Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig with my 2 Little Pigs!

We're back in good ol' VA! :) The trip yesterday was long but we made it safely which is really all that matters. Thank you God!

B and G had an AMAZING time at my parents. We got to spend so much time with family. B esp loved seeing cousins S & N, G loved seeing R, G, and K! Plus seeing my parents is always just huge. My kids pretty much think that their grandparents should move in with us. I love that they feel so close to all 4 grandparents even though we don't live close by. We are so blessed to have such wonderful and close-knit extended families!

While in NY we got to go to the National Museum of Play. As you can imagine the kids were thrilled! I will post some pictures of that and the Indianapolis Children's Museum soon.

It's also nice that as much as we love traveling, and especially love seeing family and friends, we are also always happy to be home. It's especially wonderful to see Brian! :) Tomorrow we're off to Baltimore (Fort McHenry and the Aquarium) and on the way back going to see the Washington Bayhawks (pro-lacrosse - did anyone know we had pro-lacrosse?) play (their home games are at Annapolis). We have a friend on the team and we're excited to see him play.

So excited that my friend K and her husband A are home with their son M FINALLY!!! Also so excited to continue to read about W's and H's journey home. Hurray!

Adoption Fundraiser

Hi! I'm enjoying NY and I'm keeping up with your blogs at least somewhat (very excited about a couple of you who are finally getting so close to bringing your boys home!).

A friend of mine just started to sell Lia Sofia and to get started she offered to do an adoption fundraiser for us. Lia Sofia has some beautiful jewelry and it's buy 1 get 2 half off this month (it's the more expensive 2 that are half off also which is awesome!) and they have a lifetime warranty.

I'd love it if anyone wanted to order. The website is: http://www.liasophia.com/sites/kzs/catalog-intro and the hostess name is Christy *** - send me a message if you're interested.

I know many of you are financing your own adoptions which I understand completely but I thought I would put this out there. If you need to get some gifts for birthdays or shop early for Christmas this is a good opportunity! ;)

Thanks!

Off to NY

Nothing passes the time waiting like traveling! One of our families favorite things to do! We're going to NY for 2 weeks tomorrow Now, for those of you who are thinking NYC - no where near - this is upstate NY at it's finest (read: much more rural than you're thinking)! :) Sadly, this trip is without Brian who has to stay here and work. :( We'll miss him.

We're really excited to see family and friends! Our schedule already seems packed! We're definitely looking forward to relaxing by my parents' pool and going out to Lake Ontario. B and G can hardly contain themselves because they LOVE to visit either set of grandparents. So that's what we now fill our summer with as much as possible. :)

I'll try to keep up with blogs somewhat while I'm gone but doubtful that I'll post. I am hoping and praying that there are some TC's while I'm gone (Matthew SERIOUSLY needs to be home with his Mommy and Daddy! and so does Wesley)! Have a great couple of weeks.

B and G's new room!

Our first step toward getting a nursery ready. Very strange to think about it already but exciting too. We anticipate that sometime during the coming year we will be adding to our family, likely during the school year. We knew that B and G needed to get used to sharing a room when B did NOT have school the next day so we bought bunk beds off of Craigslist and redecorated to make it nice for a boy and girl.


You can see a bit of Ben's military vehicles above his bed (with camo bedding, of course), and his moon and stars from Nonnie (my Mom) in the corner. Down below we have ladybugs, butterflies and flowers.


I apologize - this is the first time I've uploaded pictures to a post and I'm not having a very easy time, apparently. It sort of made everything wacky but I think you can get the idea. :) I do have
more pictures and there is more boy stuff in the room but my kids are in those pics. I'll get the up on facebook soon.

Family Fun Friday: Movie Review Toy Story 3

Anyone who knows me realizes that I would have gone to see Toy Story 3 even if I didn't have kids (Brian and I took M - Brian's then 12 or 13 yo brother to see Toy Story 2 in theaters). In this house we love all things Disney! Brian and I have decided that we both want to own Toy Story 3 whether the kids do or not! :) This is mostly my thoughts without many spoilers, maybe when it's been out longer I'll write more thoughts.

The plot: Andy is growing up and off to college. Mom asks him to figure out what to do with his toys. He packs them up for the attic but in typical teenage boy fashion gets distracted and leaves them in trash bag on the ground. They almost get thrown out but escape (in typical Toy Story fashion) to the donation box and end up at Sunnyside - a seemingly lovely day care. Then the very young kids come in and it's a nightmare for the toys. There is more to this plot that I will let people figure out beyond this but they are plotting their way back to Andy (especially the ever faithful Woody)!

