Another Excited Aunt and Uncle

We had Jon's sister and brother-in-law over last night to celebrate the holidays with them since we did not see them on Christmas day. We also told them about the adoption. Yeah, I have a blog and some family members had not been officially told. We never intended it to go that way but it did. We just really wanted to tell them in person and due to logistics it didn't happen until now. We also told other members of Jon's side of the family on Christmas Day. Anyway, they were super excited for us and Jon's sister asked permission to spoil her rotten. Permission granted. I stayed up way past my bedtime but we had a great time with lots to celebrate last night.

Christmas Lemons

Last Christmas, my MIL gave me a really cool Christmas present - a lemon tree. It's one of the "patio size" Meyer's lemon trees. Although I was thrilled with it, I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about keeping the thing alive much less producing any fruit. My first goal, keep it alive. Second, I would figure out how to get it to grow some lemons. I am a wanna-be gardener but really have no clue. It stayed inside until last spring and then moved onto our patio. Recently, we brought it back it for the winter. I present to you, my lemon crop of 2005. I picked the biggest lemon on Christmas morning and gave it to my MIL that day. We intended to enjoy it together but with all the festivities of the day never got around to it. I'm going to try one tonight.

Christmas Play

My nieces and nephew all had starring roles in the Christmas Eve service at Church this year. Mary, a shephard and an angel. Unfortunately we weren't there in person since we typically alternate Christmas between my family and Jon's. However, my brother-in-law was kind enough to capture it for us. I spoke to the kids Christmas Eve night after their performance. The angel told me (and I quote) that she "wishes they would have put a wire on her and let her fly into the Church - that would be cool." Considering this angel was already sporting a cast on her right arm under that sweet angel costume (she broke her wrist about a month ago), that is quite the statement.

Paybacks

Actually this story begins last year when Jon bought my mom a Chia pet for Christmas. This was hilarious because since the beginning of the Chia pet, that commercial has driven my mom absolutely NUTS. "Cha Cha Cha Chia!!!!" Not to mention that she thinks they are the tackiest thing ever. My apologies to any Chia pet fans out there - you can take that up with my mom. Anyway, my siblings and I have threatened for years to get my mom a Chia pet for Christmas. None of us had the nerve to pull it off. Jon comes along and last year actually gave my mom the prized Chia.

So Christmas morning, Jon opens the first present from my parents and you guessed it. He got the Chia - the same exact one. Still in the plastic - untouched. I wish I could have caught his initial reaction - it was hilarious. However, since his body was convulsing with laughter, it made the shot impossible. My mom gave him some sob story about not being able to give the Chia a proper home. I have a feeling this is not the end of the Chia.

Her first NEW dress

Once again, my parents went way overboard on Christmas. However, there was one present that literally took my breath away. My mom MADE this beautiful dress for our daughter. Just click on the picture to see the details. Oh my gosh, it caught me totally of guard. (Which I'm sure makes my parents extra happy since they are BIG on no one knowing what they are getting for Christmas.) I wasn't expecting this at all. I have watched my mom sew dozens of beautiful dresses for my nieces over the years. (Some of which my sister has recently shared with me - another post I haven't gotten around to yet but will soon.) And I admit that for some time now, I hoped that one day I would have a daughter that she would sew for.
To say that I am touched would be the understatement of the year. Finally, we have something to represent our daughter besides missing fingerprints and a huge stack of documents authenticated by everyone under the sun. The moment I saw that dress, it just seemed "real". Not sure I can explain it any other way. Also, for your viewing pleasure, Jon caught my reaction on camera. Yeah, I cried. Big time. I'm sure I'll cry again the first she wears this dress. I'm just that way.

Thank you Jon

Luckily, Jon didn't listen to a word of my bah humbug, no Christmas spirit, "we don't need to bother with a tree" attitude this year. He knows me well enough to know that I would have regretted it on Christmas morning. He made sure we put up an awesome tree and even put lights outside. Sure, I helped decorate the tree and enjoyed every minute of it. I just did not have the motivation to get it all going this year. He made sure it happened. He also did most of the shopping this year which I will try hard not to get used to. Thanks Babe, I Love You.

