The great growing gourd

Is it a pumpkin? Some other variety? Oh, the excitement as we try to figure it out!

As I posted earlier, I love fall. Adore it. Crave it. If it could always be October, I think I'd be happy. OK, that's not true, because then I love Thanksgiving and even though it's looking more like we won't have BK home by Christmas as we'd hoped I am starting to look forward to that holiday, too. But, I still really, really like October.

There's just something about all those beautiful fall colors - reds, oranges, yellows, browns. I love watching the leaves change (but not necessarily the naked trees that result), having that lovely fall air, cuddling in bed with the windows open, delicious Honeycrisp apples and more.

Last year we went a bit crazy betting fall decorations for outside - we went to a wonderful farm where you take a wheelbarrow up to these huge fields of plants and pick your own gourds and such (I don't know the scientific definition of gourd vs. pumpkin vs. squash, etc., so just deal), as well as some bales of hay.

We had little ones and big ones. Green ones and white ones. Solid pumpkin-colored ones and lovely striped ones and round ones and necked ones and, oh, just lovely ones. We loaded up our wheelbarrow, loaded them in the truck and decorated both front and back.

Of course, once the weather turned, the decorations just kind of sat outside and deflated. Finally we just chucked them all behind our shed in the backyard so they could return to nature, well... naturally.

About a month ago, I was mowing and thought, "What the HECK is that huge thing?" and just about mowed over a large-leafed plant. Then I realized it was something new growing this year from something old last year. Yippee!

We've seen lovely blossoms and now have some little round things of some type starting to grow...and I'm so excited you wouldn't believe it.

Cooking

I love my mandolin. And I don't mean the musical instrument.

It just helped me slice beautifully uniform and thin potatoes and beautifully thin cucumbers from the next door neighbor. Not for the same dish, but for the same meal.

Yummy.

I love to cook, but my favorite part is when the thing that needs to be cooked goes into the oven!

Ready for a change

I love summer...but I adore fall. It's my abso fave.

I'm also ready for a change. So, I'm looking forward to September.

Sweet Sunday

It's my Sunday off! Can I hear an, "Oh, yeah!"?

OH, YEAH!

I have no idea what trouble we're going to get into today. It's so glorious to have a Sunday with my husband and have absolutely NOTHING we have to do (except for laundry, the floors and figuring out what and how to feed ourselves throughout the day). :)

I asked our agency for some reassurance this last week. I know, logically, that our wait is no slower than promised but no faster than we'd hoped. I know, logically, that things seem to be doing what they're supposed to be doing. On Friday our paperwork left St. Louis bound for Russia so it should soon be in Smolensk, keeping our home study current.

And, I know I need to have faith - but sometimes that is hard to come by.

Here's what I'll try to keep remind myself - from my agency:

Things are always changing in Russia and Smolensk is no exception! ... please know that we are always looking out for you, and we know that, despite however long it takes, you WILL complete and bring home that precious child you’re waiting for. xx is always communicating with our Director in Moscow, and if they feel that it would be in your best interest to move you to another region, they will let me know first, and then I will call you to discuss it. Right now they feel the best place for you is Smolensk, but if that changes I will contact you as soon as I’m told!

International adoption in Russia is far from an “exact science”! Some days it’s hard to get my head around the changes that have suddenly been made that will affect our families. But our mission is to help these children find homes and we will do whatever is in our power to make that a reality.

We're here

Not much going on. Waiting on the agency to deal with paperwork that was at their office first thing Monday morning. Yes, it is now almost Friday. I just pray our registration in Smolensk stays current.

Frustating Day #2

I'm seriously beginning to worry about my brain and organizational skills. Usually I'm incredibly organized, anal even, and am on top of my game.

The last couple of days, not so much.

Today has been all about adoption documents. I got up early with Brian, hit the gym and did the elliptical and treadmill before returning home and getting ready to go get documents apostilled. I needed to go pick up docs at the social workers office, so I did that, dropped off the check for payment for said documents and the work behind them, and came home to check e-mail before driving to Topeka for apostilles.

I was headed to the highway when the phone rang. I'd forgotten to sign the check I'd dropped at the social workers office. And, as I hung up in frustration, I got to thinking about the photo page cover sheets in the social worker's docs...I didn't have the photo pages printed yet or attached to the cover/notarized sheet, and I got worried that the complete sets would need to be together or the apostille wouldn't be valid unless the apostille was attached to both the social workers document and the photo pages themselves.

