Busy Busy...

Well, we are at a waiting period right now as far as paperwork to bring Alton home. We're just waiting on our immigration petition to be approved before we can move forward with the next step. It was sent in on Dec. 13th and generally takes 3 weeks to recieve an approval back. I called today to check on its progress and was told our immigration officer is out until Monday due to the holiday and I should call back on Monday. Our FBI fingerprint clearance letters came ahead of schedule, so those along with our dossier updates have been apostilled and are currently en route to our agency representative in Bogota. I also included a little photo album of different pictures of us that we're hoping they will show to Alton so we are not complete strangers to him when he meets us for the first time. Since I'm generally the one behind the camera taking the pictures, I found several good ones of John and Athena and one really good family picture from Christmas at my parents house this year. I was having a hard time finding a decent, close up, recent photo of me. There were several good ones from my birthday, but being that my birthday is on Halloween, I am wearing a costume. That's not going to work. I ended up running out to work and grabbing one of my "school pictures" from having my picture taken on picture day at school:)

I am very grateful for the gift of time that I've been given with the timing of our referral and that I have winter break this week to get things done to get ready for Alton and for our trip. I got his room all set up. All of the baby stuff was roused out from hibernation in the basement and I've been clearing out the guest bedroom, setting his stuff up in the room, washing his clothes, unpacking all the baby toys, washing bottles, shopping for supplies, etc... His bedroom is going to be what was the guest bedroom. We left the queen size bed in there for now. There is plenty of room for it and still room for playing on the floor. We'll leave it there until we see how his sleeping routine goes his first few weeks home.
















This is the nursery decor we had for Athena when she was a baby. It's called Turtle Bay. Super cute coordinating wall hangings, curtains, crib bedding, etc... all with blue and green turtles:)

Merry Christmas:)

I think Santa did good at our house this year. Athena ran out into the living room this morning to see if Santa came. When she rounded the corner she stopped, her jaw and blankie both got dropped, and her reaction was a stunned "Oh. My. Gosh." Good job Santa.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The tree is up!

We finally got our Christmas tree up tonight! I like to use the excuse that we don't like to put it up until after Athena's birthday, but we just couldn't find the time to do it until tonight.

I did however make the time to get my cut-out cookies done. I do have my priorities;) Athena helped with the cookies and I have to say, now that she is 4 her 'help' is actually somewhat helpful:)

John is on call for Christmas weekend, which means we can't travel up north to see his family that weekend because he would be too far away from work. We went up this last weekend instead and had a great time:) This coming weekend we'll be spending some days at home with just us and some days with my family over at my parents house. Athena is excited to get to spend some time with her cousins from Ohio who she only sees a few times a year. Grandma is having a grandkid/cousin sleepover at her house Thursday night. Perfect timing for Ena to be out of the house because daddy has a few hours of 'assembly required' to do in the basement to get ready for Christmas morning!
I indulged in a little bit of retail therapy while we're waiting to go get sweet baby Alton! Check out these cute little boy outfits I bought! The tiger pillow pet was a Christams gift from grandma Julie and grandpa Jim. I went through all of our tubs of Athena's clothes from 9 months to 18 months and found pretty much nothing appropriate for a boy-a few onesies and one pair of jeans. Yeah, I guess I went pretty girlie with all of her stuff-not much in the nuetral category at all! I held back with shopping for Alton so far though because I have a few friends who offered to dig through their kid clothes and see if they have any boy stuff we can use. I'm waiting to see if anything turns up before I spend any more on clothes.

As for a travel time frame, we still don't have dates. We overnighted our I800 immigration petition to our agency for review on the 9th (thurs), they reviewed it on the 10th (friday), then it was overnighted to the USCIS on the 13th (monday). We're told it takes about 3 weeks to approve, though I hope ours isn't slowed by all of the holidays in there. Once that is approved, another document needs to be sent from USCIS to the Colombian officials. Once that is done, we should get word of exact travel dates. Our agency is still saying 'mid to late January' We'll certainly let everyone know once we have more information!

Have a great holiday weekend everyone!

