Pictures from this weekend

This weekend has been filled with some pretty fun stuff. Jeff and I ran a race on Saturday evening and Dad, Brandee and Leslie came out to support us...here are some pics from that.

Retro Run 5K

And today we took a road trip to Atlanta to Ikea and met with Jason for lunch. What fun!!

Ikea Day 7-29-07

And the preliminary baby shopping begins...

I have always said that we will start working on the nursery when we clear the Review Room and now that we are out (cross your fingers for the next 3 weeks to pass smoothly just in case) we are thinking about starting the baby's room. We took a trip to Ikea today and browsed around the little girl things and are looking at these.... Let me know what you think.

This crib....
transforms into this bed (you have to envision it with cute fluffy girly linens and maybe a little canopy.
OR....this bigger girl bed (which means we might have to buy a crib AND the bed)...

The walls will probably be yellow with some room accents of pink, maybe some greeny color...something cute.

In this series there is also a wardrobe and a storage unit with baskets in it that we are looking at. Of course I want a cozy chair for bedtime reading also. I wonder how we are going to fit all of this into that tiny room.

Holy Freakin Cow!! We are OUT OF REVIEW!!

I actually can not believe that we have made a tangible step in the adoption process. 13 months and 13 days after our dossier was stamped "Logged In" in China, we are out of the review room!! That means that someone in China has scrutinized Jeff and I and has passively deemed us suitable to raise a wee baby from China. I am ecstatic right now!! I even got an e-mail from Michelle at our adoption agency congratulating us that we are out of review....WOOOHOOOO!!

We will still have to wait about 2-3 weeks to feel completely in the clear because sometimes it takes a little time for lingering questions to make it to the US from China but even that is unlikely. I have only read about 3 people who have received questions from the June LID group and they ranged from the husband having nicknames in the documents to the couple leaving out a phrase about promising not to neglect or abandon their child in the letter to China and one unknown. These questions can seem minor but can potentially cause some problems in the adoption process.

So today is a day to celebrate...one step closer to mommy and daddy-hood!!

Caffeine

Yesterday I ingested more caffeine than a normal human should in a week. I decided to meet with my staff outside of the office for the oh-so-fun mid-year performance reviews and we settled on a little coffee shop in downtown Gadsden. Before the first review, I had a Coosa Kicker which is an espresso drink with steamed milk and tons of fun syrup flavors...then a soda with the next meeting and finally a Downtown Cappuccino with the 3rd. By the 4th meeting I was so wired I couldn't even force myself to blink. Today I am groggy - call it a caffeine downer.

Starring my Mom as Harry Potter....

Hee hee! I love you Mom!

My Schmelmo

I am the proud auntie to a 9 pound bouncing baby boy named Schmelmo. If you have looked at my blog before then you should have seen his cute face but here he is again. I love this scrumptious pooch. Mean Leslie ;) put his ears up in a hairbow but he is so chill that he doesn't care...what a trooper.
And here I am with him at his new apartment home. He is just so lovable. Don't you just want to smooch him?

Weekend of the 13th

This weekend we had Friday the 13th and we celebrated (or let the day pass quietly) our 13 month LID-versary on Saturday. To celebrate in true style, we had a great cookout on Saturday with lots of bbq'ed chicken and great company...not to mention some kick booty card games (pictures to be posted shortly). THEN...I had some very serious group retail therapy with Mom...we found some awesome sales and I managed to spend oodles of bucks on clothes. It was a great weekend and I just absolutely can't wait until Mom and Dad have settled in their house and are both here with us permanently....although I will have to be an observer in the retail therapy next time or risk being in the doghouse. Special thanks to Jeff and Dad who took turns being the opinion giver on all the clothes - Mom and I are so lucky to have patient men with good clothes advice. :) Thanks Mom and Dad, Jeff, Brandee and Leslie for a good weekend!!

PS - Jason we missed you playing Chicago Rummy and hope you feel better!!

Guillermo

I have to admit that I am thoroughly amused and entertained by Guillermo from Jimmy Kimmel Live...is it just the way he calls Jimmy Himmy? Is it the extreme political incorrectness in the comedy that appeals to me? I don't know what it is but I always find myself laughing when he is on....call me sick.

The Funky Bunch

Here are Jason, me, Dad and Mom eating at the Vortex in Little Five Points in Atlanta this weekend. We took a road trip to shop at Ikea and visit with my bro. It was a great day trip even though I do admit that my PMS is a little out of control. It was so hard to avoid that fried zucchini with ranch and those huge yummy looking burgers.

Yowsers

Brandee knocked her noggin on Thursday and had this huge knot...poor thing. She had to go to the worker's comp doctor and then the emergency room to make sure she didn't have bleeding on the brain. I think that was a scary phrase - you know "bleeding on the brain" sounds pretty awful, doesn't it? After all that she is ok...maybe a little concussion for which she is entitled to 48 hours of "POOR BAAAABY" but she will live and someday her noggin will go back to normal size. :)

Business in the front, Party in the back - My Version

No it's not a mullet. I had my hair done on Friday and here are the results. I wanted more freaky than the last time and Andy asked me what I meant by freaky. I said, "as far as you can go without putting some weird color in it."

His response was, "You could always put some red underneath so you can only see it when you put your hair up." So I said rock on :).
Long live my mid-life crisis!

We're back online!!

The bucket truck man came today and gave us back our internet...so now I can go to WebMD and feed my hypochondria some more. Hee hee. Bring on the world wide web. Oh and we have our Vonage back too.

Ups and Downs

So we are probably in the Review Room right now but this month's referrals encompass only 7 days worth of dossiers. I got our new estimated referral date, according to http://www.chinaadoptionforecast.com/ and it is now 11-29-08. Every month we lose a couple of months in our estimated referral date. In the past 3 months it has gone from April of 2008 to November of 2008...kinda sucky. So while I am excited that we are probably in the midst of the review room, I am continuously perturbed by the extending wait. It's enough to make you throw up a little in your mouth...I know nice imagery.

oh my goodness oh my goodness

Breaking News Adoption Update: The officials at the China Center for Adoption Affairs have now reviewed dossiers received before May 31, 2006. We are June 14, 2006 so chances are someone in China is staring at our icky passport pictures, reading our medical reports, looking at our financial situation and reading our thousand page home study right now or will be very, very soon. So we are now at a make or break stage of our adoption. We have been waiting to be through the review room now for 9 days short of 13 months...and we thought it would be February of 2007 at the latest that we could celebrate this step. When we are cleared, it means that there is a 99% chance that we will actually be parents of a little one from China at some future undetermined date. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal but we have had to cross over many levels of approval to get where we are and this is almost the very last stamp of "YES" that we will have to get.

Please, now more than ever, keep us in your thoughts and send well-wishes or prayers for those people that are making the judgment call on Jeff and I right now. If we can make it through the review room without questions, there will be cause to celebrate...one less hurdle to cross before our baby comes home and we become a family.

P.S. We STILL do not have internet or phone at home. I am writing this at work and keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a BrightHouse man climbing the power pole in our yard when I get home.

Withdrawal

Please tell me how people survive without the internet and telephone? Jeff and I have been without internet service now for 3 days and I feel like I am so disconnected from the world. Of course we changed our phone service to Vonage so no internet means no phone...ARGGHHH. Today I was even not half way dreading coming to work since I knew I would have a connection to the outside world. Anyway - the tech man is supposed to be coming to check out our problem tomorrow so hopefully we will join civilization again soon. All of this when the next round of baby referrals is due to come out any day now...I need my internet!!!