Dossier done and sent!!

Shawn and I met with our social worker last night to go over all of our dossier documents. She told us that we did a really good job and she felt like it was ready to be sent on to the main office for the official review!! (I was a little disappointed that it took us as long as it did to finish everything up (7 weeks exactly), but everyone assures me this is a really fast amount of time to get done. Oh well, maybe next time I can get it down to 4 weeks!)That meant a quick trip to FedEx this morning to make 4 copies (a whole lotta paper!!) and then put them all in a really big box to send them off. Once the main office finishes the review (takes about 1 week), they will let us know if anything needs to be changed and give us a chance to fix any problems. It will then be sent off to Colombia for translation (usually takes 2-4 weeks).

It is at this point that we might be put in a holding pattern as we are also waiting for the pre-approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Office to adopt a child and bring them to the United States. Until we have this approval, our dossier and application can't be sent to the orphanage in Colombia that we are adopting from. We are really hoping that everything gets done about the same time, though, so we don't have any downtime and can get right on the next waiting list. We are ready to truly start preparing for the arrival of our child.

Our First Baby Purchase

So we aren't going to make a habit of blogging about our purchases...but we are just so excited we had to share this picture! We bought our crib bedding/linens this weekend!! I have had my eye on these Honey Bees for almost a year and we thought we should buy it before it gets taken off the market for new designs. We are still holding off on buying the accessories (though I love them and want them all:) and the actual furniture. Shawn said that I have officially started nesting and I guess he is right.

Also, make sure to check back tomorrow night for some more exciting news on the adoption front!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

For those of you who know me, you know birthdays are very big to me. Even though I'm not thrilled to be inching closer to the big 3-0...I did very much enjoy my birthday today. I had lots of phone calls from friends and family, including the birthday song sung to me in harmony. I also got tons of Facebook messages (a new form of communication in my life). The girls at work brought in a cake and got me some of my favorite Jelly Belly jelly beans. Shawn was super sweet all day. After work I opened my presents (including an iTunes gift card and a certificate for a shopping spree with Shawn) and then we went to dinner at a fun French restaurant in Carytown...Can Can Brasserie. We had a delicious meal with a trio of sorbets for dessert. On Friday, I will be celebrating my birthday with my family (including my grandparents and aunt that are visiting from Missouri) that will be topped off with a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake...yummy:) Maybe by the time my birthday rolls around again next year we will be parents!

Summer has arrived...

With the celebration of Memorial Day last weekend, summer has arrived for us. That is always the first weekend we head down to my parent's lake house and start enjoying the water and the sun. It was too cold to do much outdoor stuff over the holiday weekend, but Shawn and I took a really quick trip down on Saturday to get in some skiing. The conditions were perfect...warmer weather, smooth water, and we had almost the whole lake to ourselves all day. Usually we have to get out on the water by around 7:30 am to avoid the crowds, but we were even able to ski in the middle of the afternoon yesterday...a real treat!! Shawn is a much better skier than me and he likes to show off by using only one ski, but we both have a great time and my parents seem to enjoy watching us.

On the adoption front...we are plugging along on the paperwork for the dossier. We are hoping to have everything done that we can by the end of this week or early next week. We are still waiting on some things to come back to us from the FBI and US Immigration, but we have no control over that and just have to be patient. We have both been working very hard to gather everything up and it will be a big relief to be able to mail it off and stop thinking about all the little details!