Home at Last

We are home from China with our new little angel. It was a wonderful trip! We are just starting to get over our jet-lag. I will TRY to post pictures from our trip as time allows. Here is a picture of the best Christmas present I ever received.

Travel Approval is Finally Here!

It's here! It's here! Our TA is FINALLY here! We will most likely leave on December 2nd. Yippeee! Well, I've gotta run. I have packing to do. Yeah! Stay tuned. More exciting things to come!

New Fortune

I love that picture! We KNOW we have a daughter in China. We just need permission to go and get her. It looks like we won't be traveling until December. We were really hoping for November, but thanks to USCIS that won't be happening. At least we'll be getting the best Christmas present ever!

We got our immunizations today and now my arms are sore. Immunizations aren't required, but why take chances? Unfortunately, the clinic we went to didn't have any flu vaccines so we have to track some down.

Since our travel is taking a bit longer than we thought it would, I am probably going to send Abby another care package and hope that we get some more pictures. If we do, I'll be sure to post them here. In the meantime, since I don't have any adoptions news or cute baby pictures to post, I'll try to post some older pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Cats have no boundaries

The bobcat









The new Jeep









The police car









The bathtub

The Kiss

3 Month Fortune Cookie Update

This is a follow-up to my previous message from 3 months ago. I had a fortune cookie that predicted good things for me. Well guess what it was? I had my first baby shower given to me by my coworkers! It was SO nice and Abby has so many great things waiting for her. She received a ton of adorable clothes, some super fun looking toys, and various other bibs, blankets, towels, etc. WOW! We just need HER now! Come on travel approval!!! We're waiting.

Birthday Party!

We sent Abby a care package for her birthday since she isn't with us yet. They delivered a gorgeous cake to her for her to share with all her pals. Here is the party we missed out on.

Introducing Abigail Madison…

YES! We have a daughter!!! She is almost a year old and lives in Henan, China. She has some medical issues but is doing well. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. We were so surprised to have received her referral when we did. I feel totally unprepared! We have a million things to do before we go and get her, so I know time will go by quickly. Thanks for everyone’s love and support through our long wait. The journey is really only beginning and we look forward to sharing all of our ups-and-downs with you.

Visitor

We are so blessed to live in a place where Mother Nature's beautiful creatures come to visit us. This past July I was able to capture some photos of a deer that was coming regularly to feed on our weeds. She was thin except for her belly. I really thought she might be pregnant. See what you think?

Well, if this is the same girl...I was right! She had TWINS! Aren't they adorable?!!

Dakota doesn't think these big "dogs" are nearly as fascinating as I do. She REALLY doesn't want them in her yard.

Coming Soon...

Eeuuwww!

I found this critter in the yard today. He looks like the one that crawled across my feet a few days ago. YUCK!!! The picture might be a little out of focus. I was trying to hold the camera with one hand, the yard stick with the other hand, and pray to God he didn't jump on me while I was taking the picture! As long as he isn't on me, I think he is pretty neat. I love his camouflage.

On This Date 40 Years Ago

Forty years ago Apollo 11 returned back to earth from their trip to the moon. They were cleared through Customs in Honolulu, Hawaii. Below is a link to a short article about it. Linked to the article, you can view a picture of their actual Customs Declaration. Pretty neat!

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/about/history/welcome_apollo.xml

3 Months

Ok, everybody! I just got some good news. Yesterday, after eating at a Chinese restaurant, I received a wonderful fortune from my fortune cookie. It read:

Remember three months from this date [07/22/09]. Good things are in store for you.

So there you go. Check back in three months and I'll tell you what it was. Ha!

Adoption Non-Update

I called the Waiting Child Department today to check-in and see where we were on the waiting list. We submitted our Medical Conditions Checklist (MCC)on 02/13/08. This is our date of reference for waiting on a child with special needs. Currently, they are still trying to match families with similar MCC's as ours with dates of Oct. 07, so we are still several months away. I asked if she thought we would receive a referral before the end of the year and she, understandably, did not want to give me an answer to that. (They could guess based on the recent trends they have been seeing, but they don't want to commit to telling you something and it not happen.) She did say we were on the downhill side of things, meaning we are closer rather than farther away from a referral. Yea! At this point, I'll take any positive piece of information I can get!

I'm a Blood Donor

Ok, I’m officially a blood donor. I don’t know why it took me so long to do it, but now I have. I guess the opportunity never presented itself before. I wanted to write this, not to brag about myself, but to vent about my office-mates who also had the opportunity to give blood but declined because they were not given a free 4 hours off of work for their donation.

Let me explain. In the past OR at other ports OR at other government agencies, employees were given 4 hours of time-off when they donated blood. The 4 hours is NOT a reward for doing a nice thing; it is actually supposed to be used to allow an employee time to give blood during working hours without having to use personal leave. It’s time allowed to the employee for the actual time it takes to give blood…that’s it. You CAN be granted UP TO 4 hours for giving blood, IF NECESSARY.

Over time, it has evolved into employees being “paid” 4 hours of time-off for their donation, so that is what people have come to expect. This year the blood drive was during the middle of the day. You were allowed to go give and come back to work. That did not sit well with many employees. Consequently, NO ONE in my work area gave except for me. I was appalled!

Would 4 hours off work be nice? Heck yeah! Would it be a nice incentive to encourage people to give? Yep. But is that what giving blood is all about? NO! The point of giving blood is to do something SELFLESS for a complete stranger. So, now, I have learned a lot about the people I work with. I am very disappointed to say the least.

In the end, I was able to gain a lot from the entire experience---guilt-free cookies, juice, and a t-shirt, two hours away from my desk, but most importantly, I’m thankful I have wonderful parents that taught me great values so I can feel good about myself for doing the right thing.

Memories...

I was just looking through some old pictures and found one that I can laugh about NOW. We came home one day to find our living room looking like this:





What you can't see is half the carpet was in the same condition as the sofa.


Now does this look like a face that could do all that?


GUILTY!!!

I'm trying my hand at this blog thing. We'll see how it goes. I think I need some formal training. I took a digital photography class recently. Little did I know we were the 1st "trial" class so things didn't go all that well. For one thing, it needed to be twice as long. Anyway, I want to have a place to share pictures and what's going on with us. I'll attempt to post one of the pictures I took for my photography class. I think it turned out nice.