Garage Sale

We have officially scheduled our first fundraising Garage Sale!

Save the Date - May 9th (weather permitting!)

Testing...

I was just curious how this blogging from email worked, so I did a little reading and now I am doing a test run.  Have a great day!  T  - Oh, and just seeing how the pix feature works.  So here is a cute pix of our newphew Grant 

The snow continues!!!

So it has now been snowing since sometime this morning and piling up where ever the Kansas wind blows. Some of our pictures from the front yard. Note: the yard slopes down toward the street away from the house and at this point is almost level from the street side up toward the house. In the foreground is some snow we had to shovel to get the car in the garage after Dan came home from work. Thankfully Staples closed early (3 pm instead of 8pm) so Dan got to come home and spend more time with Tara who had the entire day off. Thanks Jeff and Bobbie for closing. The roads were really bad and it wasn't fun being out on them.





The South side of the house and the fence line. The snow beside the house reaches the top of the tall fence approx. 7 feet and the front yard almost to the short fence approx 3 feet. Thankfully we have covers over the windows that lead to the basement buried somewhere beneath the 6.5 or 7 feet of snow.



A shot down the alley when someone was trying to get through. He was walking away from me and made it through with some effort but not before...

falling over at about the half way point to his crossing.

Out the back door to the porch and yard. Compare to the picture form our earlier post that shows what is buried below this pile. You can hardly see any of it at this point.

The air conditioner and the butterfly bush in the top right corner. Hopefully the bush will still bloom well this year even after this cold in the middle of when it was starting to warm up.

Mickey having yet more fun in the yard. It seems like he come in just to warm up a bit, then he whines at the door to go back out and run around in the fluffy white stuff again.

Covered with snow on his face it was irresistible not to get this picture of him.

Since there was so much snow in the driveway and street dip we had to shovel a path for the car to get in the garage. Tara came out and helped, but ended up with a battle scar for all her efforts. Hopefully it will heal fine and not cause her to much pain. D

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!!!

I have spent time reading many blogs since we started this adoption process and one thing I noticed was in common on many...people complaining about so much rain and snow! All I could think was, send it this way! I don't know if many know how dry it has been here in Southwest Kansas. Let's just say there has basically been no winter. We went straight from fall into spring. There were a few cold days here and there, but not many, and basically no moisture. I actually read an article from the Colorado Springs paper (when we were there last weekend) comparing the situation now to how it was in the dirty thirties (the days of the dust bowl, 1930's). Let's just say it is DRY! Well, thank the Lord, we are finally getting snow. Enough snow to basically shut down Southwest Kansas. YEAH!!! Here are the best pictures I could get this morning.

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.

304 pieces of ...

We are so excited to be moving forward in our adoption process, and preparing for all the new things that are to come. With all the blogs we have been reading (Tara mostly) we found that the orphanage our child will stay at for a time before coming home always love outdoor things for the children to do. Several mentioned that they like sidewalk chalk so...
we got boxes tonight while we were out shopping. It wasn't that we were looking for them, but kind of stumbled across them in the dollar bins at the front of Target, then by the card rack in Wal-Mart. I can't wait for the day we will be able to pack all of the donations we gather and fly to get our child(ren) in Ethiopia. Untill then we have a lot of paperwork to do and forms to fill out that will bring us to the child(ren) that God has planned for our family. D

It arrived!

Our official dossier planner arrived today! We are so excited to be moving ahead! I mean, really moving ahead. I am going to spend some time reading through paperwork tomorrow. Tonight we are going to try and focus on cookbooks. Here are some pictures of Dan opening it!