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