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!