We are...

I was SOOOO excited on Monday morning to see that referrals got through 2/15! Yes, this means that we are finally next! We should see Lauren's sweet face by mid-November at the latest, but probably earlier.

I feel like I have lots of things to do now that we KNOW it won't be long. There are still things we wanted to get done before our referral. Gosh, where has the past three years gone? Life on hold...yup. I need to kick it into high gear now!

By the way, check out my sidebar countdown calendar...doesn't it look great with all those days marked off?

The cookie knows...

I was at Costco on Friday night and they had these chocolate covered fortune cookies packaged up so cute in this red box...

This morning I opened up the box, reached down in there and pulled out a cookie. Check out what my fortune says...


Now if it could only tell me if the seeds will blossom in October or November!!! I'm thinking it will be November, but we'll know for sure in a few days.

Special gift for myself...

I got my order from Lisa Leonard Designs today and as soon as I opened the boxes the tears started flowing (I told you I've been emotional lately). I LOVE the necklaces I ordered!

I've been wanting to order a personalized piece of jewelry to start wearing when we get our referral. I found Lisa's website and love her hand-stamped, sterling silver jewelry...


I fell in love with this personalized family tree necklace with a freshwater pearl charm (double click to enlarge)...


and I also couldn't help but order this silver necklace with gold flower, also personalized...


I can't wait until I can start wearing these...I'll be so proud to finally be Lauren's momma!

On another note, thank you for all your kind words on my post from Wednesday. I think you all have talked me off the edge and now I'm looking forward to next week when we should know how far they get with referrals. We will finally see our daughter's face either next week or in another five weeks. It doesn't even seem real that we are actually this close.

Crazy!

This graphic sums up how I've been feeling lately.

Between the stress at my office right now, not knowing if we'll see our daughters face in a couple of weeks or a couple of months and the China baby formula problem, I'm just about ready to tear my hair out! I've been stressed and SOOO emotional this week.

Just in case you're out of the loop on the baby formula situation, let me give you the Reader's Digest version of what's going on...some people decided it would be a great idea to water down milk with a dangerous chemical called melamine...yes, the stuff that's in plastic. This allows them to stretch out their supply of milk and causes a false high protein level when the milk goes through inspection. This milk has been used to make baby formula and distributed throughout China (yes, including orphanages) to feed babies. The melamine causes kidney stones and kidney failure, among other things. What kind of sickos would put babies in danger like this. I can only imagine what the parents in China are going through right now...not even knowing for sure what is safe to feed their babies. The thought of our daughter being feed a dangerous chemical for an unknown amount of time makes me sick to think about.

So far, the early rumors on referrals aren't good. Supposedly the CCAA may be checking into what type of formula the orphanages have been using, which may effect the number of referrals they kick out. At this point, we don't know what will happen. We don't know if they will continue to refer babies from orphanages using the tainted formula or not. Certainly if they don't that will more than likely decrease the number of referrals since the number of available children would drop.

I always thought the end of this journey right before referral would be happy and exciting...looking forward to seeing our daughter for the first time. Instead I'm feeling anxiety, stress and sadness.

I don't want to be a downer, but I'm having trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel right now.

31st LIDversary and new floors...

Today marks our 31st month of waiting. Yes, it's now been over 2.5 years, which is hard to believe. It honestly doesn't feel like it's been that long, but at the same time it's been a long wait. It's funny how that works.

Today I pulled up Rumor Queen and my heart skipped a beat when I saw our log-in-date in her post! It seems so strange after all this time to have her actually talking about our date. Here's what she had to say...

There is an agency out there that thinks their 2/17 families have a chance of being in the next batch, but the way it is worded does not sound like they think it’s a sure thing, just a possibility.

I'm SO trying not to get my hopes up for an October referral, but it's VERY hard not to. I know it's a long shot, but there is a remote possibility. At least we know that we'll more than likely be in for November if not October.

We are finally getting the house back in shape since getting our floors done over the weekend. From the tile and grout removal, everything in the house is covered in a fine layer of dust. It's almost like soot and can't just be dusted off, so we've been cleaning everything top to bottom.

The floors look beautiful and I love them. They even make our kitchen cabinets look nicer. I'm so glad to be rid of the ugly white tile and dirty carpet. Now Lauren will have a nice clean surface to walk and play on. Here's some pictures..

Yearbook yourself...

Well, I've been spending some time with the laptop this weekend while they are working on the floors and I saw that Shannon yearbooked herself. I couldn't help but give it a try too. Here's how I would have looked in my yearbook back then...

1956

1964

1966

1968

1996

1998

This and that....

I got an e-mail today from Artbeads.com, by favorite on-line bead store. They have some beautiful new stonewear beads and some of them have ladybugs on them...


Just thought I'd mention this for my bloggy friends who like to bead and make jewelry. Don't you think one of these ladybug beads would make a great necklace? Hmmm...I just may have to order one.

Well, it's home improvement central at our house this weekend. Joe and I are replacing our ugly (put in by the original owners) white tile and worn out carpeting with wood laminate flooring. We hired someone to remove our old flooring and do the installation, but we both have the day off tomorrow to clean and paint the baseboards as the installer removes them. It will be a long and dirty weekend at our place, but come Monday we'll have beautiful new floors. Here's a few before photos...

Bad furbaby...

Well, there were 141 votes on my poll on when we'll get our referral and 71% think it will be November. I can definitely live with that. We may actually be about 60 days away from seeing our sweet girl's face!

Today we had an appointment with our social worker (SW) to update our home study certification for the last time before we travel. Our furbaby, Lucy, decided she would be a little stinker while the SW was here. Joe and I took the SW down the hall to see the nursery and we stood in there and chatted for a few minutes. When we came back through the kitchen to the table, Lucy was just polishing off the SW's last bite of coffee cake and standing up on Joe's chair to get the rest of his!

Oh my God, I was SOOOO embarrassed! Thank goodness she has a good sense of humor. She said she'd leave that part out of our update. Gee, she probably thinks that Lauren will have to compete with Lucy for food! ;)

Hopefully, we'll have an update memo from the SW within a week and it will be on the way to the court to be certified. It's really nice to have this step over with! Once we get our certification back, I'm going to request our free extension of the I-171H. It doesn't expire until March, but I want to be on the safe side.

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Oh my gosh!

September referrals are out already and the CCAA got through February 9th! This is SO much better than we expected for the first batch after the Olympics and earlier than expected too!

The CCAA was closed during the first week of February 2006. Because of the closure, this batch is actually four days worth of LID's although it's a LOT of movement on the calendar (as you can see on my sidebar countdown calendar).

There are now ONLY six LID days to go. So, when will we get our referral? There is a remote possibility of next month, but that would mean they would have to do a six day batch right on top of this four day batch. I don't think that's very likely. I think it's much more likely that we may be in for November or December at the latest. Finally, I feel I can say that we will DEFINITELY have our referral by the end of the year! What an awesome way to start the new year!!

I have a feeling that the next few months will be the craziest part of this roller coaster ride so far. I feel like I finally need to kick things into high gear and work on some things like: our packing list, finishing our agency required educational points, finishing up some reading I've been meaning to do, taking that baby CPR class. The list goes on...where have the past 30 months gone? HA!