Moving right along...and the weekend

Well, first things first. The adoption...

We ordered certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage licenses on this past Tuesday. When we got home from Colorado Springs on Sunday both of our birth certificates had come in and the marriage license came in yesterday! So, check, check, and check!
Last night we got all registered and signed up with our online education. We hope to spend some time in the evenings and on Saturday getting it all done. Dan actually has a Satuday off in which we have absolutely nothing going on!
I also finished our Power of Attorney and our Post Adoption Commitment letter. Dan is going to write our application letter to MOWA (the ministry of women's affairs in Ethiopia) this afternoon.
We also sent an email to Al and Kristen to request our two recommendation letters that we need. We asked them to get them done in the next two weeks if at all humanly possible.
We are going to straighten the house up and take pictures of it as well as getting the passport photos done that are needed. We are trucking right along and it is exciting!
My goal is to get everything done that is humanly possible in the next two weeks before our Homestudy orientation and education workshop. That is one of the fun things of living in the boonies. It is a 6 1/2 hour trip to our homestudy agency. (Which we plan on using the drive to work some more on the 'With Eyes Wide Open' workbook that is required). Thankfully they have a social worker in Wichita, so that is only 3 1/2 hours away. Our workshop and orientation are on the 4th of April. They are nicely combining those two in the same trip for us. I am hoping then that we can totally focus on the homestudy and get it all done quickly.
My goal is to be done and getting our dossier to AGCI by the second week of May. Unfortunately our state does not let us do early processing on the I-600A, so we have to wait on that until the homestudy is totally done, but that is O.K.



On to the weekend!


This past weekend we went to Colorado Springs to celebrate Dan's grandma's 80th birthday. It's a 4 1/2 hour drive, so we started working on our 'With Eyes Wide Open' workbook. It was a good time. Here are a few highlight photos from the weekend.

Dan's Aunt Cathy, Aunt Carla, Nana (her birthday), and his mom Betty

This is Dan's sister Trista and Aunt Carla (and brother Jeremy off to the side)

Dan's brother Jeremy teaching his nephew Braden how to use chopsticks

All of us at the party!

We took our dog Mickey to Colorado Springs for the first time. He did great on the trip and was a huge hit there. This is Braden 'running' the dog after the party.

Dylon loved Mickey as well. Here he is getting kisses.

Sunday we had a big traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was good. Here Al is cutting the turkey. And yes, he is doing it down on the washing machine.

Here is me, Nana, Dan, Aunt Cathy, and Mickey.

What a weekend!

Ok, so it has been an absolutely crazy weekend. To start off, last Wednesday we had our Orientation conference Call with Mindy at AGCI. It was great, we got it done and then on Thursday, we signed and notarized all our contracts and paperwork. We then overnighted them to AGCI. Got a phone call on Friday from Minday and she got the contracts and everything was great and our Dossier binder is on its way! That's so exciting!!! Ok, so in the meantime, I contacted the homestudy agency and got things underway there. Spoke with one lady and we got whatever application and whatnot filled out. The sosical worker, Alisa, called Friday as well to find out when we would be able to make a trip out to Wichita. So, we are looking at our calender and figuring it all out now. So we had two wonderful phone calls on Friday. Only thing was, we were in the middle of trying to cook for 180 women. We (me, Dan, our friend Brenda) cooked for the women's conference that our church does each year as a fundraiser for our adoption. Dan's mom and step-dad came out on Thursday night to help out. Thank the Lord they did. We put them to work. I had them cooking, cleaning, binding cookbooks and what not. On friday afternoon we had lots of little helpers, it was fun. Brenda's four kids were there and them we had my sister's four kids. I thought since I wasn't going to be at work, I would help her out to some degree and watch the kids.

Here are Betty and I working on cookbooks.

This is me just standing there, but Betty is getting ready to cut desserts for me. I felt like when I was cooking professionally. I did some stuff, but spent most of the time giving directions to all sorts of other people.The end of the day we were all ready to go home and had some great help cleaning up. Betty, our friend Troy, and his daughter Maggie are pictured here.

This is Betty and Al at the end of two long days relaxing!

So sweet!

I have the greatest family! My niece and nephews are so sweet! They are excited for us to get babies and tonight they boys asked me about the cookbook to see if it was almost done yet. They said they would each buy one with their own money to help us get our baby. Also, Macy (the girl) got ahold of our camera and took a bunch of pictures (like170) and told me I could sell the pictures for money to help us get our baby. Putting this into perspective, these kids are 6, 8, and 10. SO sweet huh!

Babysitting

Tonight we are babysitting my sister's kids and dog. They had to go to a fundraiser event. Here are some fun pictures that my niece and I took.

Uncle Dan looks a little worn out! Just got home from a meeting at work.

Grant was stuck upstairs when the other kids went downstairs to play.

Macy being silly stuffing a whole cracker in her mouth!

Grant getting some loving from Mickey

They start 'em young nowadays! (he's using the mouse on the computer in this picture. And is being ever so helpful as I try and post this, he's got the mouse back and turned it back on - I had turned it off so he wouldn't mess up this post or delete it midway being done. By the way, he's not even 2 yet, only 21 months or so!)