36

Well today is my 36th birthday. I had a wonderful weekend. We went skiing in Big Bear on Saturday, whale watching in San Diego on Sunday morning, and a bonfire on the beach Sunday night.The highlight for me of course was spending time with my hubby and a beautiful poem that he wrote me. I will post it later. The other highlight was watching 2 Gray whales 40 feet long mating .Wow! What a rare sight! There were dolphins swimming all around playing and being "voyeurs". We also got to see the whales "spy hop" and lots of tail flukes. We saw a total of 15 whales. They were everywhere! I really have a "thing" for whales and dolphins and could watch them all day long ( especially in the wild). I can't wait to teach Ella all about them.

Like New Years I take this time to reflect on my life. I have lived a very full life but there is sooo much that I have yet to do. Here are some of the things that I have accomplished and experienced in my life.....
- being part of a loving family
- loving friendships
-have experienced "true love"
-developed a relationship with God
- visited every state in the United States except for a few of the New England states.
- traveled to Mexico, Australia, and the Caribbean
-Sky dived
-gone White Water rafting
-touched the lives of many children and parents
-witnessed Humpback Whales "bubble net feeding" in the wild in Alaska
-flown into the Arctic Circle into an Athabascan Village
-taken a bike ride 36 miles down a volcano
-visited a majority of the Theme Parks in the U.S.
-purchased 2 homes
-the love of Annabelle Leigh
( and many many more that I just can't think of right now)

Here are some things that I will accomplish in the future...
-become a mom!!
-swim with Dolphins
-learn to scuba dive and scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef
-visit all around Europe , Asia, and of course Guatemala ( educating our daughter in all of these places)
-learn to speak Spanish
-go on an African Safari
-cuddle a Koala
-learn to Kayak
-learn to surf
-create my own Childrens Charity
( and many many more that I just can't think of right now)

Pictures from my Birthday Weekend.

Skiing in Big Bear. I was really rusty going down the first run. We didn't ski at all last season. I soon got my confidence and the rest of the day was a blast ( with the exception of falling when I got off of the chair lift - but that would be a different blog!) I can't wait to teach Ella to ski. They begin teaching them at the age of 3 at Big Bear! We saw some 5 year olds in training for the downhill competition. They were going soooo fast and weaving in and out of the flags like pros. So cute!

Whale watching in San Diego. Clinton wanted to take me skiing for my birthday and I wanted to go whale watching so we compromised and went skiing on Saturday and whale watching Sunday morning.

This is the boat that Clinton and I went on to go whale watching. We went with a company called Hornblower tours. They were very good. The captain was very knowledgable and they had 2 girls there from the Museum of Natural Science to educate us.

Ending the weekend with a camp fire at the beach in Corona Del Mar. Annabelle got to join in the fun. She "lap hopped" all night for 2 reasons 1. she wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to love her and 2. she doesn't like walking in the sand because it is...well..sandy and she doesn't like walking in grass because after all that is where dogs use the bathroom. She cracks me up. Such a princess dog! She really enjoyed snuggling up with Joe and Jen.

2 down and 1 to go!

We just had our second appointment with our social worker. Again, the meeting went very well. This time she went over our autobiographies that we had written. She will e-mail the preliminary report to me in a week to 10 days and then we will receive the final copy on Valentine's Day. Does anyone out there in blog land know what the average turn around time is to receive approval from INS once they receive the homestudy? She said 6 to 8 weeks but this seems like a long time to me. We have already submitted our application and have gotten our fingerprints. I don't think that we will even be considered for a referral until our Dossier is complete ( and INS approval is part of the completed Dossier). So this means we may not even be considered for a referral until late April. I have an e-mail in to our Adoption Coordinator to double check. I would be interested in hearing from others who have adopted with other agencies in regards to this. Did your agency give you a referral before you got INS approval? I'm a little fuzzy on this whole procedure. Thanks!

What do America, Australia, Japan, and Guatemala have in common?

