A Staging Designer???

New carpet goes in this weekend, the hardwood repair person will also come this weekend. The paint on the trim in the sunroom just needs a bit of touch up. Closets are cleaned out, things toted off to storage, the waterbed is drained (more on that later) and I am feeling better about pulling everything together. That was, until just a few minutes ago......

The realtor told me they have someone from their office that helps with 'staging'. Luckily, I knew what 'staging' was and didn't have to look like any more of an idiot that I usually do. A staging person helps to re-arrange and organize things in a house to help it present to the buyers in the best way possible. (Thank you HGTV for that helpful lesson) So I get the call from the staging lady. Apparently, her title is Staging Designer. She is coming over tomorrow to help me depersonalize the house, remove extra furniture and create flow. Ummm, we still have to live there you know! With children. SEVERAL children. She wants to create enough walking space everywhere that 3 people can get through (a realtor plus husband and wife buyers) Does she mean side-by-side? And depersonalize? In what way? I have already taken down most of our photos and a lot of decoration type stuff. She is going to have a cow when she sees Katie's room is lime green and purple. Oh goodness, I think my brain is leaking out of my ears with the stress.....

We have to move the waterbed for the carpet, so we started draining it last night. It takes quite a long time to really get it empty so we already knew we would have to sleep in the guest room for at least one or two nights. Levi didn't like the idea of us not being where he was used to us being (next to his room) and he wanted to sleep with us. That was too crowded so I tried to get him to sleep with Katie. That didn't fly well either. So I slept with him in Ashley's bed. He was very restless and very active in his sleep. I think there were a couple other bed switches in there, so all in all it was a rousing game of musical beds at our house last night. Today I feel like someone used me for a tackle dummy. Ughhhhhhh.

No phone calls, no news, nada. The big Easter celebrations begin this weekend so nothing will happen now for about 2 weeks. I never used to hate holidays, but since those are the times all adoption related work stops, I no longer like them. They are bad, really bad. Sigh......

Sssshhh, I bought some baby stuff

I know I swore I wouldn't buy anything until PBJ was OUT, but you didn't really believe me, did you? I haven't gone bananas or anything, but if I see something cute or on sale I might just have to slip it into my cart....

I wanted to do her room (in the new house) in lavender and green. Sweet but soothing at the same time. I had seen the awesome Pottery Barn Kids bedding but just couldn't let myself spend that much money on crib bedding. But then, on a whim, I went into the store here just to check it out and what do I find? It's all on sale!!!!! That's right, 60% off on the bedding I was in love with!! How awesome is that? So I bought it all. Here is what the pattern looks like. I kept everything else in the packages for now. Just in case we have to move it before we get to use it. (Which is looking more and more likely every day)

I have also been buying some clothes. Most of what I have gotten is either from the wonderful children's consignment store near my house or from great sales I have found. I have bougth a variety of sizes since I don't even know how much she weighs or how long she is. A lot of what I bought will be way too big for her, but she will grow! I am hoping to find out how big she is before I go pick her up so I will know what to pack.

Our little Princessa will need shoes, too! I got these teeny tiny little Converse hightops. These weren't on sale but there are some things that a girl just HAS to have and pretty shoes are a must.

So no phone call and now we are at the point where all of Guatemala is going to shut down for the holidays. It will be about 2 weeks before all of the offices down there are open. My dream of bringing her home in April is gone. Now I am hoping for May. She will be 7 months old if that turns out to be the case, and we will already probably be moved. I was hoping to be on maternity leave during the move, but now I will have to use some of my precious paid time off to move instead of having it all for when she comes home. Sigh....