"Father" Christmas

Yep, here he is - The REAL Santa and yes, I personally know him . I've known him all my life in fact. If you are curious how I know him, click here. That's right, the rest of the year he is disguised as my Dad. Then each fall, he begins his transformation. Come to think of it, I guess when Dad stops shaving it is actually the first sign of the coming Holiday Season. I think at first, "Mrs. Claus" wasn't a big fan of the extra beard. However, over the years, she's been converted. He even has elves, there's one elf named "Leo" that kept an eye on us as kids and now keeps a close eye on the grandkids. Some of us have even gotten personal phone calls from "Leo" - usually not a good sign.

Here's a picture from a school party with another of his elves Jackson.
He has been the Santa for many school parties for his kids and now grandkids. And, sometimes he's done it without being recognized. Just goes to show you, all you have to do is believe. Now don't bother writing me to tell me to put in a good word for you. He already knows if you've have been Naughty or Nice.

One Step Closer

Yeah, I said the next post would be about Christmas but it's my blog and I get to change my mind. I got home last night around 8:30 dead tired from a "day trip" to Houston. "Day trip" is the term that is used by your boss to try and disguise an out of town business trip as no big deal. You get up at 4:00am and get home by 8:00pm - yeah, that's a day. Actually I like my boss, it's not his fault, I get to do quite a few of these. Anyway, back to the story -I got home to find that my new best friend (the fed ex man) had delivered our dossier documents authenticated by the Chinese Consulate!!!! I was surprised because of course I had been obsessively tracking the return mailer that I included and didn't realize it was on it's way. I really wasn't expecting to get it back until after Christmas. Come to think of it, I guess it was a little like Christmas so there you go - this is a Christmas post after all. Of course we still don't know if I have fingerprints and still have to wait on the elusive 171H from immigration but at least I can put more X's in my oh so beautiful spreadsheet!!!

Trying to get it out of my system

Note - this is not a happy post so if you are looking for happy - don't read.

I have to admit - I haven't been into the "swing of Christmas" this year. Not for reasons that you might expect. It has nothing to do w/ the adoption. Ever since we returned from visiting my family for Thanksgiving, I've just been sad. I don't want to be a "Christmas downer" but it really threw me for a loop. Other than that one post, I haven't said much about Katrina and I don't really know why. This blog was intended to capture our lives as we move through the adoption process. Believe me, Katrina has been part of this. Much of my immediate family evacuated here and were here when we were working on the initial adoption application. For a couple of weeks, we didn't know if many family members and friends were even ok or not. My sister put her kids in school here and they were here for about 6 weeks until schools opened again in their town. I haven't had a conversation with a family member for the last 4 months where "it" didn't come up. It's interesting to me that as I go back and read through my entries on this blog, it doesn't show up more. It's been such a part of our everyday. Unfortunately, I've decided to talk about it a few days before Christmas. Oh well, timing never was my strong point.

I knew it was bad. However, seeing the town you grew up in reduced to scraps of lumber, seeing your Grandmother's house destroyed by 3 feet of water and an oak tree through the middle, seeing your Aunt that lost EVERYTHING stinks. It's four months now after the storm and people are still living in tents. My sister is friends with many school teachers and they have students that are still in tents. My Aunt that lost everything hasn't heard a thing about getting a FEMA trailer. Yet, my sister's next door neighbor whose house is FINE, gets offered one. It's a mess.

Even the "lucky ones" that still have a roof over their head have it pretty hard. Jobs are gone or seriously affected, they watch their friends and family try to rebuild their lives from scratch. Nothing is easy there, going to the bank, going to the grocery store, to the Doctor, ordering Pizza, nothing. There was even an unfortunate incident with my sister in Walmart over a frozen chicken which I will not go into out of respect for her.

Anyway, if this blog is really going to document our lives as we move through this process it had to be said. I promise the next post will be about Christmas.