My review:
It was an amazing movie! A must see - 5 stars! It was also a movie that made me cry more than I have since...well....Up - something about Pixar movies this year apparently. Ahem...anyway I definitely recommend that any Mom or Mom-to-be or anyone with emotions at all bring tissues! My college aged male cousin and my husband even found it pretty emotional! I scared my son - "Mommy, what's wrong?" "Mommy, why are you crying?" Apparently 3 and 6 year olds are completely immune to the emotions that are evoked by this movie! :)

Spoiler Alert****stop reading if you don't want to know...




It has a happy ending. It's a little bitter sweet but mostly happy! I definitely recommend it. I don't recommend movies without happy endings b/c I'm a sap. I even lack the desire to see Up again, though it was a great movie w/a somewhat happy ending. But Toy Story 3 I would definitely see again!

It's here!!!

The I171H has arrived and I have sent it to Barker. I've received an email saying that they sent our Dossier to Korea! Hurray! In a few days Korea will have our info and we will be officially enduring the real wait (the first one anyway) for a referral!

Happy Thursday!!!

Missing Mailman Revisited and Book Worm Wednesday

Our mailman has been found safe and sound. We have mail, however I believe that his abductors took our I-600a approval before returning him so we're still on the lookout for the missing form. :P

Book Review: Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child

OK, it took me several weeks to finish this book but I'm all the way through it now so I'll give you a very honest (though perhaps less than PC) opinion.
The good stuff:
The beginning I thought was mostly good. Lots of ideas on how to attach with your child. Quite a bit of honesty about grief and how that can be tough on child and parent. Throughout the book there were several parts that were just good reminders of decent parenting of any child (controlling your own emotions to listen to your child, ways to continue to connect with your child, making sure your child isn't trying to take on too much, etc.)

The not-so-good:
This is where people may take issue with what I have to say. I know that I am not a parent of an internationally adopted child yet so realize that this is written from that perspective. I felt like the author blamed every issue in the child's life on adoption. While I agree that it is going to add a new issue to deal with throughout our child's life it is not the only issue in childhood. One example that bothered me is that a one child was having trouble going to preschool (or day care) on Wednesdays. I believe the child was 3 or 4. The conclusion this woman drew was that the child was taken from her birth country on a Wednesday (she was 1). While I understand that very young memories can influence us, and that things like smells, feel of the air, time of year, etc may be triggers from our unconscious memory, I disagree that something as concrete as Wednesday would be remembered. The adoptive parents had to look back to find out what day of the week the child was brought home so this hadn't been mentioned over and over either. I think that sometimes you need to look deeper at the real situation and not conclude that it is always an adoption related issue. Maybe they have music on Wednesdays (and Library on Tuesday). The child understands that the day after Library class is music class and the child doesn't like the music. Or there is a routine to snack time and the child doesn't like snacks on Wednesday - I don't know what the issue really is and I could be wrong but I think that we have to remember adoption as a possible issue but not blame it for everything. Just my opinion.

Overall I would recommend the book, but with a grain of salt thrown in. Please don't crucify me for my opinion (and I recognize it's a rather uneducated one right now). I would be happy to hear differing opinions however, just please present them respectfully!

Have a great day!

Our Mailman is Missing!!!

I think someone abducted him! Quick - someone find out where he is! We haven't gotten ANY mail in 2 days (Saturday and today, I know that yesterday was a holiday) - and when you're waiting and waiting for the mail it is VERY noticeable when something strange like this happens. PLEASE just let him be running late today! PLEASE PLEASE let there be an I171H form in his bag that then appears in my box!
Hope the mailman is doing OK!

Back from Vacation

We went to Indiana to visit friends! We had a wonderful time with S, J, C, M, and were thrilled to meet Baby M! I've been trying to catch up on email, facebook, blogs, etc. Right now I feel pretty disorganized so this blog post isn't going to be amazing.

I will say that Monday will be 8 weeks since fingerprinting (11 since they received our HS) and no I-171H approval. I can't say I'm surprised but I am disappointed. From what I've seen recently it seems like it's taking longer than it had been. Our agency said not to email USCIS until 9 weeks b/c we'll just hear to write back if we haven't received it by 9 weeks. Hopefully that means it will arrive this week.

Today was great. We went to a local 4th of July parade and it was so much fun. Since we're outside of DC most things are done on a grand scale but not this. Don't get me wrong, in this case that's a great thing! It was a very community oriented parade. Lots of Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, churches, Little League teams, etc marching in the parade. I went early to help get things set up b/c our church was giving out water, lemonade, and flags. After the parade there was a little fair type thing (very little but lots of fun and a lot of it was free!). The kids loved it and it was perfect for families with younger kids! Just thought I'd share a bit about our 4th of July celebration (a day early).

Thinking of all of you who just traveled or are about to (or are waiting for that TC!!!). Sending up lots of prayers. Happy Independence Day! :)