My Checklists

If this week doesn't kill me then nothing will. Honestly, I am glad of the diversion of getting the house on the market. It keeps me from staring at the phone. I am working my way through my lists of what needs to be done. I met with the flooring guy yesterday and they are coming on Friday to put in new carpet upstairs. He is also scheduling a person to come out and repair a couple of spots in our hardwood floors. He complimented me on my tiling I have done throughout the house. That was sweet!
Next on the agenda is to put another coat of paint on all the trim in the sunroom, move some more stuff to storage, clean all the light fixtures, touch up the paint on the baseboards and walls, finish painting the laundry room, and on and on and on. Every time I cross something off my list, two more things get added. And of course I need to CLEAN it all. It's a good thing I started months ago with packing stuff and putting it into storage, doing little projects around the house and getting things pseudo-ready. It's never going to be perfect, but it is a nice house and we are pricing it to move FAST. I don't want to have to keep it in showing shape any longer than I have to!

Conversation with Levi:

L: I want a guitar
Me: You have one at home
L: No, not a guitar, a violin
Me: You want me to buy you a violin?
L: No, not buy me one. I am going to wish for one. It's a musical instrument.

What is this kid watching on TV?????

Funny Katie story: I told Katie she had to clean her room before the real estate agent came to see the house Saturday morning. As usual, she procrastinated and I had to push her to get it done. Saturday morning, just mere moments before the realtor arrived, she proclaimed it done. I took a quick peek and it looked good! Later, as I showed the realtor around, I was commenting to her about how hard I had worked to clean out all the closets so that they looked big and spacious, and with that I pulled open the door to Katie's closet. Holy cow, it looked like an avalanche! The realtor and I both started laughing. I turned around and there stood Katie all red in the face and she says, "I didn't know you were going to look in my closet" So now she knows that she has to keep it all clean. Goofball kid!

No phone call yet. sigh........

Overwhelmed yet?

First, I want to post this for another adoptive mother.

I am posting this on behalf of Erin and Cheri (both in my blogworld if you want to see their original posts click here: http://www.sunflowersandladybugs.com/ - Cheri, http://jesuswasnotarepublican.blogspot.com/ - Erin). Please help them if you can.There is something you can do to help if you so wish. If you are ADOPTING FROM GUATEMALA and you are with an agency or facilitator that is not HAPS or For This Child, PLEASE EMAIL THE FOLLOWING LETTER TO YOUR AGENCY. If you are NOT ADOPTING but you have a blog, please POST THIS REQUEST ON YOUR BLOG.*************************

Dear [agency-name],
If your agency has a case in process that contains a Guatemala City cedula or birth-certificate that is missing the Civil Registry signature (usually the mayor’s signature), we have important information to share.According to PGN, if your case has not yet received a previo for the missing signature, it will. The letter from the Civil Registry and/or the Mayor of Guatemala City is no longer sufficient to satisfy the previo. The four PGN assessors have made a joint decision that these unsigned documents MUST be signed. However, at this time there is NO ONE in Guatemala City with the authority to sign these documents!We are Cheri xxxxxx and Erin xxxxxx, in the process of adopting Guatemalan babies through For This Child and HAPS, respectively. After many months working on this issue separately, our agencies are now collaborating to find a solution. They have discussed this with the PGN reviewers, Barrios, and the Mayor of GC directly. The conclusion is that the mayor does NOT have the authority to sign a document issued under another mayor’s tenure. Therefore, we must file an acta with a different branch of PGN that will require the Civil Registry of GC to 1) designate and authorize a person to sign these documents, and 2) order that person to do so.The PGN reviewer on Erin’s case currently has 12 cases that have been kicked out for this reason. If all 8 reviewers have a similar number of cases, that means 80-100 cases are in this same predicament! We have been advised to find as many of these other cases as possible so that we can ALL file the acta together. We have strength in numbers.If you have, or know of, a case that contains a Guatemala City cedula or birth-certificate that is missing the Civil Registry signature, please contact:Karla Ordonez, with HAPS: cell 5555-3610, office 2332-9040Traci Orr, with For This Child: US #214-370-8436, traci@forthischild.org
Thank you for your time,
Cheri and Erin

This is another case where the system in Guatemala breaks down. Who am I kidding, it's not a 'system' as much as it is pure chaos. Steps are being made to create a true system so that the children and adoptive families do not have to suffer but these things take a long time to put in place. Until then, some cases fly through and some get stuck and there is very little rhyme or reason to it.

