going....going....GONE

Yes - that's right - dossier is in the hands of AGCI - praise the Lord!!! Tim and I are going to Mexico tomorrow (I know...dirty job - but someone's gotta do it), so we won't be here to get our #'s. Julie is going to call us though, so we'll let you all know when we get back on the 4th! So stay tuned for our #. We are VERY VERY excited!!!!!

Congratulations to everyone who got referrals this week! Hope everyone has a great week!

P.S. Did I mention that we are SUPER excited?!

P.S.S. It feels SO good to have all that paperwork OUT of our house...UGH - I was getting sick of looking at it all. Ok...maybe the pictures is a TAD bit exaggerated, but you get the drift.

Evening at the park

Tonight I had the pleasure of having ALL 3 of my nieces. Tim had 2 softball games tonight, so I took them there thinking we could watch him play....ha! They were not so interested in watching softball. So, we went and looked at ducks, and played on the swings, and went for some walks. Here are a few pics.

Good Weekend

SATURDAY
Tim and I have been saving the $ in our change jar to get a new camera. Well, we are wanting to make the switch from a point & shoot to a SLR, so obviously we'll need to put some money with the money in our change jar, but we're hoping to have a big chunk of it already in that jar. So, Tim had the idea that he wanted to count all of the money to see how much we had. I suggested just taking it to the bank because it's much easier and faster. No, no no...I can do it. Uhhhh....ok. Well, after 1 hour of counting he gave up because he only got through the quarters. I bit my lip, but wanted to say "I TOLD YOU SO!!". And now the money is sitting on the kitchen table waiting to go to the bank.

After he finally gave up on counting all the money, we decided to go mini-golfing. Although I had 3 hole-in-ones, I still lost to Tim. Here is a picture of me on my 3rd hole-in-one, I was pretty excited!

After mini-golf, Ana got into her swimsuit and wanted to go in Addy's pool with her. Yes, our dog is a weirdo and LOVES the water. She wants to be in it as much as possible!

SUNDAY

Sunday was our 6th wedding anniversary! :-) We had Ana until mid-afternoon and then had kickball in the evening, so we made plans to go to dinner on Monday night. But, we still enjoyed our day with Ana and won both kickball games. Although I am dealing with shin splints right now and it is incredibly painful. So, as I'm blogging I'm icing both legs right now. Hopefully they are good to go for next Sunday. I thought I'd post a couple wedding pictures of us since it's our Anniversary. (we got married in Jamaica - for those of you that don't know)

MONDAY

We were expecting to receive our notarized versions of our home study today or tomorrow. And we are very disappointed that it won't be happening. :( We were REALLY wanting it in this week because we are on vacation next week and wanted to leave knowing that we were on the list and we could just relax because everything is in. To make a long story short...our social worker needs to have her boss sign it as well and he is in a different state and there's a notary issue, so not going to happen until next week Monday. However, she will send everything out for us while we're away. But, still wanted it this week. Oh well, not much we can do about it and there are people far worse off so I don't feel I can complain too much, just frustrating.

Tim and I went to dinner tonight up in Milwaukee to an Italian restaurant that we really like and it was delicious! Afterwards we found this little gelato place and stopped in to take a peak. The guy that worked there was VERY passionate about his gelato. He was pretty funny and was making us sample lots and lots of flavors. So, of course we had to get some then. It was soooo good. Here is their website - you should check to see if there is one in your area. I definitely recommend it! http://www.paciugo.com/

Good night everyone, hope everyone had a great Monday!

P.S. please say a prayer for my aunt who is having surgery tomorrow to remove a lump in her breast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 weeks ago. She is doing really well so far and has a great attitude and I know she'll do great. Love you Debbie! :)

Night at the Zoo

We are watching our 6 yr old niece Ana this weekend and we went down to the zoo tonight to watch the movie Surfs Up on a big outdoor screen. We were only down there for 1 hour because the rain started to come, but got a couple of pics in.

TGIF!!!

ALMOST THERE!!!!

I am SOOO excited!! We should be sending everything in Monday or Tuesday next week - YAY!!! I can NOT wait to get on that waiting list. Although I think that will be the hard part. At least now we've been busy gathering paperwork and having appts and then we will just be waiting and waiting and waiting some more. But I still cannot wait.

I have to tell our fingerprint appt story because it was pretty funny. So, we get to our 8am appt and get in pretty much right away. The guy is doing all of my prints and he starts doing some of them over...and over....and over again. And he kept looking pretty confused. He then says "what galaxy are you from"? I said "hmmm...thats a good question". Well, he said that in all of his years in doing this that he has never come across someone like me. Apparently my fingerprints on both hands are exactly the same. Usually people have some variances or different lines...nope not me. I have twin hands!! So...that's my funny hand story.

Tim and I have been so busy lately, so feel like I'm blog slacking so I'm really going to try and be better! I'll post some pictures of what we've been up to lately.

We had two of our nieces for the weekend 2 weekends ago and here are some pics that we took.

We've also been to a couple of Brewer games...

That's all I have for now. We'll be busy with another one of our nieces this weekend, so I'll be posting more pics soon. Tim and I are so blessed to have the BEST nieces in the whole world. We love them so much and feel so blessed to be able to spend so much time with them and be involved in watching them grow. And we are very excited about our new nephew Ethyn and can't wait to meet him when he makes the trip from Minnesota to Wisconsin!

Heartbreaking...

As Tim and I are deciding what to make for dinner we get an email from a friend of ours with the video, which is linked below. As we watch this video it is heartbreaking to see the devastation the people of Ethiopia are facing. And to think we are going back and forth, on our many options, of what we should eat for dinner and all these people want is any bit of food they can get.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7444753.stm

~Dawn

Home Study - DONE

We had our last home study visit this past week, so now we are just waiting for our first draft which we should be getting next week. We are very excited to get that in our hands! We have a few more things left to do on the dossier. My goal is to have everything sent in by the end of the month. The only frustrating thing that we have run into is trying to get copies of our marriage certificates from Jamaica. They are in NO rush at all. We put the request in about 5 weeks ago and they still aren't sent out yet. So, we've made several calls and we keep getting "it's no problem man." And it WILL be a problem if we don't get them soon! So, praying we get those by the end of the week so I can stop worrying about it. We also have our fingerprint appt on Monday morning at 8am. That's pretty much all on the adoption front. We are still enjoying reading all the blogs and following along with everyone's journey!

~Dawn