Drama, Drama, Drama..... Why does there always have to be drama. My moms other brother W-(that no one likes) is causing some serious drama. He has accused my parents and my cousin (her dad B- is the one dying) of going into B-'s house and stealing things.... First of all B- is a bachelor so as we all know most bachelors don't have anything worth stealing...

My uncle W- is mentally ill and an alcoholic, so that makes for loads of fun!!! So I fly to Florida tomorrow to be the Pitbull to keep W- away from my mom and my cousin so they can take care of anything that needs to be done.

Also crazy W- went to B-'s business that he owns with my moms sisters husband and chain locked the doors so no one could get in... Keep in mind he has nothing to do with this business and has NO right to even be there, so my aunts husband is very angry and heading down there too, but with an Attorney!!!! I said I would be happy to bring my bolt cutters....

Plus to top it off my other cousin went into labor.... So her mom, my moms sister is torn because she wants to be in Florida, but she also needs to be in Michigan with her daughter and be there when her first grandchild is born... So that is another reason why I am going, to take some of the stress off my aunt.

I guess its true one dies and another is born.. Sometimes it just works out that way.

I wanted to ask everyone to please pray for my uncle. He has some heart problems and today things went very bad. My mom was a Open Heart Surgery RN for several years and she has been with him since she got the call, she does not think his going to make it.

This is my favorite uncle, he is a great guy and lots of fun to be around. I am extra worried about my Grandma, she has a bad heart also and I am afraid of how hard loosing one of her kids will be on her.

I also ask that you think of my mom because she is in charge making sure that his wishes are followed and making any important decisions on his behalf.

Thank you.

Another weekend comes to a close. We went to a Halloween party last night, we did not get to dressed up. We just wore our Mullett wigs (looked very stylish too I might add). We were babysitting as we usually do on Saturday nights and G- was just looking at us like what the heck, she was not scared of anyone she just wanted to check everyone out. (G- is 7 months old)

I have noticed that there are a few fellow bloggers on here that are from the Nashville Tennessee area, I was wondering if there are any groups that get together for adopted Asian children? There is a local group here were I live, but the lady I contacted said it was only for children from China. So with my parents relocating to the Nashville area I know we will be visiting often, so I was hoping there is a group in that area to hook up with.

I hope this week brings lots of referrals and travel dates.

Well, we received some not so great news from our agency this week. They are saying the wait for a referral has increased to 8-12 months for a girl. I am hoping since we said we would accept a little girl under the age of 2, that maybe we will get a referral a little sooner. After receiving the longer wait time news I curled up in the fetal position for a while now that I have pulled myself together and am doing okay. Well I have to do okay what choice do I have? As crappy as a longer wait time is there is nothing I can do about it.

Our Dossier has been in Vietnam for 4 months and 1 week..... Not that I'm keeping track!!

On a good note I am wearing pants today, oh let me rephrase that, I am wearing jeans today.. I have not been able to wear jeans since my surgery, so I have been wearing jogging pants. Just to let everyone know, I wear pants everyday. I would not want to scare anyone..

Has anyone started Christmas shopping yet? I know we are planning to start while we are in Tennessee, but I have no idea what to get my husband.. Last year I got him a "manly diaper bag" its navy blue from L.L.Bean. He said there would be NO WAY he would be caught dead with the diaper bag I had picked out. Apparently the Petal Pink collection by Vera Bradley is not his taste...

And I was just curious, when did Madonna start speaking with a British accent? All of my family is from Michigan and I have not detected even the slightest hint of a British accent in any of us... Maybe more of a Canadian accent (or Yooper for those who know what this is).

I have not yet went down to get my pumpkins. I might try to get them this weekend, but that would require me to stay out of bed past 8:30. The cold and snow are not helping me stay out of a warm bed.

We are hoping that the weather is warmer when we are in Tennessee over Thanksgiving. Actually, Rich is flying to Florida the Saturday before Thanksgiving to help my parents move. Then on Thanksgiving morning Shelby and I are driving down, Shelby has agreed to navigate the trip. Actually, the trip is not to bad about 7 hours. I have made it several times, because some of us girls like to go to the Honky Tonks down there for the weekend every now and them. I will be there 10 days.

