"A Long December..."

"And there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be, better than the last..."

Sorry, I had to quote the Counting Crows, because this month is seeming to drag a bit here at the end, and also, because I heard that song the other day and it always makes me feel contemplative. Although, I must say, the words don't exactly fit my life, as, overall, 2009 wasn't a bad year, much better than 2008, in fact. New Year's Eve is here tomorrow, and I think 2010 is probably going to rock.

Here's the Christmas recap. We went to Bill and Dena's Christmas Eve and spent the night. Brian made his traditional Christmas Eve dinner of homemade pizza, which always goes over well. It was quiet this year, as Erin and her brood and Ryan, Jen and Kelsey were not there for dinner. Not that I'm complaining. Quiet was nice. We got up Christmas morning and Brian made omeletes for everyone, along with toast and potatoes. I was the toast girl this year, as Brian's normal helper, Ryan, was with Jen's family that morning. (They arrived later for breakfast.) We then did gifts, and the kids really seemed to enjoy what we got them. Then, Erin's brood and Ryan and Jen left again, and we had Christmas dinner cooked by Bill. Then, we went to my folks, and hung out with them for the night, which is always fun.

The next day, we had Tompkins family Christmas at my Grandpa and Grandma's. Grandpa is still doing well, which is nice to see. Grandma has lost a little weight, which is good for her sugar and also nice to see. The 17 of us demolished a turkey and a ham, and had WAY too much dessert. Then, we did gifts, which was fun, especially to watch Emma and Nolan open their stuff and go nuts. It's weird that they're the only kids present anymore! Then, the night dissolved into a raucous games of "Apples to Apples," which I didn't play because I'm not very good at it, honestly. :)

We came home that night, and since then, we've been hanging out. John and Erica came over one night, and we're heading to their house in Chi-town on New Year's Day for the weekend. Yay! Tomorrow night, we're going to our friends the Barlow's, who invited us over months ago. The Meese-doggies are also going, should be a good night. Also, since Brian's and my Bose DVD player took a crapper about 6 months ago, we went and bought a Blu-Ray player that is awesome and live streams our Netflix. I t hen sweet talked Bose into giving us a deal to trade in the old player for new equipment, but this time we're just going with the media center, and not the whole media center with DVD. Honestly, their audio systems are awesome, but their video isn't great, and they refuse to upgrade it to Blu-Ray. So, we'll have the surround sound still, but a separate Blu-Ray, which is fine. The new media center has so many component spots to plug into, we'll be able to play Wii in surround if we want! This excites me, as Brian and I are spoiled and we do like our electronic equipment and gadgets. I mean, its a luxury and I could easily live without it if I have to, but I DON'T have to, so I might as well enjoy. :)

Happy 2010!!!

Our Dossier is on it's Way!

We have reached a very important milestone with the adoption! Our dossier is finally out of our hands and will be going to Russia in a few short days! This morning I emailed our consultant about our papers, and she apologized and said she'd emailed me on Friday and said they were good! We have no idea why I didn't get that email, but the upshot is that I went to Lansing late this morning and got everything apostilled (29 documents, 29 bucks, took about 29 minutes). Before they could apostille them, I had to run and make copies at a nearby copy shop. I wasn't aware that the apostille is a piece of paper and gold sticker seal they permanently affix to each document. You can't copy your document after. So, I should have make those copies at home before I left, but you live and learn! In the grand scheme of everything, $5 is not a lot of extra money!

After I got everything apostilled, I came home and ate my lunch and went to Fed Ex and sent all the papers overnight to our consultant in Grand Rapids. So, in the next few days, our file should go to Russia!!! It takes about 3-4 weeks for everything to get translated and certified, especially at this time of year. Russia celebrates New Years just like we do, but their Christmas is Orthodox Christmas, which is later, and is on January 7. Literally, everything is closed, all offices, etc, from December 31-January 10 for holiday. So, that may take longer than usual, but at least it's out of our hands. Depending on what the agency's Russia office thinks is best, we may register in a particular region, but we may not, as not all regions require registration. If they don't register us in a region, we go in the master pile, I guess, with all the other families who are also not registered in one particular region.

So now basically, the wait is on. They are telling us we may wait a year for a referral because we are wanting two very young children, but that's okay. We'll see how it goes. I have to think that perhaps not as many people are adopting right now because of the economy, so maybe that'll shorten our wait. (Hoping!) And there are tons of other things to do while we wait, some more paperwork, gather orphanage donations, learns some Russian phrases, find a special doctor to help us evaluate the children's health when the time comes, and others. So, we'll still be really busy! But its nothing that will hold up our timetable! We are so excited to be at this point, and plan on taking a break from this stuff until after the New Year! We've been, and will continue to be, so wrapped up in all this, a break for the holidays will be great.

Thank you everyone!

Just Waiting!

So, I just wanted to do a quick update about adoption stuff. We have our home study in hand, and, on Friday, got all our documents signed and notarized! We came home and I immediately faxed one copy of everything to our consultant in Grand Rapids for her review. I am literally just waiting to get an email back from her saying the papers all look good. Once I get that, I can head to Lansing and have them apostilled, which is a state certification of the notary (as in, the state saying this person who notarized the documents is truly a notary). Once they are apostilled, I can Fed Ex all the papers and a big fat check off to our consultant and then, THEY GET SENT TO RUSSIA!!! So, we are almost to a big milestone!!

Thanks for reading and caring!

Turkey Day Post-Mortem

So, Thanksgiving ended up going fine, although hosting duties did stress me out a bit, as usual! We ended up with 16 adults and 4 little girls, counting us. Luckily between the kitchen, dining room and in front of the TV (for the football junkies), the house could handle it all. We had a nearly 19 pound turkey, and didn't have that many leftovers! Brian normally likes having a LOT of leftovers (the man can hoover turkey sandwiches), but we ended up being busy for a lot of the weekend, and then he left for work out of town on Monday. So, not many leftovers for him this year.

The day started off well, with Brian making his stuffing and getting the turkey in at 10 am. Dinner was supposed to be at 2. He put the turkey on to roast at 325 degrees. I told him about halfway through (or maybe even earlier) to crank it up to 350, but he didn't. Oh no, he waited until it was 1:30 and the timer hadn't popped yet! Too late!!! The other funny thing is that my cousins Cory and Kayla were coming from Lake Orion, and got totally lost. I think they ended up half way to South Lyon. Kayla didn't write down the directions properly, and they ended up going in the wrong direction. They finally turned back towards town and make it at about 1:30, when they should have been here about 12:30 or 1 probably. Silly college kids!

So, it's 2 o'clock and everyone is waiting around to eat. The timer on that damn turkey FINALLY popped at like 2:15, so we didn't eat until 2:30 and everyone was STARVING!! But it was worth it, as Brian makes delicious turkey. We also had mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, green bean casserole, squash, cranberry jelly, and rolls. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie, my mother's famous pumpkin cheesecake, and pumpkin roll (which was delicious). My cousin Kayla is currently a vegetarian (for the last couple years, actually) and the only thing she and Brian can agree on is my Mom's pumpkin cheesecake! They both said it was the best one she ever made!

Cory and Kayla ended up staying until about 9:30 that night, just hanging out. We made Kayla watch the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ha ha!) and she fell asleep in the chair! Then, the Wrath of Khan came on, so we just kept watching! It was funny. I'm glad they had a good time. All in all, we had a good time with the holiday too, even though it was a bit crazy!