In other news, we met with our real estate agent this weekend to talk about listing our house. Our plan had been to wait until a few weeks before we move to list the house, minimizing the amount of time we had to keep it in 'showing shape'. She convinced us that now is a better time to list it. So our new plan is to get everything done this week and be able to list it by next Monday at the latest. That's right, one week to finish all of our little projects. Aaaack! I made countless trips to Home Depot this weekend, painted, sanded, cleaned, packed, hauled, mulched, planted, etc etc. Today I have called the carpet guy and the guy who installed our hardwood flooring. I have lists of everything I need to get done broken out by day. At least if I am this busy I can't obsess over why the phone is not ringing. Wish me luck in getting the house ready!

No news yet

A Prayer for My Child

May you be safe and sleep soundly through the night,

May you be safe as you wake to the morning light.

May you feel our love from far away,

May it comfort and protect you throughout each day.

We will pray for you, our little one,

Until our time of waiting is done.

We will pray that you keep safe from harm,

Until the child of our hearts becomes the child in our arms.

My excitement is fading. I was so sure we would get the call this week. Here it is late on Friday afternoon and no call. The holidays are quickly coming and that means everything will come to a standstill in Guatemala for about 2 weeks. Gone are my hopes we will be bringing our sweet baby home in April. Gone are the dreams of travelling soon. I am tired of asking Why, tired of trying to make sense of it all. There is no sense. No rhyme or reason for any of it. Just the need for never-ending patience, hopes to stay alive, dreams that will eventually come true. I get down, fell sorry for myself, then pull myself up again and keep on waiting. Giving up is not an option. It will never be an option. God has led us to these children and we will not fail them. The strength comes from that thought. No matter how long it takes or how big the kids get, our children will be with us eventually.

I am done feeling sorry for myself. I need a swift kick in the rear and I will be fine. Really! But if the phone would ring, I would be better........... ;-)

Senor Sillypants

I gave up on ignoring the phone. That wasn't working. I progressed to harrassing our agency. I e-mailed my contact and here is how the messages went:

Me: Any news yet? Are we out?

Bob: I will call, but don't stand by the phone. Watched pot never boils.

Me: OK, no phone watching. I have work to do anyway. Need to make money to pay for diapers.

Bob: Yeah right. You will be bugging me again by Friday. I bet, I bet, I bet.

Me: OK Senor Sillypants, I'll take that bet. I know I can hold out until Saturday!

Bob: Hah. I won't be here. neener neener neener.

I absolutely adore this guy! He always makes me smile. As most of you know, we accepted PBJ's referral and then I put together all the paperwork. It takes a ton of things to create the adoption dossier. I collected it all in record time. When I sent it all off, I let Bob know it was done. He sent me an e-mail with a dozen attachments and told me that now I could start to work on the second half of the paperwork. OMG! I didn't even know there was more. I mean, we had never gotten this far with Ahren's case. The thought of more paperchasing gave me nightmares, but I was going to whip it all out as quickly as I could. That's when he called me and told me the forms he sent were a joke, they were the forms for Russia! Boy was I relieved! I knew at that moment, though, that Bob and I were going to get along very well. I really expect him to do something outrageous when he does call to say we are out, but this time I am prepared. Now if I could just think of a good joke to play on him.......

So far this week there has been very little movement out of PGN. This is how it always goes. There will be a flurry of activity then long dry spells. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it. They don't sign off the oldest cases first, they don't treat all the cases the same and they have no prioritization system that anyone can tell. Some cases go in and out in a matter of days, others languish in PGN and take many many months. The other well known fact is that PGN is a giant black hole of information. Things go in and then there is no news at all until it comes out. No one can go and ask them about cases usually. They really frown on that. Every once in a while tidbits of info come out, but normally it is just a black box. A big, frustrating, holding the lives of our children in their hands, black box.

