This and That

While I don't have any 'big' news to report, I thought I'd give everyone a quick update on the happenings in our lives.

A year ago Friday, we boarded a plane in Guatemala City with our new daughter and headed home. It was a long day, but well worth every second. Lili was a trooper throughout it all.

On the adoption front - We're still waiting on our 171H from USCIS. I've heard the Chicago office is taking anywhere from 2-12 weeks, so I really don't know what to expect. It will be 3 weeks ago this Tuesday that our home study was sent to them, so obviously it's taking longer than 2 weeks at this point. It took 3 1/2 weeks when we applied for Lili's adoption, but it all depends on how many they are processing at any given time. Right now I'm being patient, but we'll see how I'm feeling in a couple weeks if I still don't have it.

In the meantime, I took our dossier documents to the Secretary of State's office and had everything notary certified. I sent a copy of everything to our agency consultant to look over. If anything needs to be corrected or changed, at least we can get it done now while we're waiting on the final document to arrive.

At this point they are still anticipating we'll have a 5-6 month wait for our referral once our dossier is registered in Ethiopia. Once we send our completed dossier to the agency, they will send it off to the Ethiopia Embassy to have all the documents authenticated. The documents also have to be translated before everything is registered. We can expect that part of the process to take about 3 weeks. So we're basically looking at a 6-7 month wait for referral once we send our dossier off to the agency.

Over the last week Lili's language has really started to emerge. I don't know if it will continue or not, but she is suddenly attempting to say a lot more words as well as more 2-3 word sentences.

The other thing that has emerged is more screaming. While her language skills are improving, they are obviously not where she wants them to be. Her way of dealing with that frustration is 'screaming.' Not mom's choice of communication, but communication none-the-less.

Yesterday Lili and I decided to go do a little shopping. We were in need of some grocery items, but I also wanted to get her some new activities for home. Knowing she likes puzzles, we purchased a couple more. An 8-piece puzzle of animals and a 26 piece alphabet puzzle. I had a feeling the 8-piece puzzle wouldn't cause her too much trouble and I was right. The alphabet puzzle was certainly more challenging for her. However, it wasn't nearly as challenging as I anticipated. She asked for help, but by that point she already had 3 or 4 of the letters in the right spot. Hum!!!! Some of the other pieces weren't in the right spot and were turned side-ways. However, what she had done was matched up the colors. The letters are either red, blue, yellow, green or purple and she was matching the colors, but not necessarily the letters. I sat with her for a few minutes to help and she started catching on. The child isn't 2 years old yet! What is she going to be doing in a year? And will she have completely out smarted me by that point? Ahhhh!!!! I really am happy that she enjoys so many different activities. Kids this age are little sponges and we want to provide her as many learning opportunities as possible.

Dave and I also decided to make a purchase that would put more activity into our lives. Not that a toddler doesn't put more activity into our lives, because Lili certainly does that. However, we needed something that is going to put more aerobic type activity into our lives. We had been discussing various forms of exercise for awhile and finally settled on bikes. So, last weekend we hit the bike shop and each purchased a bike, plus child trailer. Unfortunately, the child trailer had to be ordered, so I left my bike at the shop so they could get everything set up once the trailer arrives. I should have my bike and Lili should have her set of wheels this week. 'Good bye flab, hello fab.' Okay, who am I kidding, I'm going to be in some serious pain for awhile. "Hello sore legs and derriere."

It's March 29th and we woke up to about 1-2 inches of snow this morning. Now the sun is out and there are just patches of snow on the ground. Got to love Spring in Illinois!!!! At least spring is back and I'm really going to want them once I get my bike.

For any of you who were planning to attend Re-Union '09 this year, the event has been cancelled. If you made hotel reservations, make sure you cancel them.

Since Re-Union '09 was cancelled, Dave and I made other travel plans. The event was being held in Tulsa, which is then a short drive to the Dallas area where we planned to go visit family for a few days. We are still going to visit family, but now we're going via Memphis. Okay, not necessarily a direct route from Illinois to Dallas, but we've never gone to Memphis. We'll go have some good BBQ, see some of the sights and then head to Texas. We have made the drive to Texas a few times, but never taken the southern route through Tennessee and Arkansas. A change of scenery will be nice!!!

GAFE is still happening this year and for those of you who have followed Guatadopt over the years, I just found out today that Kevin is going to be one of the speakers. There are other speakers and tons of activities planned, so I'm very much looking forward to this event.

There is also a Guatemala adoptive families weekend happening next month in St. Louis. It will include a trip to Grant's Farm and dinner together Friday and Saturday night. Last year we went to the zoo and had a great time, so this is another weekend event I'm very much looking forward to.

I think that about covers everything in our world these days. Not necessarily exciting, but sometimes that's a good thing.