My dirty little secret:)

I love coupons. When you love coupons and you wait 26 months for an adoption referral, funny things can happen. Long ago, while cutting out coupons back when we were in the early stages of our adoption, I had a thought. I thought, wow I hate throwing away all these diaper coupons when we're going to have to be spending so much money on diapers once our second child gets here. I wish I could just save them all up until we need them, but of course they would expire. Actual diapers never expire though, right? So I decided that if I was able to combine a coupon with a good deal and get a pack of diapers for under $5 or a pack of wipes for under $1 that I would go for it. This way I could stock up a little bit ahead of time on diapers and wipes to get ready for when we finally got our second little one home. Do this for over 2 years and you get..... well, see for yourself....

Yes, that is what you think it is. The closet in our guest bedroom filled with 43 jumbo packs of diapers and 27 packs of wipes:) For this adoption we had to be open to a child up to 3 years old, so I planned for an older baby and only bought diapers size 3 and larger. Had we recieved a referral for an older toddler, I would have been more than happy to donate the smaller diapers to a food pantry or shelter. MORE than happy. It just so happens though that size 3 diapers are for 16-28 lbs. and Alton is currently 16.5 lbs. :) Hee Hee!!

It's a Boy!!

With great excitement we introduce Alton Joseph Zuge! Born March 14, 2010 in Bogota Colombia.

Proud big sister:)

Seriously, could he be any CUTER!!!

Getting a kiss from sissy:)

We'll be sure to keep everyone posted when we get closer to a travel date:) We're hoping to get paperwork wrapped up and have a travel date of mid to late January.

Love,

Nic, John, Athena and Alton!

2 sets of fingerprints in one day!

John and I spent the better part of our day off on Friday having our fingerprints taken at 2 different places for 2 different reasons. As I mentioned earlier, we had our USCIS fingerprint appointment at the immigration office in Milwaukee at 9:00 in the morning to renew our immigration pre-approval. Our approval was good for one year and is up to expire in mid-December. That appointment went great. We arrived early and were actually in and out before 9:00!
Directly from there we headed to our local county sheriffs department to have a new set of fingeprint cards taken to send in for our FBI clearances for our dossier update. These are only considered 'valid' by Colombia for 6 months from their issue date, therefor we need to have them re-taken and re-submit them every 6 months. For these prints, they don't let you make an appointment ahead of time. You have to take your chances, show up and hope the booking department isn't busy right then. These prints took a while, including a trip all the way home and back for some additional paperwork that they asked for this time that they haven't asked for in the past.
I'm glad to have both sets of prints done though and not have to worry about it again for a while!
November 28th marked month 20 of officially waiting and month 5 of being submitted to Ayudame.
We also had a great Thanksgiving weekend:) I had my whole family over for an after Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. This is definately the one time of year that I could use a second oven! My oven was weighed down with an 11 lb. standing rib roast, 13 baked potatoes, greenbean casserole and a sweet potato souffle all at the same time. My dad and both of my brothers zonked out in the living room after we ate, so as a chef I'll take that as a compliment that everything was good. I took a picture of the scene, but out of fear for my life from the wrath from either of my dear brothers, I'll refrain from posting it:) Instead I'll post some pics of my new front porch decorations I made over the weekend with the burning bush branches we trimmed off of our huge bushes. I decided to try to go all Martha Stewart on them:)














The bright red branches look really cool against the grey bricks. I filled the pots with sand, and after all the branches were stuffed into it, covered the sand up with trimmings from some other bushes to make it Christmas-y. I'm deciding if I want to add tiny white lights to it or not. I think it would look cool at night, but the cords would kind of ugly it up during the day. Thoughts?

A chef in the making.

As you all know food is a big deal in our house:) I love cooking. I can't stand most convenience and conventional foods and can't believe the disgusting artificial colors, sweeteners and ingredients in most pre-packaged foods. I make the majority of our food from scratch with wholesome, real and pronounceable ingredients. Don't get me wrong, I'll whip up the occasional batch of brownies from a box, but any type of frozen meal in a box has yet to grace our dinner table. Athena has been watching me cook like this for almost 4 years now and I'm happy to say that she has taken an interest in cooking and I think she has a real understanding of real food and how it's made.

Athena was playing in her play kitchen while I was making dinner the other day. Her play kitchen is right in the regular kitchen. I was making chicken cacciatore, cutting up a whole chicken, dicing the fresh peppers, onions and tomatoes. I looked over to see what baby girl was doing and had to smile at my observant little chef. Guess what she was making? Yup, she dug through all of her play food to find all of the ingredients she had seen me use in the chicken cacciatore and was trying to make the same thing:) That's a chicken, red pepper, onion and tomato.