Still ignoring the phone

I love the age of 3 and 4. They turn from babies into little people who talk and laugh and want to help with everything! Levi is a joy to have around. Even though his 'help' may not be all that helpful sometimes he makes everything more fun. I was cooking up a big pot of gumbo the other night and he was my helper. He really liked adding the spices to the pot. (I had him add them before I turned the burner on, just to be safe) In fact, he enjoyed it so much we ended up with extra spicy gumbo!

He also says the funniest things. Yesterday, in the car, he said 'Liar liar, pants for hire'. We all burst out laughing! He aslo explained to one of Katie's friends that he has a big, big, big brain and that Katie's feet smell like tartar sauce. Where does he get this stuff????

He is also still really cuddly and very affectionate. (That's my Disneyworld sunburned face!) Lately he has been all about Daddy, though. Daddy is IT, the MAN, Da Bomb! He loves to help Daddy, sit with Daddy, eat Daddy's dinner, etc etc. It is so cute! He watches out the front window every evening and leaps for joy when he sees his Daddy's truck. He refers to weekends as Daddy/Levi days. I don't mind at all. It makes me love my husband just that much more to watch him interact with Levi. The joy and pride he beams with make me so happy.

Levi talks about his new brother and sister all the time. He shows us how he is going to hold them and rock them, how he is going to teach them things, and what toys he wants to give them. He has a really generous spirit. He has personally picked out special toys for both Ahren and Peri Brynn (his and his sister's idea). We bought them and have them sitting in the closet waiting for them to come home. He shows them to people and explains what they are, but he doesn't beg to open them or play with them. He is a truly special little guy.

Ignoring the phone now

Phone? What phone? I have way too many other things to think about other than the phone. (Is it working? Do you think that will make it ring?)

In other news, we have water in our pond and it is holding. It rained a couple of days last week and we ended up with 12-18 inches of water in the pond. It's a good start! It's still muddy looking water but it will settle eventually. If not, there is an additive that causes the dirt to clump and fall to the bottom, and it's safe for fish and wildlife. I have given up on the idea of catails and lily pads. Apparently they will take over the whole thing. Later in the year, once we get enough water and the level is stable we will stock it. Sunfish and bass of course, maybe some other fish. I don't know. The only fish I ever had were in a little fishtank and ended up flushed down the toilet.

The people that live next door to our new house raise thoroughbred race horses. They have two yearling fillies right now. At first, when we would go over there, they were so scared of us. After much coaxing and patience, they became used to us and are now quite friendly. When they hear or see us, they come up to the fence right away for some lovin'. One of the horses is especially fond of Levi. She lowers her head over the fence and nuzzles him. She will let me pet her, but if Levi is around she only has eyes for him. He will run up and down the fence and she follows him. It is a case of true love! I got this photo last weekend as she followed him back and forth. The owner said he didn't think she was very good racing quality so I am thinking of asking if he would sell her to me and I could just pay him to keep her stabled. She and Levi can grow up together! (Her name is Helen. I think I would call her something else, though. Who names a horse Helen????)

Levi can entertain himself with anything. Here he is pretending to be surfing. A piece of shelving becomes his surfboard and a pile of wood shavings a wave. I love to watch him use his imagination. He usually has all of us laughing out loud.

Not yet.....

So no call yet, but we know we still have not gotten kicked out and that they were releasing files submitted the day before ours on Friday. I was pretty relaxed over the weekend since I knew PGN was closed, but last night I just couldn't sleep. Of course, that might also be becasue when I slipped into our waterbed last night I was shocked to discover it was horribly HOT. Some little monkey had once again twisted the heater dial. I felt like I was undergoing some sort of a spa treatment while I slept.