Bees and Chickens for Christmas

For the past few years, my niece Olivia and I have made a contribution to The Heifer Project each Christmas. If you are not familiar with Heifer, their mission is "To work with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth." There approach is simple yet unique. Through donations, they are able to provide a community with a source of income through the gift of an animal such as a goat, pig, chickens and of course a heifer. The livestock brings with it the benefits of milk, wool, draft power, eggs and offspring Here's the really cool part, every family and community that receives assistance promises to repay their living loan by donating one or more of their animal's offspring to another family in need. This practice of passing on a gift ensures project sustainability, develops community and enhances self-esteem by allowing project partners to become donors.
Here is an awesome story about someone who has benefitted by The Heifer Project.

It was actually Olivia that started the tradition. One year she saved her birthday money and bought a flock of chickens. She was probably seven at the time. I was so inspired by her, I decided to join her in the effort. Since then we have done two goats, chickens, geese, ducks. Over the years, she has given much of her birthday Christmas, and allowance money for this cause. This year we decided in January to both save our spare change all year and go for something bigger like the water buffalo. We were doing pretty good and had over $100 in Sept. Then came hurricane Katrina and we decided to give what we had so far to help the Katrina effort.

We continued to save our pennies and were able to contribute chickens and bees this year. I had no idea bees could be so helpful.

Speaking of Paperwork

My youngest niece Ivy (just turned 4) is very excited about the adoption. Although what is a long wait for adults, can translate to an eternity for a 4 year old, we have talked to her about it almost from the beginning. They had to evacuate from Katrina so she was here quite a bit while Jon and I were working on our initial agency application. She heard me say I was doing "paperwork", saw the stacks of "paperwork" on my desk. She even kept me company in the office while I was working on "paperwork". She knew that it was all related to the adopotion.
Recently, she asked my sister to play with her. My sister replied "Mommie can't right now, I have some paperwork to do (probably meaning bills, mail, etc.) Ivy's eyes got wide and said "are we adopting a baby from China!!!"

Paperwork update

No word yet on if the fingerprints passed or not. In case you haven't been following along, "passed" means my fingerprints were clear enough to be read and NOT that they uncovered my extensive "rap sheet". Actually that's the irony of it all. Once they do get clear fingerprints, they will probably fall asleep while checking me out. BOOOORING!!! Anyway, other than the immigration form of course, everything else has been notarized, authenticated by any necessary county clerks, authenticated by the Secretary of State of either Texas, Georgia orMississippi!!! YAY! Yep, I've been putting X's in my spreadsheet and sadly enough that is what makes me happy these days. This week, it all went to the Chinese Consulate in Houston for the LAST level of authentication. Hopefully that will all be ok and will come back authenticated within a couple of weeks. Once the immigration form comes through, we will expedite that one final piece of paper through the same authentication process.

Fall Cleanup

After being out of town the previous two weekends, this was our weekend to start thinking about Christmas. Unfortunately, we had quite a bit of clean up to do before getting out the Christmas bling. As I mentioned before, we still had pumpkins gracing the front door and were also buried in leaves. I guess you could say that we were becoming "that house" on the street. So, we raked a massive pile of leaves. When I say "we" I mean Jon and my brother-in-law Brian who was nice enough to lend a hand. This pile of leaves may not seem that big but keep in mind that our front yard isn't much larger than the pile itself. Yeah, the leaves were deep.

Here is my contribution to the raking effort.

What fingerprints?

Of course I have been obsessing over my lack of fingerprints. In fact, my hands are sliding off the keyboard as I type this since I have been using so much hand lotion. Not sure why I'm trying this - I always use hand lotion so I really don't think that is going to make a difference. I called our case worker to see if she has ever come across this. I'm expecting to hear something like "Oh, yes this happens from time to time - it's no big deal, all you have to do is blah blah blah." That's not quite what she said. It went more like "What, I've never heard of such a thing happening, let me ask the other case workers". Nope none of them have ever heard of it either. I guess maybe that's better than saying they have seen it once with someone's great great great great grandmother.
I still have my fingers (gently) crossed . The very patient woman that took the fingerprints said that there is a chance they will pass and that it depends on who reviews them. Is it wrong to hope for an untrained, apathetic, overworked FBI employee?