She then proceeded to feed it to her baby:) Way to go chef Ena!

For the adoption, we have our fingerprint appointments this Friday the 26th at the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to renew our immigration pre-approval (I800A). Our original approval was good for one year and is up to expire in mid-December. You don't get to choose when your appoinment is. You apply for the appointment and they assign you a day and time. I was very excited that it fell on a day that we both already have off of work and didn't have to take another day off of work! Worked out great:)

As if I didn't love November enough already:)

Fall is my favorite season and Thanksgiving is my mostest favorite holiday for sure! Any holiday that is all about eating great food, spending time with family and being thankful for the things we are so lucky to have will always be number one in my book:) Now however, I have another reason to love fall....off-season prices at the waterpark resorts in Wisconsin Dells! Last weekend we had a blast at the Wilderness Waterpark resort with some fabulous friends of ours. For some reason, business is slower for them during the month of November (not sure why November more so than any other non-summer month?) so they offer some super sonic deals to attract customers during the month. We had a little mini weekend vacation that was so much fun I'm sure it will become an annual tradition for us to do every November from now on.
Here's Ena & John going down her favorite green water slide for about the 20th time:) It was a pretty long slide, what you can see in the picture is about a third of it. By the end of the weekend she was going down by herself!














We also got to attend a cute little Thanksgiving gathering at Ena's preschool daycare. It was a fundraiser for the local food pantry. It's called the Turkey Trot. The kids get pledges like a regular fund raiser walk & then dress up in little turkey hats they made in school and march a few blocks around the school. They end up back at the school where all of the parents and families are invited to stay for a thanksgiving meal. Both John and I were able to make it to the event and Ena was so excited to have both mom and dad come to school for lunch. Here she is in her cute little turkey hat. Not the best picture of her & it doesn't do the cute little hat much justice either, but it's the only one I got that didn't include other kids faces in the picture.













Happy fall!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween:) Here are a few pics from our fun day of trick or treating with friends and some pictures of Ena's pumpkin-gutting fun.

















Were were a wizard family. Dumbledaddy, the black cat "Sugar" and the pet baby fire breathing dragon:)

Here she is practicing her 'fire breathing dragon roar'.

She would climb all the way in if she could:) This is one of her FAVORITE things to do.

For the adoption, October 28th marked month 19 of officially waiting for a referral (in the estimated 15-36 month wait) and our 4th month of being submitted to Ayudame.

Hope everyone else had an awesome Halloween also!

~Nic:)

Mama's birthday dinner:)

John had off of work this week. We of course have been saving his vacation days all year in case we got our referral this year and needed to use them towards our trip to Colombia. We decided that if we didn't get the call by October 1st, that the chances of us traveling in 2010 would be slim, so he might as well go ahead and burn a week of vaca at the end of October. It has been a great week having John home all week. He has had fun experimenting with cooking and has had dinner ready every night. He also has been able to help pick Athena up from pre-school, something he is never able to do during the work week with the hours he works. He kept Athena home on Wednesday for a Daddy and Ena special fun day and we also kept her home Friday for a family fun day since I had off Friday also.

John and I have a tradition of celebrating special occasions with dinner at The Melting P#t, a fondue restaraunt. This restaurant can be rather spendy though, if you go all out and make an evening of it which we tend to do:) Anyone who knows how much the fees are for an international adoption, realizes what a financial stretch it is to do it a second time and that spendy dinners out are certainly not in our budget at the moment. My sweet hubs decided to re-create the same dinning experience at home for half the cost and it was so good!

We tried a new cabernet (since cabernet is my fave) and it was really good:)

We had yummy veggies with tempura batter. Beef tenderloin, shrimp, lobster & chicken breast. Also, gruyere, swiss & white wine fondue with apples, celery, carrots and pumpernickle bread for an appetizer.

One happy birthday girl. Ahhhh, 29 again:)

Check out the ticker in the upper left of the screen!