What do America, Australia, Japan, and Guatemala have in common? These are all the places Clinton's precious birth certificate has to travel in order to bring home Baby Ella. We have to get all of our certificates (i.e. birth, marriage, divorce,etc...) both great sealed and authenticated. Here in America we order the certificates from the issuing state. We then mail the certificates to the state department where they were issued to get a "Great Seal". After I receive them back I send them to the Guatemalan Consulates office in CA where they are authenticated. At this point they are ready to be submitted as part of the dossier. In Australia it is a different story. I still have yet to find out exactly what to do - but I am on the right track. I have been leaving messages and e-mailing the Guatemalan Consulate in Australia for a couple of weeks with no response. I have been unsure what to do with the documents. I ordered the documents from Australia and had them sent to my mother - in- laws house in Melbourne. She is keeping them safe. I finally reached the consulate this evening. He let me know ( through very bad reception I might add) that he is just an honorary consulate i.e. he is unable to authenticate any documents.Australia has no Guatemalan embassy. Japan has jurisdiction over Australia. He gave me the contact info for the embassy in Japan. (I wasn't sure if I was going to be speaking to someone who spoke english, japanese, or Spanish - LOL). I called Japan. I spoke to a nice Japanese lady who spoke o.k. english. However, she said all questions had to be submitted via e-mail. I just sent an e-mail and am awaiting a reply. I have a feeling what has to happen is this - Helen will send the documents to the state department to receive an apostille ( I don't think Aus issues great seals). I think the documents then have to go to the embassy in Japan to get authenticated. They will then be sent to me (I just pray the documents arrive to me safely! ) where I will send them as part of our dossier to our adoption agency and they in turn will send the documents to Guatemala. WOW! Just writing about it makes me tired!!!

The more positive news today is that we received our Contract from our adoption agency . We just have to send it back to them with a check and we will be closer to getting a referral. ( of course we will not receive our referral until our dossier is complete and we get our I-171 ). We have our second appointment for our homestudy on Wednesday. This time she will be interviewing Clinton and I seperately. This is not nearly as nerve wracking as the first visit. I am sure all will go smoothly. The details have yet to be ironed out for the classes we have to take in order for them to complete the homestudy. The first date they had available in Feb. wouldn't work because Clinto will be in England. We are seeing if we can get special permission to do a home study course instead. Honestly, even if we get permission to do the home study course I would still like to take the "real" course sometime. The more I learn about international adoption the more fascinated I become. I am learning so much every day! That's all for now. I have to check my e-mail to see if I have a reply.

How do you sterilize nipples using a coffee pot?

I decided last night to look in other parts of our adoption manual besides the section that I am always turned to titled "creating your dossier". We were instructed not to look at the whole manual immediately as it may seem to overwhelming. I decided last night to look at the section titled "preparing to travel". In it I found a list of items to bring for baby and parents and a list of helpful hints. One of the helpful hints was that you could use the coffee pot in your hotel room to sterilize nipples. Hmmm. ... I began thinking... How in the world would you do that? On second thought I began thinking Hmmmm.... how do you even prepare a bottle? Now don't get me wrong, I know a lot about children in general. After all, I have had many child development classes and many years experience working with kids. I have been reading up on adoption, attachment, etc... However, I know very little about actually taking care of a baby! ( Shhh don't tell our social worker) As an only child I didn't spend much time around babies. I probably have only changed one or two diapers in my lifetime! This thought cracks me up! My only thought is HELP!!! I need some Baby 101 classes or to borrow someones baby pronto! I am sure that I am not the first one in history to experience this. The good news is that we are almost a year away until we receive our bundle of joy, so I have lots of time to practice and prepare. The other good news is that I am a pretty quick learner. I was pretty anal about Annabelle when she was a puppy. When I had a friend babysit her at the age of 12 weeks, I actually had a typed out schedule as to when she got up, playtime, when she was to be walked ,go to bed, etc... So I think I will do o.k. with a baby. I just need to get some of the "mechanics" down. Seriously, I would appreciate it if anyone had any good suggestions of books or reading material. I intend on subscribing to Parents Magazine very soon. Any other suggestions? Please post any good ideas. Thanks!

Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy!

Our social worker just left our house and in the words of my first graders " Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy!" It was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I did all of that organizing and cleaning for nothing! She didn't even leave our living room! She was very nice and made us feel very comfortable. She just got some basic info. and asked us questions about parenting, disciplining, etc... I think the visit went very well! She scheduled 2 more visits. The last visit is scheduled for Valentines Day. This is when she should have the homestudy report for us. Wow! What a great Valentines present! The only thing we have to worry about now is scheduling a class they call the "Journey Abroad Program". It is a course that we take over the course of 4 evenings. Scheduling anything (especially weekends) is a bit of a nightmare around here. Clinton's schedule is packed on the weekends until 2008. They will not complete the homestudy until we have completed the course. Soooo we will just have to make it work! It's just another little hurdle but I am sure everything will work out great! I am actually excited about taking the classes as I am sure we will receive more info about international adoption.

Gift from Daddy

I don't know if I have mentioned that Clinton travels a lot. He usually brings me home a little something. When he got home from Orlando on Saturday, he had this little precious outfit. I don't know if you can read it, but it says "Disney Princess". It was one of the best presents he could have gotten me!