See this little red vest thing? It is called a Baby B'Air. It is designed to keep lap riders in airplanes safe. You strap the baby into it and attach it to your lap belt. Why is this important? Let me share a story with you. The summer before last Chris and I took Levi with us for a long weekend in the mountains. We flew into Denver and then took a little prop plane to Steamboat Springs (which incidentally is where Chris asked me to marry him) Levi wasn't yet 2 years old and could have flown for free, but being the wriggly toddler he was we bought him a seat and strapped him in his carseat during the flights. On the way back on the prop plane we ran into a thunderstorm. Suddenly, lightining struck our plane and it lurched violently. I remember watching, as if in slow motion, the toddler girl on the lap of a woman several rows in front of us. She flew out of her mothers arms and crashed head first into the overhead bin. Levi, who was strapped in, looked mildly surprised and went back to watching a movie. The poor little girl wasn't badly hurt but she did have a nasty goose-egg on her head and was scared to death. Her parents looked positively green with fear. When I bring PBJ home she will be a lap rider. A safe lap rider. These little vests are not expensive and yet could be the most important thing I have purchased for her.

Now that my service announcement is over, we return to our regularly scheduled events. Willing the phone to ring........RING!!!!!

Sweet Hope Chocolates

Remember these candies I ordered right before the holidays? Hand-made and deliciouso! Well they are on sale again. You can order your very own at http://lifeofelle.com/sweethope/Ordering.html

And if you want to know all about the lovely woman who makes them check out her blog at www.lifeofelle.com

No phone call yet. Fridays are historically the biggest days for files to get out, although we may not know we are out for a few days. You know, they place the file into the pack on the donkey and get it to the next office, attach the info to a pidgeon and send it on it's way, where they then send smoke signals to the agency. (Or something equally as slow as that!) Oh, and get this, because of the Easter holy week, the US Embassy in Guatemala is shutting down for a bunch of days, plus they have decided to give extra scrutiny to all of the files (Which they have already reviewed and approved earlier in the process) so they are adding additional time to the final visa wait for every case. So even if we find out TODAY we are out and PBJ is legally our child, we may not be able to bring her home until sometime in May. That is if they don't think up something else to slow down the process with.

My head is going to pop off

No phone call yet. Well, actually, lots of phone calls but not THE phone call. So I am bound and determined to think about other things. (Yeah, right!) No seriously, I am trying very very hard. The house is coming along very quickly now. We are making decisions right and left, most of them involving how much more money we want to pump into the house to get nice little things. They call these 'design elements'. One design element I have had my heart set on was oak stair treads with white risers. Well, that was going to be another big $$$ so it is gone. Built in wine rack? Gone. Cubbies in the mudroom? Gone. Window seats....you guessed it, gone. We can do all those things later. What we do have is 400 amp electrical service, run underground all the way to the house from the road. That gives us enough power for the house, the barn and the pool. (Can you hear the manly sound of grunting in the background ala Tim Allen???) We have granite countertops, solid raised panel oak cabinets, and many more beautiful things.

The drywalling is finished and the trim carpenter is working on the house. Very nice guy named Kevin. He had some wonderful ideas but those would be........gone. What I don't understand is that things that are drawn into our plans are now costing extra. The window seats have been on the plans from the very beginning. So has the mudroom design. So why is that not included in the price quoted to us for the house? I can understand upgrades for flooring, counters, etc., but things on the plans should be inclded in the price we were quoted in the beginning. Gee, no stress in building a custom home, is there???

