Life Trumps Blogging

Whew!  The last few days have BUSY with all sorts of different things and there has been no time at all to blog.

There's been the good -- A fellow adoptive family over for dinner with their precious 4 month old.  Oh how I loved having a little baby in the house again!  And then an out of town guest for a few days, who came with last minute notice but we had a great visit with.  Great well-child check-ups at the pediatrician for my oldest 2 kids; praise God for their health!  Completed our 6 month post-placement adoption caseworker visit and not only did all 4 kids behave beautifully, but this time I don't think there were any obvious dead bugs around!  And 10 pages of preschool forms nearly complete and ready to turn in! 

The bad -- 3 hours spent in a courtroom downtown to finalize some paperwork for our adoption and we still didn't get what we needed.  Really this is minor.  Our adoption is still finalized, our youngest daughter is still legally ours and absolutely a U.S. citizen.  It's just going to be a little (or maybe a lot) more trouble than we thought to get her a U.S. birth certificate (it's much easier for school registration, etc. to have a U.S. birth certificate rather than just the Ethiopian one we have, also if we lost it, the U.S. version could be replaced, the Ethiopian one not so much!) and get her name changed from her Ethiopian given name (which includes my husband's first name as her middle name per Ethiopian law) to her American version.  We are just so, so tired of paperwork and government hassles!  But, at least this time we are not fighting our own government just to be able to get her home!

And the big project completed -- I had a coupon for 50% off a hard cover photo book that expired yesterday at midnight and I've been needing to do a 1st year album for my 3rd child for the past 4 years!  With the incentive of the coupon (came out to about $40 savings, so it was a big deal) I decided to tackle the project and finally get it done, but instead of a little at a time for such a big job, I did it all in 2 days, completing it and ordering it literally 45 minutes before the coupon expired!  Not particularly fun, but it is DONE and I can't wait to see my little guy's face when it arrives!