Yes, 2 years. It was an interesting chain of events leading up to our decision to take the plunge again:) Some major changes occured in the world of international adoption, including Colombia, very shortly after we adopted Athena. Most agencies with Colombia programs experienced an incredible decrease in the number of referrals they were receiving as a result of the changes and our agency was no exception. I began calling LSS in January 2008, right after Athena turned one to inquire about starting a second adoption. I was told they were not taking any new families into the program because of so few referrals and the high level of uncertainty they had about timelines and the new process. I called back in February and got the same answer. March the same. Each time though, they did tell me that the program was not entirely closed and to keep 'checking back periodicaly". I called every month for the next 10 months. Finally in October, I didn't get the usually response. Instead I got a hesitant "Well.........we were just discussing the possability of taking more family applicants in our last meeting.........call back again tomorrow" I called back the next day and they said they hadn't totally opened up the program to more family applicants yet, but they would take our application since we were a returning family who had already adopted from Colombia! They made it very clear though, telling me several times that the wait times this time around would be long and I had to understand that it would probably be a 2-3 year wait this time. Not the 7 weeks we had waited for Athena!
I waited until Saturday to drop the bomb on John. We had a date night on Saturday night since Athena was having a slumber party at my in-laws because I had class all weekend. I waited until John was in a happy place with a huge steak and pint of good beer in front of him before I told him the news. I was so excited that he agreed with me that we should go for it:) The following Monday I called LSS back to get the paperchase ball rolling:)

International adoption summed up in one phrase:)

I recieved an email back from our Colombia program coordinator today in response to a question I had emailed her. One phrase in her response actually made me laugh out loud. It immediately struck me that this one phrase should be the slogan for international adoption. Here it is. "Changes in procedure often change." Changes in procedure often change. Isn't that the truth?! Oh funny:) I"m sure that anyone who understands some of the 'changes in procedure' that we've experienced the last 23 months, especially my fellow adoptive parents, are laughing right along with me. Yes, it's been a hoot having our process this time around be dab smack in the middle of the learning curve for everyone that has come along with Colombia becoming a Hague compliant country. Changes in procedure often change.......I've been saying it to myself throughout the day and laughing about it every time:)
It's all part of the master plan that is out of our hands to ensure that the timing is just right for us to be matched with the child who is meant to be ours. The master plan for Athena just happened to be much faster;)

Here are a few fun pics from the weekend:)



Our little fire fighter.

Ena and daddy-o shredding potatoes for hashbrowns. John has been on a kick of making us sunday brunch lately. Nice!

Ena cut up a whole green pepper with a butter knife to add to the hashbrowns.

An optimistic update from our agency:)

I got a program update from our agency today and it made my heart skip a beat a little bit. It said we are one of only TWO families from our agency waiting at Ayudame right now! I remember back in May 2009 , I asked about where we stood at Ayudame at that time & I was told we were around the 9th or 10th family waiting to be submitted. Now we've been submitted since June and are either next or second next up for referral! (they don't necessarily give referrals to families in the order that they were submitted & I don't know between us and the other family who has been submitted longer anyway)

I guess I spoke too soon yesterday when I said there was no news to report about the adoption:)

Toodles!
~Nic

Horses and Snakes and Caterpillars, Oh My!

We went on a fun little hike this weekend with 'the girls' (Amber & Ena:) It was such a beautiful fall day and perfect weather to venture out. We saw a snake, a frog and several caterpillars. There were even some people out riding their horses on the trail. They stopped so Athena could pet the horses. Yeah, she was a little bit excited! We walked for an hour and covered about a mile and a half. The slow pace was mostly due to the fact that we had to stop and examine every caterpillar and frog this closely for about 5 minutes.

The snake however did not recieve this close of an examination from our little nature explorer! He was laying so still at the side of the trail though, that Athena was literaly just one step away from actually stepping on it by the time we noticed it. When she stopped to turn around to see what it was John and I were telling her to quickly look at, she did almost step on its tail!

Fall is definately here. We spent the afternoon after our hike hanging out at home cooking and baking. We made our first apple kuchens of the season and took one over to my parents to share. Oh, and our lawn is covered in frost this morning:)

No adoption news to report today.

~Nic

Mornings can be pretty funny when you let your 3 year old choose her own outfits:)

Check out my little fashionista! Ena picks out her own outfits and I felt her creation today was picture worthy:)
















Preschool is going awesome for Athena. Each day at drop off time there is a little less clingy-ness from her. She comes home with positive daily notes every day and for the most part enjoys telling about her day-who she chose to play with during play time and what a few of the activities were. Her teacher is so nice and she has a nice small class, only 7 kids. One thing that doesn't surpise us at all is that her daily notes often comment on what a good eater she is:)

I went ahead and put our name on the waiting list at Athena's preschool/daycare for daycare for the new baby. Right now they are at about a 5 month wait. They know our situation of not having an exact time line and are being very accomodating. I spoke with the assistant director the other day and she said we could get on the list and if when we're up for the next opening we don't yet have a referral, they can just pass over us. When we do get our referral we can have the next opening then.