I have an interesting story to tell. Back a while ago, when we were first wanting to build a house, we found the perfect spot next door to some good friends of ours. Almost 8 acres of wilderness on the end of a cul-de-sac, right schools, everything. It was for sale so we made an offer. Then the property was pulled off the market because the couple was in a divorce battle. (They lived in the house next door to this property) So we kept looking. Then, 8 months later, it came back on the market. Divorce is over, woman got the land and it was for sale again. We again made an offer, but didn't hear and didn't hear. Turns out woman was in rehab supposedly. Then she is out so we re-make our offer. We think we have a deal but she won't show up to sign the papers and then disappears again. Then we find the spot we are now building on and forget about the other land. Now, after we moved on, she came back to live in the house and finish it (it was not finished on the inside because screwy husband ran off all the workers) She couldn't sell it unfinished, so she moved back in and made a deal with some laborers to trade room and board for work on the house. Then, early last week, the power was shut off for non-payment. One of the workmen figured out how to turn it back on at the power pole and built himself some scaffolding to climb up there. He took the long metal pole for the pool and reached up to pull the trigger to turn it back on. The electricity arced and killed him instantly. Neighbors noticed something burning on the scaffolding and called the fire department. It was only after they arrived and put out the fire that they realized it was a body. I feel so horribly sad for that man and for the woman who owns the house. Such tragedy. I just keep thinking that if she had sold us the land next door she would have had the money to hire professionals to fix it up right away and none of this would have happened.

OK, I am not thinking about the phone. I am not thinking about how over the weekend the offices are closed and we can't get out. I am not, I am not, I am not!

No call yet

No call yet. I feel like a teenager waiting for that cute boy to call. I sit and stare at the phone for hours, willing it to ring. The phone rang last night and I practically vaulted the couch to get to it. It was not THE call though. I had to fight the urge to pull out suitcases and start packing last night. I have diapers and formula and bottles in the cabinet. I just need the baby. We started this journey almost 2 years ago now, researching, discussing, planning. This has been the longest 'pregnancy' ever. We may never bring Ahren home and we have certainly missed his babyhood and will miss most of his toddlerhood. But PBJ is almost in my arms. So close and yet still out of reach. Come on phone ring!!!!!

In other news, I would like to give a shout-out to my gal pal Krystal who is due to deliver her baby girl Parker tomorrow. May the induction work easily, may the epidural take away all the pain and may you be holding your beautiful baby girl very soon. Congrats to you and your whole family!

To Ginger - come on PINK! I wish we lived closer so we could go shopping and share some retail therapy together!! I am really hoping we can meet up on our pick-up trips...... come on phone, ring!!!!

In Ahren news, we have it confirmed that our file was resubmitted on March 5th. Now we wait. They have asked for every piece of proof under the sun so maybe now they will approve it. If it gets denied completely the alternative is just too horrible to think about. So everyone pray, knock on wood, cross you fingers, whatever you can think of to get this approved!

Oh, and come on phone ring!!!!

Waiting for THE call....

The Guatemalan adoption world has it's own language. Only those who have suffered/struggled through the process fully understand this language. On top of the lingo, almost everything gets shortened to letters. PA is pre-approval. FC is family court. But the biggest and baddest of them all is PGN. PGN is the large government office that oversees all adoptions in Guatemala. It is headed up by a man named Barrios, who happens to be very anti-American and anti-adoption. When he took over about a year ago the formerly smooth adoption process that took 4-6 months turned in to a tortorous journey of many many more months. Ahren's case is stuck in PGN while they try and correct his birth certificate. It has been rejected 5 times already with each time them asking for more documentation. The latest was an additional copy of a document they already had in the file. Peri Brynn's case is also in PGN but at the final stage of her adoption. Once the case gets the signature of Senor Barrios she will be legally our daughter. This is called an OUT. (You get OUT of PGN) So, PBJ's case was submitted to PGN in January (unsure of the date so I randomly chose the last Monday of the month for counting purposes) which means her case has been in PGN for 43 days. So far we have not had any 'previos' or knock-outs for corrections in the file. Now almost every file gets at least one previo, often for stupid and made-up reasons. But, some do go through without one. If we were going to get one we should have already had it by now. If this is really the case (I don't believe anything anymore!) then the average length of time from submission to out right now is 50 days. We are within 1 week of that. Any day now we could get THE call. The call telling us we are out. We would not be picking her up until April though, because there is still more to the process that has to happen and the Easter holidays will delay many things. But one step at a time. We are just hoping and praying for that one phone call. Come on phone, ring!

