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:)