Winter Wonderland - Texas Style

We were treated to a small dose of sleet and ice yesterday. We don't get much actual snow here - what we do get is typically in the form of ice. And since we only get it once, maybe twice, a year the place really shuts down. Schools dismissed early yesterday and were closed today. Lots of businesses were even closed today as well. Of course, I work from home quite a bit so that doesn't do a thing for me. I'm sure our friends up north would get a chuckle out of the chaos that a little ice can cause here. However, I don't care where you are from, it's not easy to drive on a sheet of ice. I certainly didn't get out in it. I did however, get Jon to stop at the store on his way home last night. Depending on how bad the ice got, I didn't know how long we could survive on the gallon of milk and microwave popcorn that we had on hand.

We've been fingerprinted - sort of

Yesterday we went for our fingerprinting appt. This is the last step before we can get our immigration clearance and the immigration clearance is the last thing we need for our dossier. I was very excited because we got our fingerprinting appt. quicker that I anticipated. I heard from other local adoptive parents that it's no big deal, best to show up at 8:00 when they open and you can get in and out pretty quick. About what you would expect - fill out a form, take a number, wait to be called. Didn't take us too long to be called, so far so good. When they do the fingerprints, they do it digitally (no ink) and do all ten fingers. Jon's fingerprints were done in a matter of minutes. Mine on the other hand, totally different story. Apparently I have no fingerprints. Well, I guess it isn't that bad, but they could not get a good print from over half of my fingers!!!! I did not see this one coming. They tried washing, drying, lotion and some super secret eraser type substance from the back room that they got from the police station. She even called her supervisor over to see if she could get my prints. No luck. The women were VERY patient and tried for over an hour. They understood that this was for an adoption and that I will not be approved without an FBI check which is what these fingerprints are for. I asked her if this happens a lot. Note to self - never ask a question that you don't want an answer to. She tells me that this happened with a kid that had a habit of chewing his fingers (never done that) and can often happen with the elderly. Did she say elderly??? If I want to feel old, I can just make an appointment with the fertility doctor thank you very much. She also said that lots of washing dishes and working on the computer can wear out your fingerprints. Well who doesn't do that???? How come mine are so messed up? See there Dad, all those times you made me help Mom out with the dishes - it really did scar me for life.

They warned me that there is a good chance that the prints will be rejected by the FBI and we will need to try again. That of course means a delay which makes me very cranky. I did all sorts of reading on the adoption forums last night to see if anything can help with this. Several posts from people that have older people living in their house and had trouble. Great, again with the elderly reference. One person suggested lotion which doesn't make any sense because I use hand lotion constantly and I don't think Jon has ever touched the stuff. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know - I'll try anything at this point.

What a week

This past week has been quite a blur. We returned from our Thanksiving trip the Sunday following Thanksgiving. I had crazy days at work on Monday and Tuesday. Went to the Rolling Stones concert on Tuesday night with some friends. The concert was really good, better than I expected. Those guys still have it.
Wednesday, I flew to Atlanta for company meetings on Thursday and Friday. Jon joined me in Atlanta on Friday evening as our company Holiday Party was Saturday evening. We went to dinner in Atlanta with some friends Friday night and then the party on Saturday night.
You know those boring company partys where everyone sits around making small talk, trying to impress the management and not doing anything to embarrass themselves? Well, imagine the complete opposite and that is our Holiday Party. We had a great time. Names will not be mentioned in order to protect the guilty. I am lucky enough to work with a great group of people that are very passionate about everything they do and that includes company parties. I haven't had three big nights out in the same week in quite some time. Not as easy as it used to be. Then Sunday afternoon I had a wedding shower to attend in Atlanta for my good friend Kimberley who is getting married soon. I got to see lots of girlfriends that I had not seen in quite so time so that was great. We flew back home around 9pm Sunday night.
We've been gone much of the past two weeks. We really need to get ready for Christmas. I guess the first step should be removing the Halloween pumpkin decorations by the front door.