A Pond without Water

What does one do with a pond that has no water? Levi has it all figured out. You bring your favorite action figures and you run around in the bottom of the pond

climb up and down the sides (see action figures in both hands)

climb down again
and back up
run around the bottom

and back again
check on what Dad is doing

stand at the edge

then slide down
throw rocks in the bottom

go down again

throw the action figures down in front of you
then follow them
bring the action figures out and throw them again



and finally get a helping hand from Dad to get you and ther action figures up the steep side.

We went home and Levi plus his action figures took a bath, ate dinner and he was out like a light. Maybe we don't want water in the pond????

TGIF

I can't get a normal picture of Levi anymore. If I so much as touch the camera he makes silly faces and won't stop. What a goofball. I blame it on his sisters. They think it is hysterical to make faces and taught him to do it. I guess it is a kid thing because all of Katie's friends do it too.

Just wait until I pull these pictures out in a few years and show them to their boyfriends! Maybe blow them up and use them as decorations at their weddings. Hah!

The lawyers cannot confirm that Ahren's case has been re-submitted to the government in Guatemala. This is the same thing that happened in October and it took almost 2 months to finally get the file resubmitted. It had just been sitting in a pile on someone's desk. The lawyers are pushing the facilitator this time and not waiting.

No news on PBJ. Just waiting for the call and trying to not go bananas. I want to go buy every little pink thing in the stores but I am resisting the urge. I am afraid I might jinx it!

Where Dreams Come True

Here are some of my favorite photos from our trip to Orlando. Since the real reason we went is for the National competition I have included some dance photos. It was so hard to get good action shots! They kept moving around ;-) The lime green outfits are from their modern dance which won them a first place trophy and a Grand Champion trophy. The turquise and black outfits are from their kick routine which took 2nd place. The red and orange outfits are for their big production number where they also first place. I love that dance the most. The song is 'Standing Outside the Fire' and the whole dance is designed to look like flames. The effect is really stunning. Katie is the tall flame in the back (orange skirt) She wanted to be one of the dancers in the front but since she is a rookie and a 9th grader she got cast as a flame. Because of h er height, she ended up as the center flame and then the shortest were on the outside and that added to the effect.

Even though the girls danced from 9 am until 10 pm, they were still all smiles all day. This is really a wonderful group of girls, all really sweet and kind.

We really weren't expecting to win anything. This is a really young program and still feeling their way. The day of the competition the girls were just on fire. I have never seen them dance so well. It didn't hurt either that the competition in our category wasn't too bad. Mostly, the girls just out-did themselves.

We got to have a character dinner at magic Kingdom and the girls had a blast. You are never too old to have fun at Disney.

The animatronics just keep getting better too. The dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park were incredibly life-like. This T-Rex tried to eat us! We barely escaped. Eeek!

I have a little bit of news, and I hid it at the bottom of this post. Yesterday PBJ's agency told me that we have been in PGN 6 weeks with no knockouts. That means they have reviewed it and there are no errors. The 3 cases submitted by our agency the week before just got final signatures. They said we are next. Any day now we will get the call that she is legally ours. I can't believe it. In fact, I won't believe it until we get the call! Because of the Holy days in Guatemala in mid-March we probably won't be able to pick her up until early April, but that's OK. I still can't shop. Not quite yet. I don't want to jinx it!!!

New Pictures!

We received new photos of both kiddos in the past few days. What a wonderful surprise! Ahren is 13 months old in these and Peri Brynn is 4 months old. They both look wonderfully healthy and beautiful. It looks like PBJ is going to have a very healthy head of hair! I can't wait to put bows in it. Ahren alwasy looks so serious in these photos., like he is really studying what is happening.

No word on either case, but I expect to get info today. We are supposed to be back into PGN for Ahren's rectification and still in PGN for the final approval on PBJ's case. Everyone say a prayer and knock on wood, and cross their finger, etc etc!