We will also be celebrating my favorite Holiday while I am down there.... My Birthday.... It's not until mid December, but since we will be there until December 3rd, it might as well get celebrated!!

Besides getting Kittens referral for my Birthday (and Christmas) I am not sure what else I want. A referral would be the best present EVER!!!!!

I go back to work tomorrow. So I guess my life of leisure is over for now. I guess only a week does not make it a life!

My parents close on their new house in Tennessee in about 3 weeks, so I am excited for them. My mom wants all new stuff for their new home, so on Thursday when I was feeling up to it, I wanted out of the house so I went to the La-Z-boy furniture store to check out their stuff for my mom. By the way, very nice things. It felt good to get out and about. Of coarse I love shopping, especially when I will be spending someone else's money. I know we will be doing lots of shopping over the 10 days or so we will be in Tennessee with them.

Other than that, it has been slow around here.

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What the H@#$ is wrong with people.... I have pumpkins going up the fron steps of our house, however, they have been disappearing... And everytime one goes missing, I happen to see that this crazy lady down the street has a "new" pumkin on her from porch!!!! I had a white pumpkin that I loved and guess what, it is no longer on my steps, it has made its way down 5 house to this ladies front porch.... I am not losing it, I know my pumpkins because I grew them myself at my MILs house.

I have had a few run ins with this lady in the past, because I caught her standing in my front flower bed teasing my dog through our front window. That really p@ss%d me off. Also everytime she walks past my house and we are outside she tells us we have the ugliest dog she has ever seen. Personally, I think my dogs butt is better looking than her!!!! This crazy woman is probably between 35-45 years old, so she is no kid.

I am considering taking my other pumpkins down to her house and save her the trouble of stealing the rest. She walks with her kids everyday, what kind of example is setting for them by stealing other peoples stuff???

It really makes me mad because I planted these pumpkins this summer for Kitten, so she is actually stealing my little girls pumpkins. (ya, I know she is not home yet, but these where for her incase she was home.)

Any suggestions????

I had a good visit with my mom while she was here. She bought Kitten the cutest shirt from Baby Gap it says "Good looks run in my family".

I survived my surgery, the Doctor was able to find out what was giving me so many problems. He was able to fix some stuff, but than he found a Fibroid larger than a softball in my uterus.... Fun times.. So needless to say, I have to have another surgery to remove the Fibroid. Basically, I have to have have a C-section to get this thing out. Oh well, if thats what has to be done to make me feel better than I will do it. I want to get it done ASAP so that I am all recovered by the time we go to Vietnam (whenever that is).....

My dog Shelby has been taking great care of me since my surgery, she is making sure I have been getting plenty of sleep (her favorite pastime). I think tomorrow I will go to Target and walk around, since it is to cold and rainy here to walk around my neighborhood.

Today marks the 16th week our Dossier has been in Vietnam, I am hoping and praying for a referral soon, I don't know how much longer I can hold myself together.

I woke up this morning to let the dog outside and then I saw it, SNOW!!!!!! It is October 12th and there was flipping snow on the ground. The dog saw the snow too and decided that she could hold it until next Summer. Anyways, I was able to convince her that if she went really quick we could get back in bed and snuggle under the covers, so she complied. My dog is great at snuggling in bed, but the draw back is that she snores soooooo loud.... and she tends to hog the bed. My dog is the lovely Miss Shelby Ann, she is a Bulldog (aka the couch potato).

Shelby and I where looking at some other blogs and she noticed people trying their carriers out with their dogs in them, she thought maybe we should try it, because any kind of physical activity is a major inconvenience to her. I had to remind her that she is a trim 70lbs, so the carrier might not work for us, but we could look into a wagon for her and Kitten to share for our daily walks next Summer. She agreed to that.

Today is the 15th week our Dossier has been in Vietnam, I hope we have some news soon, if I have to wait to much longer I think I will be able to run for the Mayor of Crazy Town. (I am sure there are several more of us out there that can run too!!!!!!). Sending Congrats out to Sherri on her referral of Gracie, what a cute little girl, I hope you travel soon. Matter of fact, I hope everyone waiting to travel, travels soon.

