I'm Moving

I've moved our blog to a new URL - If you follow our journey, go on over, add me to your bloglines or to your favorites. This blog will stay up for a bit but I will eventually delete it.


Here it is
OUR NEW BLOG

Back to School

Another successful school break is coming to an end. I'm ready for back to reality. We have had a great break with a surprise visit from Aunt Nancy (Joe's sister) thrown in. Aunt Nancy arrived late last Wednesday and we have had lots of fun. Our cold temps made for some good shopping and rearranging of our living room the first 2 days and then we hit the seas. We also got to prove again why we so affectionately call ourselves the Griswolds. You all know the movie Vacation - they drive to Wally World and it's closed... well these types of things happen to us a lot so thus the nickname. This weekend's Griswold moment was..... when we decided to spend our Sunday and Aunt Nancy's last day fishing. We loaded up our pontoon which we call our barnacle barge and headed out to a special fishing spot we have marked on our GPS. We arrived, we anchored. I was setting up the food, Joe was in charge of the bait and rods. When we heard "oh no".... never a good sound in our Griswold world, we knew something was wrong. Sure enough the bait bucket line some how untied - much scrambling ensued, at one point I had my eye on it it with my trusty boat hook, but it was a goner. Yes, we are the Griswolds. Well that didn't stop us from a fun day of boating. We headed to Picnic Island - just being on this island is fun - fishing or not. I leave you with some pictures. Back to life, back to reality - yeah, I'm singing that song in my head right now - join on in :) Happy Monday to everyone.

Aunt Nancy and Joseph

Dolphin The Bridge I run over when I run :)

Our first family pic 2008

Look close - it's a Bald Eagle in the tree on our dock Goodnight...
Our beloved barge :)

5 Days

That is how many days the CCAA referred this month. Congratulations to the few families that were included this month.

The second official paperchase began for us today and this was not that encouraging in my decision or my new outlook. As I made doctor appointments, copied documents that have already been copied, notarized, authenticated, etc., (at least this time around only copies are needed) and Joe was gathering tax documents and re-doing our financial statement, all that kept going through my mind is I may have to do this again. As I was grunting under my breath, I heard Joe say "let's just do what we have to do". Glad one of us in the right frame of mind.

Enough - moving on, moving forward..... Here's to the weekend and some warmer temps tomorrow. I'm cold and I don't like it. I'm tempted to buy Uggs. My sister is coming in a week - it better warm up. Even though our cold temps are what our NY family/friends call warm this is not what she has in mind for a winter vacation to paradise. To think a day ago, my air conditioning was cranking.

Better late than never - isn't that what they say? Our Christmas 2007 was awesome as was our New Years. We kicked off our Christmas starting with the annual Christmas pageant at Church which was beautiful and a reminder of what this holiday is really about. Christmas Eve we went to the beach to get our sand for our luminary tradition. We went out to dinner at our favorite waterfront restaurant for an early dinner and then shot some fireworks off of our dock. We lit the luminary, put out our key for Santa, read Twas the Night before Christmas and before we knew it morning was here. Santa was very good to all of us :) The next day we had the pleasure of our Maryland friends visiting and we of course went boating - Captiva was our destination. Their visits always go by too quick but a good time! Friday we headed out to Boca Grande for New Years. I know I say that all the islands we visit are my favorite, but this one is definitely tops for me. It's a magical place. I love getting on the golf cart and just driving around the island. The people are so nice and one of our favorite things to do is to go to the dog park at 3:30 - that is when the unspoken Boca Grande rule is that the small dogs gather and play - at 4:00 the big dogs come. Boo loved her park time each day and there was even another Norwich there named Hudson. We did lots of fishing and Joseph caught his first big snook - very hard to catch! This was a keeper! We met the Governor of Florida (there's a pic in the slideshow). Joseph had a very nice political converation with him. We visited with our social worker who had just returned from China last month. She gave Joseph an Olympic 2008 t-shirt and gave us a beautiful red ornament with a Jade stone that represents Good Luck in China. She bought this for us in Guangzhou. We have it hanging in our kitchen. When speaking with her this weekend we talked about the wait and how discouraged we were. I mentioned at one point that maybe this just wasn't meant to be - her answer to me has stuck in my mind since - she said "something is not meant to be when every single door has been closed." Well the doors are still wide open.

We ended our last day of the year on the beach watching fireworks. We brought along some but there were so many others doing them, we had a nice show.
As this new year begins, I have so much gratitude for the life I have - my husband, my son, my family, friends and now my blogger friends - I am blessed beyond measure. I wish everyone good health, happiness, peace and may this year bring lots and lots of babies home to their forever families. I look forward to watching many of you start and complete your families.

FOURTEEN

Today marks 14 months we have been logged in to the CCAA. This also starts the beginning of us doing another paper chase to keep our immigration approval current. As of last week, I was completely set on just letting it all expire and starting over to file with USCIS in maybe 6 months or so. That is what seemed logical. We had a lengthy telephone conversation with our agency last week and it still seemed logical after that conversation that we should just let our I171H expire because at the rate of referrals, we will most likely have to do it all again anyway - so what's the point? Well, the point is, for us, if we let it expire it's almost like saying we are giving up and we are not. I have had some much needed support this past week and we decided we will re-do our paperwork, we will head out to Tampa to be re-fingerprinted and we will do what we need to do to keep on our path to our daughter.

Thank you for all of your support and encouraging words - they mean so much to me.

Here's to the last weekend of 07' - I'm ready for 2008, bring it on.

TRADITIONS

Every Christmas Eve when I was a child, our family would do luminarie. Someone in our neighborhood always coordinated the project and Christmas Eve afternoon a bag filled with sand, lunch bags and candles were delivered. I remember going in the garage with my Dad and making the bags. I loved doing this with him. Well, we started this tradition for our family last year. The only difference is we go to the beach for our sand- about a 5 minute ride. This year we are doing red and white bags. We just got back from the beach with our sand - The bags are filled and now we wait for nightfall. I love Christmas....