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?