Tomorrow is my last day of work week. yippy!!!! Then I am off all of next week for my surgery. I work 3-4 days a week normally, but because it is hunting season, the Doctor I work for takes off extra time... Fine by me.

I spoke with our agency yesterday to make sure they had received our updated homestudy (they had) and I just wanted to check if anymore referrals have been given out. They said they had not given out any referrals for about 4 weeks, but they where working on several referrals at this time, but could not give me anymore information other than that. So, I am praying that all these children they are working on are able to be matched with their forever families soon.

My mom called me to say she was finally able to find the t-shirt I have been looking for and kicking myself for not getting it when I first spotted it. We looked for it in Targets in 4 states and my mom finally found it at a Target in Florida it says "Everyone Loves A Brown Eyed Girl". I think that will look so cute on my Kitten cakes.

I am trying to keep a positive view while waiting for a referral (somedays are easier that others) and starting tomorrow, we are a week closer to our little person.

My BIL is getting married in March, first it was going to be in Scottsdale Arizona where they live, but now they decided they are going to get married at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. They love Vegas and were planning on honeymooning there anyways. I looked up the Monte Carlo Hotel, looks very nice. We have not yet been to Vegas and had just been talking about going there to see what it is like before Kitten comes home. So now with the wedding, that is just the perfect excuse for us. We tried to convince them the should have the wedding in Hawaii (we love Hawaii,we went last year for our Anniversary). But, no luck.....

My mom will be flying in next Saturday for my surgery on Tuesday, so I assume we will run wild in the streets until check-in time on Tuesday... Sunday we are going to Kalamazoo Michigan to visit my Aunt (moms sister) and my sweet Grammy (moms mom). My Grammy hand knitted a baby afghan for Kitten so I am excited to see it. My Grammy is 83 and not in the best health, but it was important for her to make this afghan. My Aunt works for Johnson& Johnson so she has a bunch of baby goodies that she has been buying at their employee store, she said she had to hide all the stuff she got for me at my Grammys because my Cousin (her daughter) keeps taking everything(she is pregnant and due any day now). So, I guess my mom and I will hit the Babies R us on Saturday to get some gifts for my cousin baby. It will be fun baby shopping with my mom, because with her being so far away , she has missed out on so much we have done. Maybe while we are out, she will just feel like Kitten needs more clothes or toys..... She did get her the BEST carseat ever (Britax Marathon) it is soo cute, its pink with rose buds. I love it, Rich thinks it is to pink for his car. So I found a grey and black Britax one for his car, but we will wait to buy it until we get our referral.

We find it so funny, that now our conversations with our friends are about stroller, car seats and baby goodies. Oh, how the times have changed. Now, instead of dreaming about a new convertible I am checking out Volvos (one of the safest cars of the road). My former party girl self would swell up and die if she knew I wanted a Volvo.
I have been cleaning my house like a mad woman all weekend because I know it will drive me nuts if my house is dirty while I am down and out after surgery.
I am trying to get together with Richs cousin so he can fix my photo uploader problem, then when he gets it figured out I will have to bombard everyone with way to many photos of clothes and baby accessories. Plus, I want to get the photo stuff down before we go to Vietnam so I can post countless pictures of our fabulous little girl and our trip.

Last night to celebrate our 14th week of our Dossier beingin Vietnam, we went out to dinner at our local Vietnamese restaurant. Of coarse the food was great. It is owned by a husband and wife, the husband is American and his wife is from Da Nang, they plan of retiring in a few years and move to Da Nang. They are very nice people.

This adoption has been a very long haul for us, we turned our application into an agency back in June 2005 when when Vietnam "reopened" and then we waited and waited.. Then in January of 2006 they finally started handing out licenses, in the 7 months we were waiting I kept researching agencies and found a second agency that I really like so I told my husband what ever agency (out of the 2) got their license first is the one we will go with. And of coarse they got their licenses on the same day, we ended up going with the 2nd agency, because I felt they did more work for us, they took care of all the State Seals and Authentications needed. So the day after they received their license our Application went out along with our Homestudy Application. And after a very long haul of gathering paperwork and waiting for our homestudy (she took a bit longer than what I wanted to complete....) and then waiting for I-171H (we all know that wait..). So our Dossier FINALLY left for Vietnam on June 29th (I was sooo glad to get that paperwork out of this Country). Some days I wish I would have started our paperwork earlier than January, but I was scared that something would happen and Vietnam would not open.

