One Amazing Weekend!

Thank God for Grandparents that are willing to take our 3 crazies and puppy for an entire weekend! I don’t even know where to start with what this past weekend meant to us as a couple and as a family. It all began when our friend Megan went to Blogher in NYC and roomed with another mother named Christine. Through Megan’s posts, I followed a link to Christine’s blog where she talked about the challenges of parenting children who have endured major trauma in their lives (adoption being a part of that) and using Therapeutic Parenting to work towards attachment and linking the thinking and feeling parts of the child’s brain so that they can better process feelings and emotions. As it turned out, Christine was going to be talking at a conference just miles from our house. After reading about the conference, I knew we had to attend and quickly shot off an e-mail to T. He was on-board and so were grandma and grandpa! Yah! Little did I know what the weekend had in store for us when we walked in Saturday morning, cups of coffee in hand, thinking that we were going to learn some great tools to help strengthen our attachment and bond with K. By Sunday afternoon, we had 50 new friends that we had shared our hearts with and they had done the same, we broke down together as the Kleenex box was passed around the room, we built ourselves back up together and realized we all had a strength in us that we never knew was there, we saw the fear in each other and were forced to ask ourselves if adopting a 4 ½ yr old with a rough start would be beyond our capabilities, we saw the hand of God leading us to this weekend and giving us the tools to be better parents, better spouses and better individuals. We left on Sunday, opening the door to beautiful spring weather, the warm sun on our faces, our eyes open and saying in our hearts, “How could we not adopt this precious little girl that by the grace of God will one day be our daughter ! We need to say yes to her as God has said yes to us“ . More to come!

Setbacks...I've had a few...

Long week, suffice is to say, that while our dossier sits waiting in Colombia, we found out that our psychological report is missing a required personality test that our psychologist thought was discretionary. Luckily we can just add an addendum that has to be notarized and appostilled, send it to our agency to forward to Colombia. Hopefully our psycologist will return from spring break soon. In the grand scheme of things, it could be a lot worse, if we were not waiting for our USCIS approval to submit the dossier anyways, so hopefully, the stars align and our addendum arrives at the same time our I-800a does and all things will be good in the world.

Now I will get on my soap box for a min. The nuggets and I (we are now calling E2 and K the nuggets) go to open gym on Fridays. There is usually a group of respectful mamas at the gym looking for their kiddos to have some fun and exercise. Well with spring break, it seems like every mom who had the joy of having their kiddos home all week were, by Friday, looking for anywhere to dump them off on someone else. So instead of taking care that their kids were being respectful of others, they chatted or stayed in the lobby texting on their I-phones while their little brats pushed my kids, skipped my kids and were just plain rude and disrespectful. I get it, you need a break from your kids but REALLY! Dumping them off on other moms' is not a solution. So yes, if your kid told you in the lobby that they got an earful from another mama, I admit, it was probably me, so STEP OFF! No one cuts the line in front of my kids! And next time you want to dump your kids at open gym, I will expect to be paid minimum wage for babysitting time!

1st times a charm. 2nd.. you're certifiable..

The first time you sign up and run a 50k, people just think your nuts or weird, or maybe just got a bad batch of coffee.

The second time you sign up, people begin to look at you with that "You did what?" look with the furled eyebrows. You know the look.

Well, the blog is Tri for Hope, Sacrifice with purpose. As always, the intentions are to do things "with purpose". In the gusty, cold wind of the lakefront, I completed my 2nd 50k. I didn't expect it to be easy, but I also didn't expect the wind and cold to make it as challenging as it did. Unofficial guesses between myself and another individual.. the wind might have accounted for an additional 30minutes of time out on the course. My first 1/3 split was quite blistering. At the half-way point, I know I was in for a long day, as I was close to tapped out. A combo of run/walk got me through the cold, numbness, and the legs doing their best to convince my brain that they were not capable of even walking anymore.

Certifiable? Perhaps. But I'll say this. If there's another 50k in my future, its not likely to be one on the Lakefront of Chicago in March. I'll leave that to the hardcore Ultra runners.

Peace

Adoption News!

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that formed for me, when as yot there was none of them." Psalm 139:13, 14, 16

We have a file for a beautiful 4 1/2 yr old little girl from Colombia and she has captured our hearts! We found out this week that our dossier was sent to Colombia for translation, and they will then hold it there for our I-800a approval. Our fingerprinting isn't until mid April, so we are praying that after we are fingerprinted, we will have the approval in hand quickly so IBCF can start reviewing our file.

