Japanese Gardens, Pumpkins, and Cousins

We have had a busy, funfilled past few days.  Saturday we took Hannah to the Japanese Gardens and had so much fun.  She loves feeding the fishies and it was such a nice cool morning. 

Hi fishies!

climbing the big wall like daddy did when he was little

Playing in the water, yep I was soaked afterwards

All gone, eat up fishies!

Then that afternoon we went to our church to pick out a few pumpkins for our house.  I got some cute pics, but the patch is right off a busy road and parking lot so the background isn't so cute.  We may venture out to a 'country' pumpkin patch to get some better pics. 

She tried to sit on all the pumpkins. So cute.

HAHA I LOVE the look on her face.  She was stuck and falling back and not sure what to make of the hay.

LOVE this pic, DISLIKE the cars in the backround.  I need to figure out how to photoshop it.

Then today my cousin, Tracy, and her girls came out to visit and see our new casa.  We had fun and Hannah PASSED out from the exhastion of keeping up with the big kids. : ) Loving this weather!   Hannah just loves to be outside all the time.  It's great. 

Ashlynn, Hannah, and Kendyl

Love the way she watches the big girls!

Me and my girl Kendyl

With her mommy and my cousin Tracy

So Sweet

'bunny hunting'

My blue eyed beauty...and yes she wears a bow everyday,

 in fact she asks for one when she gets up in the morning! LOL

Having a snack outside

On the adoption front, paperwork keeps coming in and then going out, either to Austin to be apostilled or to Pittsburgh to our agency.  My todo list is dwindling down and I LOVE marking off what is completed!  We have our pychological testing this coming up Friday.  Wish us luck! LOL

I recieved my necklace!!!

Here is the necklace I designed!  I LOVE LOVE IT!!!! It is even better than I expected.  I designed it using this website... http://fotoflexer.com/ and Ordered it from this Etsy vendor http://www.etsy.com/shop/sscatstudio  It took just shy of two weeks to get.  Not to shabby considering it had to fly over seas.  The second pic reflects why I chose this vendor to make it.  I loved the heart in the back. No one else I looked at had this. An even better plus was that with shipping I only spent a whopping $9 on it!

Love it! 

Love the heart : )

Zoo Pics

Today was such a beautiful day for the zoo.  We have an annual pass and go pretty regularly, but today I actually brought my camera.  Here's a few pics!

Hannah and her Nana.  She usually loves feeding the birds, but wasn't into it today I guess.  This big fat one followed us around the bird cage Ha!

Nana and her Aunt Ali

These two black bears have been smooching since we came last week!  Funny...maybe some baby black bears at the Zoo soon?? ; )

Hi Mommy

Ooh pretty kitty

Excited to run into her other grandma, Mimi, and her cousin Gracie 

Laughing at Gracie...she loves her

My neice Gracie! Pretty cute huh?!

Hannah with her Nana and Mimi

Not sure what was up with my mom's camera aim, but Hannah is sitting on a elephant statue.

Um, no comment ; )

This was so sweet.  We were waiting inline for the carousel and Hannah was INTENTLY watching it.

Sweet girl

Waving

Loving it!

Gracie-poo

Just a mini update...

Well we are still paperchasing away!  As of right now there is a package in Austin with a few items getting Apostilled (FYI: Apostille is making a document 'Authentic'.  It is an international certification comparable to a notarization in domestic law.) There is a package of minor things on its way to our adoption agency in PA and more importantly the package containing all of our home study items are heading across town to our home study agency!! This means that we will finally get to meet our Social Worker, Jenna, and finalize our home study after an in home meeting or two. This is the first HUGE step because after we get our copy we then get to file our I-600!! (FYI: I-600 is the application to classify an orphan who either is, or will be, adopted by a U.S. citizen as an immediate relative of the U.S. citizen to allow the child to enter the United States. The petition is filed by the U.S. citizen who is adopting the child.)  Soooo by the time we get this approval we will have gotten together the rest of the items for our dossier (again FYI: Dossier is a collection of papers giving detailed information about a particular person or subject. AKA the items produced from this crazy paperchase we are in.) Exciting! We are finally starting to see results from all of this work.  Next week we get to (haha 'get to') to the MMPI2 exam (yep..FYI (so many new terms!) MMPI2 stands for Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.  It is one of the most frequently used personality tests in mental health. The test is used by trained professionals (a psychologist) to assist in identifying personality structure and psychopathology. So basically a test to make sure we aren't crazy.  No comments!)
What else....I designed a cute little image stating 'Expecting from Russia'.  i found someone on Etsy to make it into a glass tile necklace.  Of course I chose someone in the UK. SO it's probably sitting in customs right now.  I can not wait to get it!  At least with Hannah I was obviously expecting, but this will be my little way of shouting out to the world that we're expecting this little guy! Pic to follow...If I ever get it. I guess that's it. Not much else going on in our little world.  Just enjoying life and Loving this weather right now!

INFO overload...beach vacay, new house,MDO, test, paper chase....

Wow it has been such a busy past couple of months.  I finally uploaded the few pics I took on our family vacation to Galveston.  Hannah is very much a beach baby!  She loved it more and more each day we were there.  We had a blast.   

My cutie

I want some candy!!!

Hmmm just not sure about this wet brown stuff...