Oh well. I say I did the paperwork, because Rich and I had an agreement, that I would take care of the paperwork and he would be in charge of making sure we had all the money we needed. So our agreement worked out great as I took care of my part and so did he.

I now truly believe that God does provide the money you need, when we started this we thought for sure we would need to do a home equitly loan, so we talked to the bank and got everything set up so that when the time came we would have the money. However, things started working in our favor, last Christmas my husband got a LOT larger bonus than he had ever got, so into the bank it went. My husband drove a big truck, but it did not have a back seat and we were not comfortable with a baby in the front seat, so we bought a big Ford Explorer (needs lots of room for baby stuff). And we were then able to sell the truck (Rich paid in full for truck when he bought it) so more money into bank. We also had a Mustang (Rich has also paid in full when he bought that also) that we only drove in the summer time and decided that we did not need it (a baby seat could not fit in the backseat) so we sold that,even more money in the bank. So after our vehicle clean sweep and the bonus we had all the money we need for our adoption, without having to borrow a dime. I am so happy that we were able to come up with all the money. Now we have been saving because I am taking 3 months off work and I don't want that to interfere with my shopping and Latte's. We have also started saving to take Kitten to Disney World Fall of 2008. As you see we plan ahead...
FYI, if there is a Kohls department store by you, they have Carter's kids clothes 50% off and if you have a Kohls credit card you get an additional % off, very cute stuff.

2 referrals for twin girls have been given to 2 fellow bloggers in the last few days. That is such awesome news, congrats to the new parents.

When we started this journey Rich wanted to request twins, but I was hesitant. However, now if our agency were to ask us if we open to twins I would say YES.... Wishful thinking, I know!

Also sending my thoughts out to all the families whose travel to meet their children is delayed because on a world economic thingy going on in Hanoi. Sorry world leaders, but getting these kids home is more important.

Today I am feeling a bit sorry for myself, most of it I think has to do with the fact that I have stabbing pains from my ovaries, they appear to be very angry at me. Only 15 day until my surgery, hopefully this surgery will make them behave.......

I am also sad that we will go yet another Christmas without a small person to spoil, we may not even have a referral by Christmas. I HATE dealing with everyone during the Holidays asking us where is that baby and why is she not here yet? Some place I saw a t-shirt that said " No, I do not have any new news about my adoption and thanks for reminding me." We are day dreaming about a Christmas time referral, that would definitely be the best gift we could ever get. But a Halloween or Thanksgiving referral would be awesome too, see there I am day dreaming again.

Well better go pop some more pills and call it a night.

October is now upon us. The weather here is turning cold, but I love Fall. Looks like we will be spending Thanksgiving in Tennessee with my parents in their new home, that they will hopefully be in by then. Why is it that when kids are out of the house all the sudden parents start driving great cars and buying houses that are tons bigger and nicer than what you grew up in..... My mom says its because kids take all of your money, okay I am believing that now!! Our weekend was pretty calm, yippy. On Saturdays I babysit my little friend G- she is 6 months old and sooooo sweet, I watch her so her mom can work Saturday nights, dad is really not in the picture, we have a blast playing with her. I am sure G- and Kitten will be good friends. Well back to spending Thanksgiving in Tennessee, we plan on being there about a week and a half, we have vacation time we never used because we thought maybe we would go to Vietnam this year..... oh well. Anyways I saw in Nashville (about 20 minutes away from parents new house) there is a great mall with a few of my favorite stores Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids and Restoration Hardware. Happy shopping while we are there. And while there we will have to hit the Honky Tonks in Nashville. Maybe we will like it so much down there we will have to move, not that I would miss the sub zero winter temps and tons of snow here each winter......