So I turned around, came home and realized I could not print the photo pages here, since we're out of color ink. So, I put them on a flash drive, went to Office Depot, then hit the road.

I did have fun eating at a great Topeka drive-in, Bobo's (http://cjonline.com/news/business/2009-06-19/bobos_among_8_wonders_winners). I circled about 5 times before getting a parking spot; I got my grub to go and ate it in my car at the big park in town and watched the train carry kids and parents around, something I remember from my childhood.

The documents were apostilled - by the lovely Georgia, who I misidentified yesterday as Daisy. See what I mean about losing it a bit?

Then on my way home I realized I hadn't brought the FedEx envelope with me, so I had to come home, put the package together and go back out to drop off the FedEx envelope.

Oh, and then I had to go back to the social worker's office and sign the check. And then go to the grocery store. Then it was 5 o'clock and I couldn't go to the vet to get medicine for the fleas that poor Guinness is being annoyed by.

I'll second yesterday's RARGH with another!

Rargh! My frustration with my own-fault frustrating day!

I have to go to Topeka tomorrow to have our home study addendum documents aspostilled - which, by the way, I didn't remember that I needed to do until the last minute. You'd think that once you do a gazillion (yes, that's the official number of documents we did) documents that you'd remember when you're updating those gazillion documents how things work.

But I digress.

In addition to the home study addendum documents, Bri and I had 2 specific documents that we needed to do for our region. I've had a hard time getting jazzed about doing them, since they're not needed until we go to court and that seems like forever away, but our consultant has said she'd prefer the documents be done and in the file, so we don't have to worry about them later.

Long story short, I had to make two trips to Brian's shop because I made an error on the document and had left the flash drive I'd put the document on at my office, so I had to go back to get it. Blah, blah, blah.

Rargh.

So, tomorrow I'm off to Topeka for the lovely Daisy in the Secretary of State's office to apostille all the docs and then I'll FedEx them to our agency.

And then we wait. Or continue to wait.

A small (non-adoption) victory. Really small

It's hardly worth mentioning.

It's a really small victory.

I went to the gym.

And worked on the elliptical for 30 minutes.

And sweated.

Six months, give or take 3 years

Well, it's another milestone of sorts - we've been officially waiting on The Call for six months. We were registered in our region of Smolensk in early February, and now that we're cranking through August, we've hit the six-month mark.

It gets hard for me to remember that this part of the wait has "only been" six months - because we've been trying for more than 3 years to have a baby, sometimes all of the time gets lumped together in my mind. I try to divide it all out into appropriate segments, but sometimes it's just like, "OK, it's been YEARS already!"

With the average wait time with our agency from registration to referral at 10 months, I have to think that we're more than halfway there? Right? And by halfway I mean halfway through our referral wait NOT halfway through the family-building journey. If we're only halfway through that I fear I'm sunk!

Weekend

I have one 5-hour shift at the second job this a.m. then it's weekend! Bri and I will probably watch a Netflix movie tonight if it arrives in today's mail and I'm stoked that I have stuff in the fridge for a simple taco dinner. Usually I end up in the grocery store AFTER a toy store shift and today I can just come right home!

Tomorrow our dear friend Brandi, her fiance and her girls Paige and Jade are coming over for smoked brisket and beans - I love my smokin' husband (he's smokin' in more ways than one!). I "recruited" Bran to live in the other half of the duplex I lived in and she moved in when Paige was just 3! Now she's 13! Eeek! She was the self-proclaimed junior bridesmaid in our wedding. Her sister, Jade, who I held when she was just hours old, turned 4 on our wedding day and was one of our flower girls; Brandi, of course, was one of "my girls" and had as much fun with Bri and me getting married as we did! Jade's now, of course, almost 4 years older as we got married in 2005. Sigh.

Bring on BBQ and friends!

Back...again

I was out of town again to St. Louis on business, but am now home. Hooray! Otherwise, trying to keep on keeping on. The heart gets sad sometimes but then remembers how much it loves what it already has.

Busy, busy

Brian worked all day Saturday; I ran errands in the a.m. and early afternoon like a crazy woman, then worked at the toy store from 3 to 8. Today I worked from noon to 5 and Brian changed my oil, rotated my tires, washed my car and gave it a double wax job, then stopped to come pick me up at work. Now it's 6 p.m. and we're relaxing together on the couch...finally!