Still Cold.

Ok Winter can be done now. My hands are hurting and dry from the cold air. Apparently as you get older any moisture you previously had in your body gets sucked away...how I don't know. Too many years of exposure? My skin is itchy and dry, this is a newish phenomenon for me. As a teenager the issue was too much moisture now not enough. Thank goodness for lotion.

I have approximately 55 minutes until I need to leave to grab Gavy from school and head to Atlanta for a visit with a pulmonologist. After numerous battles and missing umpteen days of preschool for non stop coughing we are heading to a specialist with the hopes of getting this nonsense undercontrol. Last year he was tested for allergies and other than a eensy allergy to cock roaches (yes they test for that) he is allergy free. Which I had already figured anyway seeing as we only ever get asthma flair ups when he gets a cold. So we will see what we are told today. Since he is starting Kindergarden (be still my heart) in a wee 7 months (deep breaths) we need to get things better managed because he can't miss entire weeks of school numerous times in a year. We had similar issues with Jakeb but by this age he was out growing them. However Jakeb was a wheezer which is pretty classic asthma, Gavin on the other hand is a cougher--not so classic. So to the docs we go, though I do think this new combo of meds seems to be the best thus far.

This morning we zip zoomed on over to mail our I797C approval letter to our agency. Yes! We received it Saturday--woot! Now we kick back (well if that's the sort of person I was--but unfortunately it's not...) and relax and wait for it to go thru translations and then on it goes to where it's going to go for official approval! It=Dossier. Dossier=major bunch of papers letting Colombia know we are cool and awesome and would be rockin' parents to 2 children from their country. That we will love them and snuggle them and squeeze them (not too tight) and think they are amazing and will tell them that too and oh yeah we aren't crazy and we really are real people with a real house and all that jazz. So that's that. Now we wait....right right we already have been doing that, but now we get to wait some more. And we are excited about this, because it gets us closer to less waiting more receiving. All good things come to those who wait and patience is a virtue and all those awesome things.

And with that...here are more snow pictures (though it didn't snow again these are from the other week)...because it's winter and cold and you need to look at them because it's better than listening (reading) to me ramble...trust me.

Snow wrestling: cracked me up.

The shine on the ice:

And now I have 20 min. Because it takes THAT long to load pictures. Well almost...I needed to do a itty bit of tweaking on those. But really picture loading takes a long time.

Comfortable.

I love before and after pictures, so I thought I would share some of the living room/sunroom swap that I raved about a few posts back. I am still loving it. One of the things that everyone tells me when they come to our house is that it feels comfortable. Cozy. And that's great! I have learned that I have a knack for piecing the house together and making it look pretty decent. I at times would love to go and buy fancy paintings and expensive rugs and then think--for what? So I don't (and not only because it's not in the budget) and instead I am proud of myself for putting together a comfortable house with what we have. And I will take that!

Here's the family/living room before (you can see part of the sunroom, they are seperated by a step down):

The before of the sunroom/sunken living room/we aren't sure what to call it:

The AFTER of the swap:

The AFTER family room before--now a "sitting area" or something:

Much better! And we didn't paint--just different lighting made the walls look different. The recent photos are more true to the real color, the "Sunroom" is a bit more turquoise but not as much as the first picture shows. Either way I LOVE the color. So there ya have it!

Approval!

Found out that our I800A was approved this morning!! Now let's see how fast we get our letter in the mail, we need that in hand before anything is sent.

Big step! This means everything that is handled state side is D-O-N-E. That is until it's time to renew everything....

ETA: We just got an email that we need to have our medical forms redone per a new form in Colombia. Not cool. One big step forward, one small step back. Par for the course!

ETA again: Our forms do NOT need to be redone. We are good to go! :)

Happy Dancing.

After calling approximately 94532 times we were informed yesterday by the US of A department of citizenship and immigration that our papers have been assigned to an officer. Not approved, just assigned. Silly I know but that gets us one step closer and we are working at a baby step pace. I suppose I should wait and be doing a happy dance after everything is approved but I am just glad to be almost there. This is the final step before everything is sent to Colombia. From there our papers are translated and receive a few stamps and then will be reviewed by the proper people. Once everything is approved in Colombia the waiting clock officially starts. I know right...you thought it already had. Nope not yet. BUT once everything is approved we will have a better idea of our time frame. This is good.

