post holiday wrap

We had a nice quite Christmas. Made some cookies, played games and had yummy dinner. My husband and I don't live close to family so it was just the two of us. Next year we will have a 16month old around so I'm sure our house won't be quite!

Favorite gift, ice cream maker. I love ice cream so this should be lots of fun. I also got a cookbook full of neat recipes. I'm sure it will come in handing during the summer.

I think my cold politely waited until after the Christmas cheer was over wipe me out. Last night I got it. So today I have a pretty bad cold. I'm hoping it will pass quickly.

On the adoption front, no news other than 'we hope a lot of families will travel in January' my husband said it means nothing. I'm hoping it means us! Cross your fingers :)

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas. It has been an amazing year and I’m grateful for the progress we have made in our journey to add to our family. I’m also grateful for the friends and the families who share their journey online with me, it helps to know there are others out there who have or are going through the same ups and downs along the way.

Now, go eat some Christmas cookies, throw on some Christmas music and snuggle up with your favorite loved one.  Have a good one!

darkness all around

Weekend progress? Nothing Notta Zero. Thursday night we lost power and it stayed off until Sunday night at 11:00 just im time to go back to work. We where lucky because we have a firerplace and our house didn’t have any damage from the storm. There are trees down everywhere. All the roads that I take to work are detoured because of fallin trees. So, one weekend down and one weekend closer to christmas, yikes! Oh, I forgot we but christmas lights while the power was out  I didn’t want to just sit there doing nothing. I think my neighboors thought we where crazy, we got some strange looks as they drove by. hehe

The waiting for TA is getting harder and harder, I feel like whining, throwing myself on the floor or anything else that might help the situation. The problem is nothing helps. We like all of you will just sit here and wait for the phone call that will allow us to get our daughter.

Christmas is sneaking up fast! I still have a bunch of shopping to do. It’s frustrating because I hate giving a gift, just to give a gift but some people are really hard to buy for! We still have to buy something for my father-in-law so if anyone has some good ideas let me know.

We have been busy around the house, we finally got a tree. We went to a tree farm and they had horrible trees so we went to Lowes. I know not to festive but the tree is actually really nice. We bought lights for the front of the house, but they are still in the box. By the time we get home it’s dark so I’m afraid they will have to wait until the weekend.

We sent a request to get our fingerprints updated. They expire at the end of January. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do this but it’s better to be safe than sitting in Hanoi with expired fingerprints 

I put up our adoption timeline, I don’t know how we have made it this far, but I’m happy we are in the final stretch

Our Adoption Timeline

Our Adoption Timeline
Applied to agency	December 2002
Vietnam Closed	January 2003
Look at different programs, Taiwan, Kazakstan	--
Vietnam Reopens!	June 2005
Homestudy completed	October 2005
INS approval	November 2005
Agency received license!	January 2006
Dossier to Vietnam (DTV)	June 2006
Referral	November 2006
Refingerprinted	December 2006
Travel	April 2nd 2007
G&R	April 6th 2007
Estimated Return	April 20th 2007
It's been a long road, but we are thrilled to be where we are today and cannot wait to travel to meet our daughter.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Our baby girl is 4 months old today. I'll blow her a kiss but wish we where there to see her in person.

Some neat things babies do at 4 months are:

begins to Babble and make new sounds
plays with feet and toes
average 4 month old has doubled there birth weight
begins to laugh, giggle, and smile

poa

Today we got more paperwork to sign. The POA and referral acceptance each will go to the Justice Department in HCMC and DIA in Hanoi. I was all excited about this thinking it meant we where "closer" then I asked my agency what this meant. Basically nothing. She also told me we need to get refingerprinted because our prints expire on Jan 21st. URG, I guess that mean we aren't traveling before then and now another expense of getting refingerprinted. I don't mind getting refingerprinted if we need to but I keep holding onto the idea of traveling in January. I know this setting myself up for a huge disappointment but I cannot help it.

Wasn't I just saying not to but timelines on this stuff, what happen to that train of thought...

missing motivation

We didn't get a Christmas tree, or as much done as we hoped for. I think we are the only family on the block with no Christmas lights up, but we hope to have them up soon. The bathroom remodel has been sucking up most of our time and taking a lot longer than expected. The new tub is going in tonight, I cannot wait to get it in a working again.

