Vancouver BC

Jake and I went to Vancouver over Veteran's Day weekend. We took the train, which was beautiful going up. Coming home was a completely different story though. Vacouver is very walkable and we walked everywhere. There was a little taxi boat service that got us over to Granville Island and that part of town, but we walked the rest. The weather was pretty cold, but I hear it was worse here at home so I can't complain.

Here are some of the photos I took from the train.

We went to China Town on Sunday and most of the stores and restaurants were closed, but we went to the Asian Garden and walked around there for awhile. When we walked in it was kind of disappointing because all of the photos that I saw online were obviously taken during the Spring and Summer when everything is in bloom. A couple was getting married there when we got there. We also saw the skinniest building in Canada or the world, I don't remember. It is one room wide.

A Beautiful Fall Day

It was so nice today, I finished up some yard work that I had been putting off. This is the first year that all of my plants have flowered. Yea! And with the weather so up and down they are very confused and still flowering.

Yea!

Jake is coming home late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. He has been in California for the past month training in the desert.

It seems that his schedule is one month away, one month at home, one month away, one month at home. Hopefully this pattern stops. He should be home all of November and all of December at least. I say, as long as he is in the country I'm happy. Well, not really happy, but happier than if he was in Iraq.

I problem with Jake being gone so long is that I go shopping when I'm bored. I have officially cut myself off from buying anymore fabric for the nursery. I have more than enough now. But in my defense, Jo-Ann Fabric keeps sending my 50% off coupons. I can't let them go to waste.

Weddings and more weddings

On Thursday I'm going down to California to attend two weddings on Saturday. That's right, two weddings on the same day. These are two totally unrelated people who are just happen to plan their weddings on the same day in the same area. And lucky for us, one is in the afternoon and one is in the evening.

Jake is not going down with me. I'm traveling with my sister, her husband and my dad. Jake is trying to save up all of his vacation days for when we travel to adtopt and after we get back.

Nothing new on the adoption front. We are just waiting. I got my first baby present though the other day. A very nice woman in my aerobics class made a blanket for me, well for the baby.

4th of July/Our Anniversary

As of three days ago Jake and I have been married for four years. It's nice to end our anniversary each year with fireworks. We went to the fireworks display in Kenmore for the first time this year and they were pretty good. We usually watch the ones downtown, but really didn't want to deal with the traffic this year.



On the adoption front, we are just waiting. When we started the process in February they said the wait was 12-14 months. Now they say the wait is 10-12 months. Hopefully the trend stays in the right direction.



I have started buying stuff for the nursery. But I am buying a little at a time. Right now I am working on a cross-stitch blanket and on finishing the toy chest my grandpa made.

Yea, an update

We just received our I-171, so our paperwork is complete. Our agency will send it the the Vietnamese Consolate then it is onto Viet Nam. Our official waiting has begun. Our agency has started partnering with a second orphanage and is working on a third, so hopefully the wait time shortens.

This would be good news because Jake's deployment to Iraq has been pushed back to May 2008, so it could be possible to receive our referral and travel before he leaves. That is our hope anyway.

Work has been crazy for me the last month or so and I am really hoping the summer brings some down time. I'm sure Jake would like that too since I have been so tired and cranky.

I have started looking for furniture for the baby's room to fix up, so if anyone has an old dresser, the shorter, wider kind that they want to get rid of let me know.

Things are moving, not necessary forward

Army News
Jake has been assigned to an engineering unit. Engineers in the Army blow up land mines. Jake is one of the medics who rides with the engineers in case something goes wrong. The unit is scheduled to go to Iraq at the beginning of next year. His biggest worry is not being able to go to Viet Nam when it is time to travel to get our daughter.

Adoption News
We are sending our updated forms to our adoption agency and our USICS (INS) form. Our homestudy should be at the agency. Hopefully we will get our fingerprinting appointment in the next few weeks then we will be official. That's when the official waiting begins.

Other that that, I'm on spring break and being as lazy as possible.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted and quite a few things have changed.

Jake is going back into the army. Working full time for my mom and going to school full time was a little too much and he needs a break, so he's going into the military. It makes sense?!? He has one more week before he has to drive down to Ft. Lewis everyday. He will probably have to go to Iraq for awhile with the surge. How much longer until Bush is gone????

With Jake's new job we need to refill out some adoption paperwork. We need to get a letter from his employer, would that be George Bush?, and we need to fill out a new financial info form since he will be making a different amount of money.

We also met with our homestudy guy last weekend at our house. We went over the paperwork that we had filled out before and talked a little more indepth about some stuff. Then he did a quick tour of our house. I guess we didn't really need to deep clean our house, but it needed it anyway. He has already done our background checks. Now we just need our references and our doctors to get back to him then he will send us a rough draft. (If any of our references is reading this stop and go write our reference letter.)

My mom has decided to do the three breast cancer walk and she has asked if I want to do it with her. My sister just happens to be going to Hawaii on vacation during that time. I haven't decided yet, it is for a good cause.

And, Jake and my anniversary of our first wedding is this Friday. He said that it is up to me where we go to dinner. I should get on that since I won't get home tomorrow until 9:00 pm.

Photographs

We have to send photos of our home with the adoption paperwork and I realized that most of you have not seen our house. So, here are some of the photos.

February 23, 2007

Today we went to the adoption agency and turned in most of the paperwork. We still need to write a letter of intent which states the age and gender of child that we want and that we promise not to abuse or abandon the child and we are still waiting on Jake's birth certificate.

We also received some paperwork that we need to fill out for our home study person. Once we send it back to him then we can set up a time for him to come to our house and make sure it is adequate for raising a child and that we are not crazy.

It is amazing how many times we have to do the same things over and over again. An example: We went to the King County Sherrifs Office to get a police clearance, which means they did a background check. The home study person does a background check on us through DSHS. And we have to get fingerprinted and the FBI does a background check on us once our paperwork gets through INS. But, both Jake and I have already had background checks done. I have to have one because of my job and Jake has had one through the Army.

Oh well.

I will try to up date this blog when something new happens.

Here we go!

Well, we have started the adoption process.

We have decided to adopt a girl from Viet Nam. So, we have been filling out paperwork, figuring out where to get certified copies of documents and scheduling appointments. We are trying to get as much paperwork done as possible by next Friday and turn it in to our adoption agency. A couple of the documents need to be sent to the federal government and processed before we can move on to the next steps.

Next week we will also be starting the Home Study and hopefully get our police clearance.