Every time I walk past what will be their room I feel a little heart skip as I think about them being here and home with us. The boys are very excited. Gavin asks me everyday what various words are in Spanish, he will learn so quick. It's really pretty amazing.

The boys started back to school this week after being out for a month! It's weird getting back into a routine after lazying around for so long. It was much needed but an adjustment for certain.

The snow is finally melted and I am fast approaching being very ready for warm weather. If I see one more beach picture it might do me in. It will be here before I know it!

The Meltdown.

It's Thursday and it's Sunny. The shine on the ice is gorgeous, my yard is full of glistening pearls. And chunks of broken ice-snow. Underneath the ice-snow are falls leaves and underneath that is the promise of spring and then summer. When the snow started to fall I was giddy with excitement. I watched in awe as it fell and fell and fell fast. We had total coverage in a little over an hour so I woke the boys at midnight to show them--or tried to Gavin mumbled that he didn't want to see it and rolled back over. But I fell asleep smiling that smile that you can't hide. You know the one. I woke up with the same excitement. And somehow I lost it. Within 20 min of being outside it was gone--I was frustrated and overreacting. Shock, I know. As previously mentioned Jakeb and Gavin aren't much for the cold...so they had to warm up (no pun intended) to the idea of spending more than 10 minutes outside in a freezer. I get that, now. I got that then. But at the time I was expecting romping and sledding and giggling fun. That didn't happen at least not in my time frame. Instead I got angry and Jakeb ended up in tears. Smooth as ice, I am. Appologies were made and we made a second attempt, with greater success. If at first you don't succeed try again and you may. And we did. Today Jakeb was asking to go outside the second my foot hit the cold wood floor, progress. Next time however I will put down the camera and play with them too. Today we walked out to 5 cars stuck and trying to get out of our neighborhood, so we had a bit of extra excitement. The sledding was good and apparently so is the ice because Zachary couldn't get enough of it. It is slowly (very slowly) melting away....but in the mean time we are trying to enjoy it. Being "stuck" at home has been surprisingly easy this go round and I am wishing I was more often.

Here's a video of the boys sledding just this morning....ignore my loud mouth and listen to what Gavin says. Haha.

Snowy Snowness

We have a little stream that runs through our back yard and this is what it looks like right now

Our backyard is downhill from the front so we have stairs that go down from the driveway to the back yard--under the snow.

We are "snowed" in here in the suburbs of Atlanta. For real. Now Robert did make it out of the hood to head to work for the first time this week. But we haven't had our MAIL delivered in 2 days. On the news last night they showed a clip of a person ice skating on a major highway. What?! Yes ice skating and the night before that? Skiing. Not kidding.

The city was undoubtedly not prepared for such precipitation. And while maybe they should have heeded the weatherman's warnings, things like this happen every decade or so--therefore I am not surprised at their lack of response. The kids are more than pleased. As a result they will likely get over a month of Christmas break. They missed last week as a result of the flu and now it's Wednesday and I don't see school going back tomorrow. Friday maybe, and no school Monday for the holiday.

Our road looked like this last night

Going back is going to be hard! We have all been sleeping in and getting up lazily. The kids aren't much for cold weather and wet snow so outside time has been very little. We did all get out last night for over an hour and had a blast. Poor Gavin and Jakeb just can't do the cold-even with 3 pairs of pants, heavy duty socks and boots, hats, and gloves.

this was Zachary's favorite thing to do--dive into the snow/ice. And pretend to be stuck.

this is what is on top of the snow--sheets of ICE.

Maddie girl thought the snow was AWESOME.

Zachary totally nailed Robert with a snowball as he jumped.

An Arrangement.