I really don't understand why with one agency things move so quickly and people get G&R dates and other it moves so slowly. Now, we have only had our referral for a little over a month but our dossier was logged in and sent to the province that we are adopting for. So what the heck takes so long? :( I'm really hoping for January but maybe that's wishful thinking.

We got a Maclaren baby carrier on ebay, it's really nice I cannot wait to use it. I also have started to sort the baby clothes, I cannot believe how many oneies she has, yeks! One things I cannot figure out is how do you know if it's pj's or outfit? We have some carter suits with feet, are those pj's? How do I know? Omg, why is that so hard, it seems like a simple thing, but I look at the clothes and get confused. I know with older kids the pj's are pj's plain and simple but baby clothes it seems like many things could possibly be pj's. I don't know if I'm making sense. But if anyone has the decoder please send it over ;)

Welcome December!

During our adoption the end of each month was always a little depressing for me. Since this whole process is based upon dates, deadlines and time lines in the past a new month has meant a milestone not met.

I'm really going to try not to think our progress as far as dates. Will we get our travel approval in December, humm. That might be a set up for disappointment come Jan 1. Sooo, I'm going to think of things as far as in a few months or soon. Then I don't put to much pressure on dates that might or might not happen. After all if it's one thing I have learned during this process is we don't have control over 80% of what happens.

On a side note, we are going to get a tree this weekend. I LOVE Christmas! I got a new cookie press that I'm dying to try out. It seems a lot easier than hand rolling sugar cookies.

4 weeks down, 4 more to come

wow, can you believe it's been 4 weeks, or should I say we survived 4 weeks of waiting! 4 weeks today at this very time in the morning I received a email asking me to call. It didn't fully click that this was 'the call' that would change my life forever. I listened while my agency rep described my daughter. my daughter, how wonderful those words sound.

Since then we have getting ready, preparing, making lists and wondering how you ever really prepare for this. So all those seasoned parents out there please share your secrets with me, as I'm sure I'm forgetting something. :)

now, for the next 4 weeks, urg! this is getting a little harder. We haven't gotten updated pictures in a couple of weeks and I'm a little sad to think about how much she has grown and changed.

snow and such

We had a great visit to Colorado, two surprises. When we arrived Thanksgiving day my aunt came to the airport to get us. Little did we know we had a surprise visitor waiting at home for us. My sister and her son where there! It has been a little over two years since I had seen them so I was very happy.

We had a great dinner, my mom made way to much food as to be expected with her.

Then Friday we went to my aunts and they had put together a surprise baby shower! It was great, we didn't expect to be having a baby shower. We got some adorable baby clothes and cannot wait to take our daughter back to visit.

It was really strange to be coming back from Colorado to a snow storm in Seattle! It's very beautiful!

I'm officially tired of waiting, I know it's only been a month but I'm really wanting to go to Vietnam soon. I asked the adoption agency for an update, of course nothing new. Urg, one of the hardest part of this is blindly waiting with no updates! oh well...

Turkey Week

We are in the middle of remodeling our guest bathroom. And when I say 'we' I mean my husband and I, no contractors. My mother keeps making oh so subtle comments about the timing of this. But hey this is a good distraction from waiting to travel. So, we took out the title in the shower, the bathtub and the floor this weekend. I cleaned up last night and went to shut the door to keep the cats out of there. And had a sick feeling to my stomach, PANIC! So I slept horrible last night partly because of worry about having everything ready and partly do to the chocolate pie I eat at 8:45pm giving way too much sugar for my own good.

We have gotten no updates on travel; I think we are still in Step 2 waiting for provincial approval. Does anyone know approx. how long this takes in HCMC?

We are going to Colorado for thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to seeing my family and taking a break. We land at 3:30 and dinner is at 5:00pm so let's hope for no snow, at least until we get to my mom's!

Jenn's blog post reminds the true mean of the holidays, so it's my turn at the table.

I'm thankful for my husband who I cannot imagine any day without seeing his smiling face. I’m thankful to the people of Vietnam for allowing me the opportunity to care for one of there precious babies. I’m thankful for the adoption community who has welcomed my family with open arms.

eats and sleeps easily

Yesterday we got an update on our daughter. What a parents dream, they said she "eats and sleeps easily". Now let's hope she is still doing that when we get her. My husband and I read that and looked at each other and said, that’s our daughter they are talking about! What a great feeling.

