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.