Many moons ago we bought new living room furniture. Very big living room furniture and in the 3 living rooms it has been placed in it has never fit. Ever. Why the whole "measure the furniture" idea never crossed our minds when we purchased the twin size bed of a couch is beyond me but it didn't. So we are stuck with giant furniture that isn't my taste. Also another issue--this furniture was never "my taste" but I liked it ok and knew it would not show stains. Which is true, I could rub Georgia clay mud all over the cushions and you would never see it. So a plus for it. Right so anyway. Let's stay on topic here. When we moved I knew the no wall 6'x7' living room and giant furniture weren't going to get along well. But being the resourceful person that I am I made it work. Until today. Today I stepped over one toy, kid, pillow, or dog too many. I made the executive decision to move our living room to the sunroom. Why I pushed against this previously is beyond me--actually it's not--everyone else suggested it, I said "No, no that won't work..." but basically I am pretty sure it needed to be MY idea--yes apparently I am one of those people. Awesome. (and for those of you that just said "no kidding" hush yo mouth!) Right anyway. I lost it and started moving furniture all over and Giant Couch is now in the much larger living room space (Duh) and previous "family room" will now house 2 chairs and 2 book shelves like it should instead of enough seating for an entire family of 5 plus 2 dogs and 3 cats. Trust me that was NOT working.

It looks marvelous and much more open and comfy. I am glad I am so resourceful and take the advice of others like a champ.

One of the things that had to be moved was our TV. Now I will say this is the main reason I protested because A) there is no fantastic spot for a TV in a room full of windows and B) the one cable jack in the room is not hooked up to Directv. But I trudged ahead anyway noticing again the atrocious job Mr. Cable Man did and finally calling Directv a mere 8 months after the install to get it done correctly. Oops. Apparently they don't honor that sort of time frame. Who knew? I thought maybe if I played all authoritative pissed off customer that would help so I asked for a manager. But no dice. Still they will be out Sunday to hopefully fix it and run a line to the new jack all the while charging me $50 and crossing my fingers they will tack the lines up properly. I personally think their "return policy" should be longer than 7 days...but I also should have double checked Mr. Lazy Cable Man's craftsmanship before I signed the papers. But dude for reals who leaves wires just hanging out of the wall and calls it a done job? I mean really. My favorite is the cable line drilled directly into the baseboard of my closet. Nice. Real nice. But again my fault for waiting entirely too long to fix something that just wasn't that high up on my priority list. Did I mention new family room is fantabulous? Because it so is and so has room for like a family of seven. Awesome.

Speaking of family of seven our happy pretty little dossier is on it's way to our agency. Still waiting on our CIS approval but everything else is done and ready to rock and roll on down to Colombia. So close folks, so close.

Ho Hum Week.

A funky week it has been here, no one is quite sure what to do with themselves. I am 97% positive the boys will be back at school tomorrow. Despite their protesting they are 97% better--fevers have been gone for well over the 24 hour period. Having them home for nearly 3 weeks made me realize I need to get some ideas rolling around for summer--yikes. Zachary has blossomed into quite the ahem, busy child. And will need activity or we will both go loco.

I wandered around yesterday trying to find a substantial activity to do with no real success. I did move some things around in the boys rooms and cleaned out the guest room closet--but really that took no time. I played a couple games on the Wii with the kiddies and a couple board games. Tossed a couple loads of laundry in the wash--which now need to be folded. Folding laundry is my most loathed chore. It used to be mopping but I got a new Shark Steam Mop dealio for Christmas and I heart that very much. Mopping made easy. And really mopping is over rated, IMO anyway. Especially now that I don't have babies crawling around on the floor. I do vacuum often because I loathe finding dog and cat hair all over. Yuck! All that other cleaning, whatev. I am so not stressing it. I used to stress over every last "chore" getting done by X day but oh goodness I have a million and ten better things to stress over. Now don't get me wrong I will flip my lid if my counters are piled with junk for more than 24hrs. And piddly little trinkets all over the floor no can do buckeroo. Not only unsightly but eesh! stepping on it no bueno!!

Well Robert just walked in with a eensy container of the BEST ICE CREAM EVER. ¡Adios!

Fotografias

The tree ready and waiting for the boys to wake up!

The treadmill behind the boys is what Santa brought me :) No he wasn't dropping hints it was on my list!

And after gifts we had SNOW!!

So close.

