Dreamin'

I had a dream about Olivia last night, it was the second one I've had. I dreamt that we were in China getting her and driving around sightseeing. She had chin length hair and her lip had been fixed already. She was soooo cute. We were sitting on the back end of OUR (in China) minivan....LOL.....and I turned around for a second. When I looked back up, she was over at some steps with this Chinese person who was holding her. I ran over and was asking what she was doing with my child. I picked her up and brought her back to the car and changed her diaper. That's it. That's all I remember. Hmm....weird.

About a month ago I had one too that we had just come home with her and went to my parent's house to show her to them. When we got there, everyone in our whole family was there. I went upstairs ahead of Livi and watched her walk up the stairs very slowly and by herself. She stopped half way and just looked at everyone and acted scared of how many people were looking at her and trying to talk to her. She looked at me and said "mama, hold me" and held up her arms. I was so excited in my dream that she 1. spoke...and in English and 2. that she called me 'mama'. Dreams are so funny. Makes me think that they are the things I must really be thinking about while we wait to go get her.

Next steps

Today, Jason and I went to the agency to sign a bunch of paperwork for bringing Livi home. Immigration approval is the next step and it has been averaging about a 4 week wait. After that, there's Embassy stuff and article 5's, NBC paperwork and travel approvals......all of which should average around 12 weeks, give or take. I'm not setting my watch cuz I don't want to be disappointed if it takes longer....and secretly I'm thinking that the more time until we go gives us just that much more time to come up with the rest of the expenses....
But for now, we are very excited.

It's Official

Today, after spending 10 weeks looking at that precious face, we got our official approval to adopt Miss Olivia. We couldn't be more excited!
Tomorrow we head to the agency to sign some paperwork and send out the next part for immigration. We will also be able to send her a care package and request more pictures of her. That I cannot wait for!
YAY!!! She's ours!

Thanksgiving 2010

It came and went and here it is 5 days later already. My gosh, time flies.
We had a really nice day at Mike's house with tons of good food


lots of laughs, and loud kids all over the place. Pretty typical holiday for us.


That night I went with Mindy, Pat, Lindsey, Kristin, Amy, and Dan to the outlet mall that opened at 10pm. Other than being freezing outside, it was a lot of fun. There were a ton of great deals and I was surprised at how much I was able to find. I'm thinking this is going to be a new tradition. It sure beats getting up at 3am on Friday to wait outside all the other stores.
On Friday, after Jay got off of work, we went out to the Mall of America with the kids. We mostly strolled around from store to store and floor to floor.
For dinner, we decided to go to Ruby Tuesday's. As we were sitting there, I noticed a family with 2 little girls that looked like they might be from China. The younger of the 2 seemed to be about the age that Olivia is and I couldn't stop watching her. I was sure the mom was gonna see me staring and think I was nuts. Jay knew I was dying to talk to them, but I didn't want to impose so he just took it upon himself to instead. Hey, no one can ever accuse that guy of being shy.
Long story short....we got talking to them and sure enough, they had adopted both little girls from China and the youngest had just come home about 6 mos. ago. She was 2 1/2. We asked the parents some advice about what to expect when we go there to get her. Her best advice was to not have any expectations or ideas or how it will go because you just don't know and you just have to be able to go with the flow. That's our plan. Just love her and hold her and try to get her to trust us....just a bit, before returning home.
The boys were so cute with the girls and it gave me a glimpse a few months into the future. We can't wait. We ended up getting their email address and are hoping to stay in touch throughout. It's always good to have other people around you who have gone through it. I just love how God puts people in your way like that.

This year, above all, I am thankful for my growing family. For our continued health and the boys' safety. Everything else in life is gravy.....

Tony's missing teeth

Less than 2 weeks ago, Tony still had all his front teeth.
Look at how things can change in just a short time.
This is a week ago....


And this is today.


I'm not sure how many more he can lose in front before we'll have to put him on a liquid diet.

Running out of time

For some reason I thought I'd check on my New Year's Day post from this year. I knew I had listed some things I wanted to accomplish so I figured I check them out to see how I've done.

Um....bad idea.

The way I see it I have 2 options.....

I can either say forget it, I failed miserably

Or...

I can take the next 6 weeks and try and do something....anything.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure yet which option I'm going to take.

It's 1:15am and I'm tired so option 1 seems like a pretty good idea right now.

I mean, it's only 6 weeks away from being able to start all over again.

Maybe in the morning I won't be in such a hurry to take the easy way out.

To be continued.......

Two Months

Yesterday marked 2 mos. since we saw our Olivia's face for the first time. We are on day 62 of waiting for our LOA. Maybe we are supposed to count from our PA time which would knock about 2 weeks off of that wait. At any rate, we're getting closer. The average time to LOA is 6 weeks. I'm praying we get it this week. I don't think I can stand it much longer. I just want to have that and move on to the next part.
Soon....I hope.