Colombia's process works a bit different than our Guatemala adoption in that Colombia will first approve us to adopt, then they will send our file to the region the child is at and then they will approve us to adopt her specifically and officially give us her referral, so although we have her file, she has not be officially referred to us and there are several more steps that need to take place. For this reason, we are only sharing specifics about her with imediate family at this time until we have her official referral, which could be 4-5 months off. We appreciate all your prayers as we continue in this amazing journey!

Tale of the Dueling Fingerprints

*** UPDATE **** Oh for Pete's Sake! I tried to do a give away and the FBI clearances arrived before I could publish this post! Not to mention on 3/21 we got our USCIS fingerprint appointment so the FBI fingerprints won. Will have to try another give away soon. Maybe this time I will post a picture of the giveaway item to encourage more comments!
Stardate: Jan. 26, 2011, time 0 seven hundred hours
Captain’s Log: Sealed envelope containing most computerized scan of 10 digits sent via Priority red container through these United States of Postal Systems marked “HIGH SECURITY” for elusive “No Arrest Record” correspondence from said Bureau of Investigations for which Country that is not spelled with a “u” has requested.
Stardate: March 2, 2011
Captain’s Log: Largest acrobatic offspring takes part in celebration of certain milestone, 6 yrs in the making and shares edible fluffy bake good with crew mates much to their delight. New crew member, arriving for the celebration from land of many potatoes appears to be leaking fluids (note Trans-former reference) and should be docked near emergency exit. I-800A paperwork has been processed through crew chief and has received final approval for departure via transportation vessel Fe.d-Ex.
Stardate: March 14, 2011
Captain’s Log: Confirmed receipt of I-800A via transportation vessel. Additional engagement for 10 digit recording appointment TBD. Captain notes passage of 6 weeks since first 10 digit record sent to Bureau and projects additional 2-4 weeks before receipt of elusive letter stating “No Arrest Record”. Additionally, based on significant analysis of past data, Captain predicts additional 4 weeks until I-800A appointment which should prove to be ample time to heal self inflected stab wound on opposable thumb resulting from physics defying puncture by adjacent broken nail plate that in turn “bled like a mother” during transport of nuggets to Starfleet training class. Captain announces friendly wager with other commanders.

Will the Bureau letter arrive before or after I-800A FP appointment? Leave your guess in the comments with your e-mail. Correct guesses will be entered into THE FIRST GIVEWAY EVER AT TRIFORHOPE (HINT, giveaway is a pair of shiny ear thingies!!!!!!!)

Where am I going with this...

ok, between the new puppy peeing on the carpet, I think I have found some time to blog a bit and catch up. E1's Godmother sent me a book and journal for Christmas and in the chaos, I had not had time to start it. Well it turns out that I was at a conference 2 days last week and finally had a chance to dig in. In reality, i couldn't put it down and while, for once, I had the chance to go to bed early, this Ash Wednesday, I found myself trying to reflect on, well, myself. And so far, I have found myself asking myself what it all means. The point of the first chapter was to use movies us chicks love (aka, chick flicks) to point out that every woman wants to be romanced, wants to play a role in a great adventure and wants to feel beautiful. While I listed the movies I most enjoy, I found that besides Ewan McGregor being a constant in several of them, they were all, in a word, horribly tragic. Yes there was love, yes there may have been some romance, if you consider an encounter at a auto manufacuturing plant romance, but in the end, more often than not, someone dies, and dies tragically, leaving a gaping wound in the hearts of their significant other. Not quite the romance novel that the author speaks about or any sort of happy ending. Through the author's questions, this got me thinking about how strangly important it was/is to me in my relationships that I feel protected and would be saved, should a situation arise. I will never forget hubby telling me, walking in downtown Milwaukee while we were dating, (I was only 17 at the time) that if someone came and tried to rob us, that i should run and he would do whatever to protect me. In hindsight, the scenario was pretty far fetched, but I was hooked. He would be my champion, my hero, at least on paper and in my head. Years later facing a coral snake in Belize heading towards my inner tube, reality set in as I was faced with a life and death situation, it was every man for himself, including our guide who watched in horror as I tried to put as much distance between my tube and the snake. I ended up saving myself, there was no hero that came rushing in on a white innertube, throwing himself between me and the snake....there was just me. I am hoping that hubby doesn't read into this post as any kind of failure on his behalf, because its not, and it shouldn't be. In real life, I don't think it is realistic to expect someone to behave like some sort of Lord of the Rings hero at the ready with a sword should some Ork jump out from behind the evergreen when I am walking to get the mail. What I really am curious about is why this scenario is so important to me and why it is not good enough that after I saved myself from a snake once, that I can't rely on myself to do it again (should I be faced with some sort of deadly snake scenario, which of course happens all the time in the midwest). God, I am such a GIRL! I can't help but wonder if this ends up being a piece to that alusive puzzle I have been trying to put together for years...I guess we will see what Chapter 2 brings! Got to run, puppy needs to pee..again

Tired in advance..

just thinking about the 21miler coming up sometime this weekend is making me sleepy. Have fun storming the Castle...