I am trying hard and failing most days to not obsess over the adoption. It's not an easy thing, the waiting and the unknown. And right now I feel SO close, yet so NOT. We are hopefully weeks or even days away from submitting our dossier for translation and then to Colombia. EEK! That's so close, yet still so far away. So close I am bursting from the seams, yet once that's done we have a potentially long, long wait before we are hugging on those sweet babies. And for that reason I am trying not to obsess, but it's sort of in my genes. Right now I am obsessing over learning Spanish. Um do you know how hard learning a second language is? Yes, hard. Supposedly English is one of the hardest languages for a person to learn--have you tried to learn Spanish verbs? Um yeah. Lucky for me I had a couple years of it in high school, but I am not sure how I go about learning. I am leaning more towards learning like a child does--how to speak it first THAN worry about proper spellings and etc. Because trying to do both at the same time is confusing me muy mucho. So because I am trying hard not to obsess about when I will be loving on some kiddo's, I am obsessing about Spanish--poor Robert. I have this thought that I would like to be somewhat fluent because depending on the age of our children I would like to be able to help them keep as much of their language as possible. No pressure or anything.

And for some perspective on the genetic obsessing: My dad has been talking about moving down here for no less than 6 months. Looking at houses, deciding what where, when, how the house shall look. How he could add on to said house, where he could, when he could....you get the idea. He is finally closing on a house Jan 17th. Seven tenths of a mile away from ours.

Update on the fluboys: they seem to be on the mend. Fevers are under 101 and moods perked up yesterday. But I suspect one more day home, we shall see.

Fluday Monday

Today is the day before the boys go back to school and we are supposed to be enjoying it by doing something fun. Instead they are 2 on the floor and 1 on the couch and down for the count--hit with the flu.

They really got shafted on their Christmas break 'o fun. Though not to them. Lately their idea of fun is staying in pajama's for 2 days straight and alternating from the Wii to Beylade battles. So while I am feeling a little bummed that our 2.3 weeks of winter break was heavy on visitors of every sort they haven't noticed a bit. The stomach bug that began with Gavin (in a restaurant 2 hours from home--that was fun) and ended with me after Christmas was relatively mild but kept us homebound. Now we are camped out with 3 pitiful little boys with the flu. Really I should say I have 2.5 pitiful little boys. Jakeb and Gavin are feeling pretty cruddy while Zachary seems to be taking it like a champ. Takes a lot to keep that one down.

And every little twinge or tickle of the throat has me racing to the thermometer and waiting for my own demise. And the Swagger Wagon in the garage...after hauling 3 flu filled kids to the doctor...is now the Germ Wagon and in quarantine.

ETA: The boys obviously will not be going to school tomorrow and likely the next day or the next.

Sharing Photographically

Ok so I am going to try to do this in order--somewhat...you know before Christmas, after etc....I have gotten ubber slack on the picture posting. One of the things I am looking forward to in 2011 is getting back into my personal picture endeavors. I decided, yesterday in fact, that I will be officially working my way towards closing up shop for Lilac Hill Photography, at least for now. With everything going on with the adoption I have no intention of restarting things here anytime soon, and economically speaking traveling back and forth from TN just isn't working and wouldn't work long term. So I made the decision to no longer accept any NEW clients, I do plan to continue with the current clients from time to time. So anyway--I am hoping that will allow me to get back into what drew me to photography in the first place. Anyway--all of that tangent blabbering just to share some pictures of us with you.

The big gift this year was a trampoline and they got it early--they LOVED ours we had in TN but we left it because we didn't think we could get it in our yard here, but after all of the clearing Robert has done it fits just great! These pictures aren't of the trampoline though--instead it's the boys playing in the boxes it came in--they had a blast coloring them all up and then sliding down our leafy hills and stairs. I never did get a picture of the finished tramopline with the net on it--but it's there!

I have just one shot from Jakeb's Christmas program--the 5th graders did a play and the 3rd and 4th graders sang songs in between "acts". Jakeb is in the grey sweater with red stripes with his arm up on the front row. I didn't get many shots because I took more video and he was never facing me.

Third up we have a few shots from Gavin's little Christmas "program" where he was waving and yelling "I love you" at us from the stage. He rocks. My dinky point and shoot camera doesn't cut it sorry for the grainy--I knew it would be there but I zoomed anyway!

And in his class.

The boys school (which is AWESOME) has a "Giving Tree/Holiday Sing-a-long" day. It's the last day of school of the "year" and they have every student bring a gift into the gym and then they donate them to the county children's services and then they sit in the gym singing Christmas carols. Now I am pretty sure they sang EVERY single Christmas song but it is just a wonderful thing that they do. I didn't sit with Jakeb so I didn't really get many shots of him but I did get a few of Zachary who came and sat with me.

And Santa Came!

And soon I will get to the actual Holidays....