linens put away.  The attic rooms still need settled as well.  One is going to be my sewing room, the other an exercise room.  It should be interesting!  We are hopeing that the weather cooperates this weekend and we will be able to get the garages cleaned and oragnized.  We keep getting donations for the garage sale (which is Awesome!) but need to organize the other stuff so we have a place to put them. 

On the adoption front...  as to Mason, we are sending inour 12 months update and doing our last meeting with the social worker at the end of the month.  We are combining the last meeting on Mason with our home visit for our new adoption.  Let's just say travel fees are ridiculous, so, they are letting us combing the two meetings!  I have started working on Mason's Citizenship application, but have not been able to give it the attention it needs.  Once again, a goal to have it done and sent in by the end of the year.  As to the new adoption, we are getting there!  The homestudy paperwork is all turned in.  We are finishing up the last 5 or 6 things for the dossier so it will be ready when we get the homestudy back.  The goal is to be able to turn in the dossier and be officially waiting by the end of 2010! 

That is our life in a nutshell.  Here are the fun pictures that you really come to this blog looking for: 
Mason at breakfast...

 Mason and his Uncle Jer at breakfast when he came to visit this past weekend!

 The family after church out on the porch swing!

 This is something cool we noticed one evening.  We live on a block of historic houses.  It is on the national registry as the silk row district of GC.  One evening we went out and looked down the block (we are on the end) and all 5 of the houses (including us) had their flags out.  It was just a neat shot.   We love living in this neighborhood.  Everyone has been so wonderful!

Promised Photos

Here are the promised referral photos. We saw this beautiful face for the first time October 19, 2009. We were at the office, which has dial up internet, so it seemed to take an eternity before we could see them all, but it was worth it. He was 5 months old at the time we received the referral. Hard to believe he is 17 months old, running and playing all over the house!

One year ago...yesterday!

Well, blogger isn't uploading pictures for a couple hours due to maintenance, but I will upload the pictures either later or tomorrow. We moved this weekend and have no idea where the power cord is for the computer and we are almost out of battery... but to the point-
One year ago yesterday, we received a phone call and email of the greatest kind. The kind that will change your life. We received our referral of our precious boy! He was 5 months old and beautiful. I will post the referral pictures later, but trust me, beautiful! It was the afternoon where we really became parents. It wasnt legal yet, but in our hearts, he was our boy and we were finally mommy and daddy! Life has just gotten better and better. We love him so much and can't imagine life without him in it. We love hearing the pitter patter of little feet running on the floor, the way he runs at us with arms out ready for a hug, his smiles and laughter. It is just amazing! He is amazing! So, a day late, but trust me, we didn't forget - one year ago, our lives changed forever!
T

Big News!

We are excited to announce that we are officially in the process of adopting again. We have started the homestudy process and have signed contracts with a new adoption agency and are working on our new dossier. We are so excited to begin the journey again and grow our family.

To answer a few questions that we know are coming, No, we are not using AGCI again. Yes, we loved working with them and have nothing but good things to say about them. They have grown as an agency and have a large waitlist as well as a large number of families working on their paperwork.


We are planning to adopt two children. Not one or two, but only two! We are excited to be growing our family from three to five! It has been a dream of ours and something we have been praying about since we were married.


We will hopefully not need to fundraise to the same extent we did for the past adoption. Our awesome agency is set up as a non-profit and will take tax deductible donations in our honor if anyone so desires to help out in that matter. We will be using the adoption tax refund from Mason and are planning another garage sale for the Spring. And finally, we will be applying for as many grants as possible.

Please join with us as in prayer through this journey. Pray as God prepares us and our family for two new children as well as the two new children being prepared for us. Thank you in advance for your prayers and support!

Labor Day Weekend

I have some more pictures to add to this and will update this, but blogger is not letting me upload more pictures at this point. So, we will add the rest of the pictures later. So, here is labor day weekend...

We went down to Albuquerque, NM to see Dan's great aunt Jane. We had a great time visiting her and had the opportunity to go to the botanical garden and aquarium. It was a great time.

Mommy and Mason during lunch

Daddy and Mason looking at the fishes...

Mason crashed after a bit at the aquarium.

The whole gang. This is me, Aunt Jane, Mason, Dan, and Grandma Betty. (She joined us on this trip)On our way out to the car.

I don't think Mason realized we had an 8 1/2 hour road trip ahead of us by the looks of this picture. He did really well, but it was a long trip. We had a good time and always do when we go see Aunt Jane.

Under Contract!

We are officially under contract on our dream house. It is such a God thing. We have been praying for guidance over the summer as to 'our next step' and had been feeling like we were supposed to stay here in GC. We are in an apartment that isn't the greatest, but it works, and the lease is up soon. We were trying to figure out what to do and then my sister says that she has found the perfect house for us. Low and behold, she was right! This is our dream home. It has an amazing porch, beautiful wood floor and woodwork, tall ceiling, lots of bedrooms, finished attic space, unfinished basement, brick patio out back, corner lot, and big, mature trees! This is truly our dream home. It was also super cheap! We love good deals, and this is one. It was a repo that had been bank owned for two years. They just wanted to get rid of it. It needs loving - a paint job, minor updating, cleaning up the yard. It's a great home! We can't wait to close and get it and settle before the holidays. Enjoy the couple pictures of the house and the beautiful entry with the stairs and woodwork.

picture fest again

So we have been enjoying life with Mason, and getting used to being parents with our special little boy who is not so little anymore. It is so fun to watch his personality come out and see him experience life. Enjoy the pictures!

Here is Mason in his smiley face shirt that says it all.

Daddy and Mason playing games with friends.

Mason enjoying sitting in a car seat even when out of the car, and his friends Abigail.

Mason ridding a toy.


I love the look on Mason's face and the finger pointing at me. He was talking to me like he was telling me what what going to happen next. I guess I point my finger at him when talking a bit more then I realized.

Sleeping boy.

Ready to go. Just need the keys.

Playing it up with Grandma. He has the same smile in stores and other places. Such a FLIRT!

Riding in the car with cousin Dylon, while grandma and grandpa watch.

Mason tries out a three wheeler.

Tara and Mason eating more food. This boy sure does love his food!!

Picnic time. Mason eating up all the attention.

"Hot Dog"

Trista filling the water table for Braden and Mason.

Bocce Ball with Family and Friends.

Grandma playing with Mason.

Grandpa shares the wonderful view from the deck with Mason. Unfortunately the mountains were fogged in today.

Mason in his du-rag. Give him a few years and he might be the next Dread Pirate Roberts.

The first hat Mason has left on for longer then five minutes.

Mason running after Pipper who came to the apartment for a visit one afternoon.

Mason strutting his stuff with a football.