We are very lucky because we have gotten updated pictures already, so in all we have about 16 pictures of our sweetie! Usually we will get updated pictures every month or so. We are looking forward to the updates but think it might a little hard to see how much she's changes.

We also heard that families will not be traveling the 2 weeks during Tet. We where thinking it would be really neat to be in Vietnam during Tet but now know this won’t happen, a little disappointing. I sure hope we can travel before tet, if not that would delay things to end of feb or march. Who really knows, it’s so much of a guessing game at this point.

This past week I have been having pretty bad stomach problems, which have slowed me down in general. Last weekend I didn’t really do much at all. I hate that. Oh well…

Our week since the referral

It's amazing how one phone call can change your life so drastically. It has been a week since we where introduced to our daughter to be. Since then it's been a whirlwind of running around, make list and trying to think about how differently our life will be in three-four months. Pretty amazing.

I'm trying not to think about our wait to travel and keep focused on our great referral and trying to make the transition for our daughter less painful.

Who knows maybe we will be going to Vietnam for Tet in Feb. That would an experience!

Happy 3mn Birthday

Today is my daughters 3 month birthday! I wish I was there to give her a kiss. Since our referral last week I have been floating! We are so thrilled and don’t understand how we got so lucky. Waiting is so hard; it’s amazing how one day can change everything.

I’m also really worried about running out of time before we travel. I’m a big planner, I think I might drive my husband crazy because she our referral I have been on go mode. I know it can border line neurotic but hey what can you do. Since our paperwork is already in HCMC I’m thinking the travel will be within 3mns. With the holidays that is really right around the corner, wow! I’m really excited.

Some things we found out about her are, when she got her medical done, she weighed the exact same weight 8.71lbs that I did when I was born. Another thing, her name Lien is the Vietnamese name we love, we where actually considering naming our second child that. So it will be a perfect middle name for her.

OUR DAUGHTER!!!

WE are trilled! You can see her announcement, click here

WE GOT IT!!!

I cannot type because I'm shaking, but we got our referral. I'll provide more details later!! WOW

- I cannot find my husband!, where the heck is he. We promised not to look at her pictures until we where together so I have a message sitting in my inbox with attached pictures and I cannot click on them. So, I'm trying to distract myself.

She was born on August 7th :)) I'm was expecting her to be older, so this was a huge surpise. I'm so excited

The Waiting Game

ok, I seriously think I might be going crazy.

Work has slowed down, so my work day goes like this:

check email
check for missed phone calls
check email
check various vietnam blogs
check for missed phone calls
check yahoo groups
check phone one more time, cause maybe I missed a call. Even though the phone doesn't leave my side. When that thing finally rings I think I will pee myself (sorry bad visual)

It seems like everyone either has a referral or is traveling really soon. Is there anyone out there still waiting??

About Me

Since this is a new blog, I thought I would take a second and tell you a little about me.

We are adopting an infant girl from Vietnam, this is our first child. We are using a larger agency which has ups and downs. We are lucky in that we got on the waiting list early, now there are soo many people on the list, it would be really discouraging. We are told our referral will be coming within the next month. Our referral will be coming from an orphanage in HCMC.

Up to this point I have primarily been a lurker, and have really enjoyed reading other families blogs. I figured I should be proactive and not lurker around anymore :)

My husband and I live in < Washington, we have only lived here for about 2 years. It’s so beautiful here and we are lucky to live in a diverse area. When we moved here I decided I wanted to learn to knit, since then I have been obsessed with knitting and have made various things for our daughter. My husband and I love animals and often that makes going to pet stores dangerous, we have two cats, a dog, and two lizards. We both love doing projects around the house, next I think we are going to tackle the bathroom.

Anyway, that’s a little about me. We cannot wait to go to Vietnam and are nervous about being new parents.

It's been so quite, I really enjoy reading about other people adoption but lately it seems to have slowed down. Or maybe going stir crazy! That's possible...

First Post!!!!

Here's my first post of many on my way to Destination Motherhood! It will be a bumpy ride, so hold on.