Adoption Update!!

We received great news on Friday...on Wednesday, August 20th our dossier translation was completed and given to the orphanage! This means we are on the official list and are now officially waiting!! It is almost surreal to know that the Colombian adoption officials now have our name and information and know we are desiring to adopt a child from their country. We still have a long wait ahead of us (anywhere from 6-18 months), but it feels like it could happen any minute. We have some dossier documents that have to be updated every six months, but for now, I guess we get to do the fun stuff...like get the nursery ready!

Happy (belated) Anniversary to us!

Since August 14, 2008 (our 4th anniversary) was spent with Shawn at work and me having dinner with my parents and then watching the Olympics, I'm sure you will forgive the late post about our special day. We didn't really get to celebrate until this week when we spent the night at the Hilton at Virginia Beach (thanks mom and dad!) We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and spent the rest of the day at the rooftop pool. It was pretty windy and sometimes a little cold, but the hot tub felt really nice! We had a nice dinner and then enjoyed the concert in the park followed by a walk along the boardwalk eating our yummy ice cream cones. Thursday we spent lounging in the sand and sun at the beach. The water was really rough and the wind was still strong so neither of us ventured into the surf, but we had a great time reading and people watching. Our room was really nice, too, and we were able to keep the door to the balcony open almost all the time to enjoy the sound of the waves and the smell of the ocean breeze.

We (actually I!!) spend a lot of time reminiscing about our wedding day. Even though the weather was crummy from the remnants of Hurricane Charley, we made the most of it! I will always remember the memories we made on that August day and enjoy adding to them with the anniversary trips we try to take every year.

I also just had to include this picture. We also spent some time at the lake earlier this week and when we were pulling up the anchor...this is what came up with it. I totally freaked out and wouldn't go near all the "seaweed" (as I like to call it) and Shawn had to handle cleaning off the anchor and keeping the boat away from the shore all by himself!! I'm so much help on the boat:)

Watermelon Festival

There are many festivals in Richmond and it seems that most of them deal with food. Today happened to be the annual Watermelon Festival in Carytown, a local shopping district. After a nice lunch with some friends from church, we decided to take a break from our around-the-clock Olympic watching and get some fresh air while eating our fill of watermelon. Our good friends and their two kids came with us, too. The street was closed to traffic and there were tons of people walking around looking at the booths, eating the food, and listening to the bands along the way. The orgainzers were expecting over 100,000 people...and I would say they got at least that many! The watermelon was delicious and we all had a great time. I'm not sure this will become an annual event in our family, but it is always a way to kill some time on a Sunday afternoon in August if we are looking for something to do!

Fun at the zoo!

A little known fact...Richmond has a zoo!! And Shawn and I went with several families from our Sunday School class last weekend for a fun zoo experience. As can be expected, the zoo was not the best I had ever been to, but for a small operation they had a lot of animals. We were able to see monkeys, camels, snakes, prairie dogs, a lion and tiger, lots of gazelles (African deer as I like to call them) and many other animals. We were able to feed the giraffes (yuck!!) and watch the penguin feeding. Another little known fact...12 of the 17 species of penguins in the world are warm-weather penguins. So the penguins at our zoo are perfectly happy being outdoors even though it was about 95 degrees outside! We also took a "Safari Train Ride" into the Africa region where we able to go behind the fences and ride around with the less dangerous African animals. The adults thought this was much more fun than the kids in our group, as thy were restricted to their seats and really just wanted to run around. We had a really nice picnic lunch and then went back to see the rest of the animals. It was so hot outside we thought we might melt, and apparently the animals felt the same way! As you can see at the edge of the picture with the camels, a lot of the animals were lounging around and laying in the shade. The kids started getting really tired/cranky, too, so we all decided to call it a day. Overall, I think our zoo outing was a success!