September 28th will mark month 18 for us in our wait for a referral and 3 months of being officially submitted to Ayudame. Our FBI fingerprint clearances came back a couple of weeks ago so we're good with those for a while. Today we sent our materials to the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Service) to apply to extend our immigration pre-approval for another year. Our next step is to wait for them to contact us with our appointed time to come down to the USCIS office in Milwaukee to have our fingerprints re-done by them also.

Have a great weekend!

~Nic

I totally caved.

We knew right from the start that this adoption would take considerably longer than Athena's did. Our agency was very up-front with us about this from the start. Because of the long wait, I decided I didn't want to do anything to set up the nursery until we actually got the phone call. Who wants to look at an empty nursery for 3 years?

Well, opportunity has knocked and I couldn't resist:) What do you get when you start with one free hand-me down dresser from a friend (thank you Stacia:), a few bucks worth of paint and new pull knobs, and a couple of hours of sweat equity in the form of sanding and painting? A beautiful new dresser/diaper changing table! I unpacked the changing pad & also the lamp that matches our nursery decor to see how it all looks together. Look at how great it turned out!

We went ahead and pulled out the tall dresser from the guest bedroom and put the 'new' nursery one in it's place:) It's the first step we've taken in changing the guest bedroom into the nursery. Athena loves it and has moved her bathroom step stool into there & has changed her dolls diapers on it about a hundred times already.

Hope everyone else is having a great holiday weekend also!

~Nic

The Question of The Hour

I"ve been asked several times by different people recently if we've told Athena about our plans to adopt again. We have. We actually told her pretty early on, right after we started the process again. I thought it was important for her to have a good long time to get used to the idea of having to share mom and dad since she's used to getting every waking moment of our attention and she's such an incredible mama's girl. She seems to have embraced the idea and constantly talks about when 'baby brother or sister' is going to come home. She knows that we're all going to go on a big airplane to Colombia to go and get 'baby brother or sister' and that we're all going to have to stay in Colombia on vacation for a long time until all of the paperwork is ready for us to return home with him/her. Every time she sees a plane in the sky now she asks if it's someone going to Colombia to go and get their baby brother or sister:) The only thing that concerns her is that poor Amber can't come along too and how much she's going to miss Amber while we're gone.
I think it's good that we told her so early on because she's had plenty of time (almost 2 years so far!) to get used to the idea of having to share mom and dad. A year ago if I would have held another kid she would have been nearly hysterical, crying and saying 'that's my mom!' and trying to push said kid off of my lap. Last week however, we had friends over for pizza and cake for John's birthday. I held their 6 month old baby for at least 15 minutes and Athena took it really well. In fact it didn't seem to bother her at all. She asked for several turns to hold the baby also. Maybe all of the prepping we've done with her has paid off or maybe she's just matured a bit more. Either way, I'll take it:) Now we just need that phone to ring:)

No new pictures of Athena today, but I do want to say HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO ANDREW AND JESSIE!!! Here is what we were doing a year ago:)

First Day of Preschool!

So I just dropped Athena off at her new preschool/daycare for her first day. We visited last week for about a half hour so we could see her classroom and I could talk to her teacher for a few minutes and I'm so glad we did. Drop off went very good with no tears from Athena. I also managed to hold it together until I got back to my car. The teacher was great. I gave her a heads up when we visited that Ena is not good with transitions and that I would most likely need some help getting out the door. When the teacher saw that it was time for me to leave and Ena was still hanging onto my leg like velcro, she came over and asked Ena if she would like to sit on her lap for a while. Thank you teacher!! Ena happily accepted the invitation, gave me a kiss goodbye and went with the teacher:) Thank goodness!

