Paperwork, check!

Homestudy paperwork, that is.  We submitted the last of it yesterday, and realistically won't hear a thing until 2012, but that's all right.  My goal is to have people waiting on items from us as little as possible, so are focusing paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork.  Next on the list: a brand new dossier....

Hoping for a peaceful and restful holiday season for everyone, near and far. 

The Cone of Shame

Maybe, juuuuust maybe...

Possibly.

We might have something incredible coming our way.  Maybe.  We're trying not to get ahead of ourselves, but that's harder than I thought it would be.

We have preliminary approval to adopt a sweetums through the China Special Focus program.  He is just over 2 years old, and absolutely perfect.  Has a special need which we can't disclose just yet.  It's minor in the grand scheme of things, although it is obvious (hence him being on the Special Focus list). 

He's really, really cute and overall really healthy. 
What happens now?  We have a lot of work to do.  Updated homestudy, re-fingerprinting, re-doing our dossier (well, creating a China dossier).  Saving money like biggest tightwads on earth. 

Once we have a  new homestudy, a new dossier and new Hague-certified fingerprints we submit everything to China.  They say yay or nay.  Usually if preliminary approval has been given the powers that be say yay to final approval, but we haven't always had the best luck with things going smoothly (to put it mildly).  We don't have a whole lotta faith left in the system, but maybe, just maybe, juuuuuust maybe.....

We can't let ourselves get excited.  But we are kind of in love. 

OK, not kinda.  Totally and completely head over heels. 

In.

Love.

But not excited at all.

Yeah, right.

:-)

The Season is Upon Us

We put up our very first Christmas tree last weekend.  We always travel for the holidays and while we've decorated for Christmas before, we haven't ever had an actual tree.  We took Maggie to the tree lot with us, where she proceeded to pee on the first tree she saw.  Whoops.    (Note to self--next time, take her on a walk first.)  The toothless guy who helped us didn't seem to mind, so we marched boldly on.

A Starbucks and a sort-of-black-lab.  Dare I call him a yuppie? 

Anyhoo, the tree looks lovely and smells wonderful (hey, the dog didn't pee on ours) and is very sparkly and festive.  We've also discovered that Goose the Cat finds tinsel to be a delicious and satisfying snack, so that had to be removed as well.  The things we learn. 

Anyway, we have to bring our canine-baby to the vet this weekend for a growth on her leg--I think it's just an old-dog-warty thing, but it's not going to be fun.  So in honor of our warty old lady, Cory bought her the biggest rawhide bone I've ever seen.

The rawhide is as long as her, but she finally figured it out...