It's looking up!

Again, I apologize for my previous downer-of-a-post. But now, things are looking up! We received our homestudy draft yesterday via email and I combed through it at lightening speed. We emailed today the necessary changes and are crossing our fingers for that to be done quickly and emailed to AGCI for approval. Then we can get some notarized copies and finally send off to CIS. Yay!!! This is some good news. I am super excited.

I want to say a big shout out to those of you who've been sending me bits of encouragement and laughter. It helped so much! Now I am even more committed to commenting on other blog pages...even though I'm often fearful that people will think I'm a weirdo. (I haven't come to grips yet that it may possibly be the truth.) So, look out blogworld, here come my comments!

So. This is goooooood news. I feel totally refreshed, both spiritually and emotionally.

Another fun thing that happened is (drumroll) that all the material and supplies were purchased to start making baby bedding! Yay! When you're the last girl (of everyone you know) to set up nursery, you're not left with a lot of options that aren't taken by your cousin, your friend, your neighbor, etc...and I couldn't find anything that I was totally in love with. So, I combed the fabric stores with my wonderfully amazing grandmother and finally found something. Yay! So we purchased all of it. No joke, we took every last inch of two of the fabrics. This baby is going to have one rockin room. Can you tell that I am excited? Well, I am.

And I promise, cruise pics are coming. In the ship's library, there was a giant globe. That's all I'm telling you for now. It's the coolest picture. It's so cool that Justin even made it his background pic. That's serious real estate.

The weather is tooo perfect here so I'm going to enjoy it!

already waiting forever

Well, the cruise was great. Maybe I'll post some pictures of that in a bit. Right now (and for the last few days) I have just been overwhelmed with not-so-good-feelingness. We were expecting our homestudy report to be done a while back. It's still not done. This wouldn't be such a big deal if we were told it would take this long...but we weren't. We were assured we'd have it the following weekend. And then when we didn't have it a few days after that and hadn't heard anything I was nervous. Maybe I forgot something important and didn't realize it and she was just waiting for me. So when I contacted our social worker...after waiting a few days for a response we were given another deadline. But that was last Friday and it's already Monday and this just stinks.

I need the homestudy report so that I can mail in our CIS so we can get fingerprinted and approved so we can start the real waiting. Ha. The real waiting. We've been waiting forever. We waited to start the process until the job thing worked out. We waited to start again for the insurance thing to work out. We waited again for the money thing to work out. Now we're waiting for our social worker to work out. We're nowhere near the actual waiting list and I'm just feeling really whiny and complainy...as you can see.

Sorry to be such a fusspot. I just needed to get it out to someone who would understand. In the words of Eeyore, "thanks for noticing."

forget the waiting...

Well, in a few hours I will no longer be thinking about homestudies or paperchasing or anything other than the glorious sun and my best traveling buddy.

That's right. Tomorrow begins my last spring fling! Christina and I board the Ecstacy ship tomorrow and head for a "Girls Gone Silly" Spring Break. We're taking along a surprise guest. More on him later. (I love surprises...that includes pushing them on others.) Then when I return I get one night with dear hubband and then I'm taking a little road trip with my mother and grandparents. This is going to be something. Yay for traveling! Yay for being busy thinking of other things!

I was hoping to have our HS back so it could go to Portland and be accepted and then I could mail our USCIS stuff and know that I was done with all the stuff that depended on me. But alas, God has different plans and so I leave with all that up in the air. I emailed my SW and asked that she please send the HS straight to AGCI while I'm gone so that I can mail everything off when I get back, fingers crossed.

Please pray for a safe journey for us Girls Gone Silly, speedy HS acceptance, and my sweet hubband who can't vacation because he has to work. He's going to miss me a lot and the pups will also be mighty lonely. He has plenty of clean laundry but he doesn't eat at home when I'm gone. That means he'll be having meals out at lunch and dinner (since I'm not here to make his lunch...or breakfast) which includes a lot of Lenny's Sub Sandwhiches. We keep that place in business.

Enough. Until I return...this is me! Yay!

i heart john piper

my pal glo really turned me on to this guy because he is one of her favorite authors/speakers and well, i secretly want to be just like her.

check this out.

happy monday!

p.s. still no homestudy yet. but i didn't publish my unhappy post, deleted it, and replaced it with this good stuff. : )

oooow! i feel good...duhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuh

I knew that I would!

(duhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuh)

So good, so good...

baby, I almost got you!

**I added a music player...how fun is that?!**

Ok, so that's my newest rendition of an old song. I have this habit of rewriting things to make them work for my life. You know, if you had your own tv show about your life and it had a theme song or montage...well, my life does! And watch out, because I am singing them often.

So, our completed homestudy should be finished this weekend. I know, this weekend! Tomorrow morning I have an appointment at the Houston Passport Office to get that. Yep, I will have my whole passport in one day. Yippie! And (and I love it when there's an "and") if our homestudy is done this weekend, then I can send it to CIS on Monday or Tuesday. And that will be the last stop before we can be official!

Now do you see why I feel so good? So that you may all feel good too, I am adding some feel good pics! That's right, some generosity just for you! Enjoy -- and FEEL GOOD! Yay!

by popular demand

Ok, here it is. You can stop checking our site six times a day to see if I've posted about it yet. Goodness gracious. Ha ha, like we're really that popular or in demand. But thanks for checking in and well-wishing!

Here are some fun things to know:
About our house:
1. I'm pretty sure it's never been this clean.
2. I'm pretty sure it will never be this clean again.
3. I'm really astonished at what we accomplished.

About our social worker:
1. I'm just guessing here, but I'm guessing she's about nineteen years old.
2. Her vocabulary is surprising...and I'll leave it at that.
3. She drives the biggest Ford 350 diesel pickup ever.

About our homevisit:
1. It started two hours late.
2. It's finally over.
3. We should have the completed homestudy next weekend.

I'm sure by now you're guessing that our homevisit didn't go exactly as we had pictured it would. But that's totally ok because I like seeing God's sense of humor and know that it doesn't even really matter anyway. I am really glad that we got so much clean, though. So there you go, two good things happened:
1. A really really clean house
2. One more step closer to our baby.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering about our previous predictament of name choosing, we've finally decided on a name for either a boy or a girl. Yay for that. Now if only someone would get us a baby...