She had free pick of her closet when we picked out and laid out her first day of preschool outfit last night. I was surprised at her choice-a well worn play t-shirt and pants. She has several adorable new school outfits and super cute new pairs of shoes that Grandma Kathleen sent her in a care package, but she went with one of her older play outfits. Maybe the excitement of starting at a new daycare is enough new-ness for her for one day and she just wanted the comfort of a familiar outfit for today. She's a pretty smart cookie like that;)

I'm off to work now to start getting my classroom set up. Wonder how long I should wait until I call to check how she's doing.........:) Teacher inservice starts on Thursday. Hope everyone else's back to school routines go smoothly!

~Nic:)

Sunny morning at the park.

The weather was perfect today, warm and sunny & not hot and humid like it's been so much around here lately. We headed out for some park fun this morning. I wanted Ena to play good and hard outside this morning so she would take a little snoozer this afternoon since she has a dinner date at my parents house tonight while I have a dentist appointment and a few other errands to run. This way she won't be tired and cranky for them this evening since she's had a nap:)

For the adoption, August 28th will mark 17 months of waiting in our 15-36 month estimated wait and 2 months of being officially submitted to our respective orphanage. I just got the info this morning from LSS MN to start working on the forms to renew our immigration pre-approval which is up to expire later this fall. Shockingly, there is no fee to file this form! The reason I am pleasantly shocked by this is because several of the fees for the USCIS forms that need to be filed for an international adoption have tripled since we had to file them for Athenas process.

Lots of other excitement around here. This weekend is John's birthday and school starts next week for both me and Athena! You can bet I'll be posting pictures next week from her first day of pre-school!

Toodles~Nic:)

Summertime

One of the highlights of Athena's summertime routine is our daily trek to the back yard to check if there are any ripe tomatoes. Incredibly cute how her face lights up when there is a ripe one for her to pick! She then proceeds to inhale it right on the spot. The girl loves tomatoes! We have 5 plants this year, a mixture of regular size and cherry. We've been getting between 1-3 ripe ones each time we check and have yet to have any of them make it into the house:)

Next week we're headed to Ohio for 4 days with my parents and brother Joe for a visit with my older brother Andy and his family:) We're all excited for the trip and to see them!

As for an adoption update, we've been submitted to Ayudame for 1 month and are 16 months in on our estimated 15-36 month wait to be matched with a baby.

~Nic

We're submitted to Ayudame!

We got a little bit of news today:) Bettina, our coordinator at LSS MN called today to tell us our paperwork is done being translated and has officially been submitted to Ayudame! Ayudame is the name of the orphanage we are adopting through and is also the orphanage that we adopted Athena from.

Each time a child is available for adoption at the orphanage a referrall committee meets to decide the best placement for the child. In the meeting the director presents the files of 6 prospective families and the committee chooses which family they think is the best fit for the child. Now that we are submitted, we are available to be one of the families presented at a referrall committee meeting!

I'm putting our updated fingerprints in the mail today to keep everything current so we don't get held up before traveling when we do get a referral. The FBI fingerprint clearance is only considered valid for 6 months & needs to be kept valid at all times so we need to re-do them every six months.

Oh, and Bettina said that our official date that we were submitted and accepted to Ayudame is June 28th. This also happens to be the day we bought & brought home my smokin' hot new mama-mobile to get ready for kid number 2! Coincidence? Or a sign? I guess we'll see!

Here we go again:)

When we started this blog in 2007 to communicate with our friends and family during our trip to Colombia to adopt Athena, I never would have imagined that I would be starting it up again more than 3 years later in preparation to bring home a little brother or sister for Athena. I was planning to wait until we had some exciting news before I began posting again, but it's summer break now and I have more time on my hands and the excitement of blogging again got the best of me:)

We're still just waiting for news. Last I heard from our coordinator at LSS our dossier was still with the translator and not yet submitted to the orphanage. I did get an email from LSS 2 days ago congratulating us on recently sending our dossier to Colombia and attached were all of the travel materials/info and in-country information for when we finally do go back again. I took that as a good sign. I've been hearing rumblings of several referrals lately to families from our agency, so hopefully we're moving up the waiting list. We are currently 14 months into our 15-36 month estimated wait. I'll post any info when we get it!

For now I'm just enjoying having a bit of free time to spend with Ena now that grad school is finally done and I'm on summer break. I added a picture of Ena and her BFF Amber just so everyone can see how BIG she is getting. Sweet angel baby, she's so excited to be a big sister. I have a feeling she may be the most excited one when we finally get the phone call!