In the last 2 weeks....

I have managed to break our eldest heart twice after we met two shelter dogs that didn't turn out to be right for our family. Tears were shed. I managed to notice that I have a meatball on toothpicks running around our house who I thoughtfully named butterball (wow, those christmas PJ are not flattering E2, but the thought of a meatball on toothpicks running around the house made me laugh so hard I peed my pants). I managed to eat an entire bag of dark chocolate pretzels in hopes that my larger butt would slow the descent into K's regressive behavior. It didn't work, but they were delish. I managed to frighten myself by realizing how often T and I end up on the same page these days. I managed to bury myself in paperwork and puppy finding last weekend so much so that I forgot the post office was closed on monday. I managed to send the blue footed boo-bie through the car wash cause I couldn't see out the windows any longer and if you got within 5' of it you could taste the salt. Besides, its always fun to see k's look of terror turn to a glee-ful squeal when the colored soap hits her window. I even managed to wash the kitchen floor in the last two weeks! yah ME (for washing the kitchen floor, not so much for eating all the chocolate)!

19miles and we Collide..

Lyrics from "Collide" by Howie Day

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you

..
I worry I won't see your face
Light up again

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out the doubt the fills your mind
I somehow find
You and I collide

19 miles on the road. Knees are sore. 2 miles more than 17. My heart still soars. 2 miles less than 21. Still such a long way more. 6 weeks to my personal 50k. 6 weeks closer to the day when you and I may finally collide.

For those that I love that I already see, and to those I love I've not yet met. I can't do much. But I can run. I run for time to pass, run for praise (to him the gives me strength), run for healing, for you...

1770 miles done. 8,014 more to go.

Peace

10 Things you Might not Know about J

10. I love milk. As in LOVE milk! The colder the better and I absolutely hate soda. I think I drank so much milk one time that I gave myself a kidney stone. When my dr. suggested I needed more calcium in my diet I had to laugh. Once I relayed the kidney stone story, he changed his mind.

9. I reverse-sneak my kids (if that is a word). There I admitted it. The kids, especially the boys are notorious for sneaking into our bedroom in the middle of the night, crawling into bed and then snoring in our faces. I wait for them to fall asleep in our bed, then sneaking out of our room and into their bunk bed. After a peaceful night sleep with the stuffed animals, the first thing I usually hear is someone asking where mama disappeared to as the last place they tend to look is in their own bedroom.....

8. I ate a pringle covered in ants on our honeymoon. It was dark and I didn't realize it until I felt them crawling on my hand. They were crunchy.

7. When we first bought our house, it needed painting. So we bought a ladder and I spent all summer on an extension ladder painting the exterior. Its starting to peel again and I am starting to wonder how I managed to paint it the first time around and still be here to tell the story.

6. I secretly wish I had a closet full of shoes like Carrie on SITC, but wonder how long it would take me to break my ankle hiking around a construction site in my
Man.olos.

5. I am convinced that most things women "claim" to be a result of child bearing are not. They just don't want to admit they are getting old. Case in point, I never birthed a child however a. My beautiful blonde hair is now a shade of dirty dish water b. I have a pooch c. I pee my pants when I laugh too hard.

4. Speaking of old, I am now jealous of women who are in their early thirties as someone pointed out to me the other day that I am now "pushing forty". Luckily I discovered a time machine.

3. I caught a 10" diameter plate of barf the other night at our favorite restaurant totally unnoticed by anyone sitting around us. The hard part was trying to figure out what to do with it after the vomit machine (AKA E2) finally turned off. Needless to say I ran into the owner on the way to the dishpan. Oh so embarrassing

2. I have had 2 ticks on two separate occasions decide that my left cheek was an ideal location to set up shop, and I am not talking about the cheeks on my face. Both time I had to call in reinforcements (AKA T) to get the confounded thing out as I am not a Circ-de-Solie performer people!

1. I can't think of anything else. So much for the build up......