Ok I get it! (yep father-in-law in background hehe)

Beautiful girl

Um someone is stinky!  LOL

I want to go play golf!

My sister in law and her boyfriend had made this the day before the pic was taken.  We came back out the next morning and found it like this!  LOL they even left a $5 tip! Love it

splash splash!

Love this

Love this pic too, Hannah with her Aunt Ali

Mine and Hannah's footprint

 When we returned we finally got to move into our new house! It has been so nice to have our stuff out of storage and Hannah sleeping back in her own room.  She RULES this house!  LOL Caleb and I are just her tenants. : ) She has her own playroom right off the kitchen, and stairs (yikes), and a pretty cute bedroom.  The bedroom had been occupied by a 16 yr old girl who had it all decked out tiki-hut style.  They left the window covering and bed 'hut'.  It was so cute that we decided to keep it as Hannah's room too!  Her crib is so cute under it and she loves it.  It goes with the bathroom, as I did it up with beach critters.  Hmmm just got to figure out what to do little brother's room in now. I haven't got any pics of the house yet, but they will soon be coming as we have to take pics of our house for the adoption.  We have a pretty decent size backyard and Hannah has been loving it.  We put out a sprinkler for her to run in and she loves it.

not so sure...

This is fun!

Brave girl

Yesterday, Hannah started a Mother's Day Out.  Even though she doesn't have to go, I feel that it is so important for her growth and development to be around other kids, that aren't siblings or cousins, among many other perks of this program.  It's at a church right across from our house that has a great children's ministry.  I waited too long to get her into our church program, but I am pleased with what this one has to offer.  Hannah did great!  She cried when I dropped her off, as did I : ), like she does on Sunday's, but they reported to me that she stopped crying quickly and she had a great day.  She ate her lunch and snack and slept for the entire allotted nap time!  She was so happy to see me when I picked her up.  It was great.  We then went to visit Daddy, Mimi, and Papa at work where she showed off her coloring for the day.

Checking out her backpack

Loving it

Let's go!

Also on Saturday I finally took and passed my Acute Care Nurse Practitioner exam!  I've already been Primary Care certified, but took some time off from having to study before I decided to buckle down and get this thing taken.  What does this mean for me?  Nothing really.  The position I am in now I only need my Primary care licence, but I'll get a little raise and I'll be more marketable with future job prospects.  But I'm so glad to have it done! I can now focus on getting the rest of my house unpacked and working on the adoption!

So on the adoption front...oh.my.gosh.  I knew it would be a lot of paperwork, but after receiving the initial packet of todo's....let's just say I lost some sleep stressing over it!  My goodness it's a lot of stuff!  The other night I typed up mine and Caleb's todo lists to help get us organized and we're just going to start at the top and work our way down.  One good thing is that we are not in any hurry, so we are just going to take our time and get it done in the most 'stressless' manor we can. : )

Whew that was a long post...pray that we stay sane during this time period of the adoption!! It is quite overwhelming!

Oh and one more thing, my RN career consisted of working as a NICU nurse and it is and will always be so near and dear to my heart.  Yesterday marked a MAJOR milestone for my former NICU.  They officially opened thier 100 bed, all private rooms, NICU.  Got to admit I felt a little sad that I couldn't be a part of this incredible move, but I am so thrilled for all those babies, families, and my former staff to be recieving such amazing unit.  And when I say amazing, I mean AH-MAZING!  I got to tour it recently and it is incredible.  There are private rooms for twins, triplets, and even quads.  Here's a news link from one of the news stations that coved the historical move.  They moved over 50 babies in two hours!....      http://www.wfaa.com/video?id=129340248&sec=553117 

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Big-Little-Move-at-Cook-Childrens-129340568.html

I love seeing my former coworkers on the news!

Ok one more of my baby girl!  This was from her 1 year pics by Corrimages in Mansfield.  We've been using them for all her milestone pics.  Cori is a fabulous photographer and we are so thankful for all the precious pics she has taken for us!

My sassy girl!

Accepted and moving forward!

After a fabulous vacation to Galveston for a week and moving/getting settled into our new house, we are finally getting some paper work together for our homestudy.  We were formally accpeted by our agency and sent our signed contract back to them.  We are now awaiting another big 'ol packet of paperwork in the mail to begin working on our dossier!  It's getting exciting!!! For those of you not in the adoption world, a dossier is a compilation of official documents about us that will be sent over to Russia for the Russian government to review.  Not sure what is all consists of yet, but I hear it's a lot of paperwork and time consuming.  I've also been looking at cribs and bedding trying to get ideas for his room.  So much harder than when I had Hannah!  Plus I have all of Hannah's baby item strewn across his room that needs to be sorted through, given back, and/or donated.  This is a task that will take some time and I'm sure a few tears will be shed. ; )  If I ever upload my pics from Galveston, I'll get them posted.  Our Hannah is quite the beach lover!

And so it begins......

Application is sent off to our prospective agency!!! We put it in the mail on Monday, two weeks ahead of when we had planned to, after many, many months of discussion, researching, and praying.  I was getting a little antsy and ready to start NOW!  If you know me, you know I'm not one to enjoy waiting on anything.  I'm sure I'll be in for a lesson on patience!  : ) We signed on our new house today and are anxious to get moved in.  Now we just sit back and wait for the loads of paperwork to start rolling in!! To be continued....