Take me out to the ball game

For my birthday we ventured out to a baseball game. Even though our local team is probably one of the worst teams in the league, it is still a lot of fun to go out to the park. It is too bad that more people do not support the Royals, because it really is fun to watch any team play (good or bad). This was the first trip for C and F. A had gone last summer to a game with me and my dad. They all loved it! We were in great seats and you can actually see the faces on the players. I am used to sitting in nose bleed seats when I have gone to professional sports games in the past, so it is really great to go and actually see what is going on. The boys brought their new gloves in hopes that they would catch a foul ball. This was so funny to me because they can't catch the softest lob you toss their direction yet they thought they would hang on to a ball coming at them at 30x that speed. Even though we had just gone out to eat, we had to get the obligatory nachos. If you haven't been to a game in awhile you might not know that nachos are now served "mega-style." You get a massive amount of chips and two huge servings of cheese. The cheese to chip ratio is out of control. The kids thought they were in heaven, so I guess it was worth the outrageous fee they charge from stale chips and processed cheese! Anyway, it was a really great night and not a bad way to ring in my thirties.

DTC

Today we are officially DTC!!! Our dossier was sent to China today from our agency in Texas. Now begins the looooooong wait. Atleast it is out of our control now and in China's hands.

Dossier to agency

On Friday we received our 171H back from the Chinese Consulate. This completed our dossier!!!! Today we shipped our dossier to our agency in Texas. They should be receiving it tomorrow morning. They will look it over and if everything looks good (it better considering I checked everything about 10 times!) they will send it to China on Friday!! May 25, 2007 will hopefully be our DTC date. We could not have timed this more perfectly.

When adoptions from China were moving more rapidly, a DTC date (Dossier-to-China) was really important because it signified the end of a family's paperchase and the start of their wait. Once a dossier arrived in China it was logged it pretty quickly and the family was given an LID (log-in-date). The wait at that time was about 6 months from DTC to referral. Now it is taking almost a month for a dossier to even get logged in and then another 19 months to get a referral. So some people argue that the DTC is not that momentous anymore. But we sure are happy to be done with the mountain of paper work needed for this adoption, so we are going to celebrate anyway. Who knows, maybe everything will speed up again!

Lake time

Lake season kicked off for us last weekend. My parents have a lake house about one hours drive north of our house. I took the boys up there this past weekend (Susie had to work the whole weekend :( ) . The kids absolutely love it at the lake and they count down the nights until we get to go back again. I also love the lake because it is not only fun, but there is something for the kids to do all the time. We have a two boats, a trampoline, a sandbox, horse-shoe pits, minature pools, an actual community pool, an area for camp-fires and smores and so much more. It is really nice to spend an entire weekend and not hear the words "I'm bored." The highlight of the lake for C is the riding lawnmower. My dad just got a new one too and C views it as I would if he got a new jaguar! He could sit on that thing all day. Also for Christmas this past year, my parents bought the boys a miniature tractor that they can drive themselves. This has been a huge hit with them all. F is a bit too young to get the concept of holding down the pedal in order to move forward, but he likes sitting on it. My aunt and uncle also have a house next door to my parent's place and so it is really nice to hang out with them too. The kids also like going over to their house to see what the "big kids" are doing. Here are some pictures of this past weekend. Don't tell C he was using a toy fishing pole :)

Final authentication

Susie was able to get our 171H certified today and I made a mad dash to the UPS store at 5:40pm to get it mailed off before the 6pm deadline (items dropped off after 6pm have to wait until the next day). It should arrive at the Chicago Chinese Consulate by 10:30 tomorrow morning. It took us 11 days to receive our last batch of documents back from the Chinese Consulate, so hopefully this time will be a day or two quicker. My goal is to have it back so we can get our whole dossier to our agency by May 23rd. This may be a pipe dream. My 30th birthday is May 24th and you have to be 30 in order to adopt from China (or in reality you have to be 30 before an agency can send your paperwork to China...with the length of time it is taking to complete an adoption, most people are atleast 32 before they actually adopt the child!) Anyway, our agency sends dossiers (completed papers) of families to China every Friday. They have to have received the dossier at the agency by 10:00am on Wednesday morning in order to make it to the Friday shipment. I think it would be great to get our dossier to our agency by Wednesday May 23...my birthday would be the 24th....and they would ship our dossier to China on Friday May 25th. What a great birthday present that would be. Things have to fall into place pretty perfectly for that scenario to happen, but we will see....

Happy Truman Day

Apparently today was Truman Day, who knew. I unfortunately found out as I headed down to the the Missouri Secretary of State's Office to have our 171H certified. I found the whole building shut down with no mention anywhere as to why. I came home and called government offices all over the city to see what was going on and none of them mentioned why they were closed. I finally called an office in another city and they had a message saying they were closed in honor of Truman Day. How ridiculous is that? I find that government workers are 1) the most unfriendly of people and 2) hardly overworked (but move at glacier speed), yet they are constantly off work for made-up holidays that no one else seems to even know about. I also found it odd that our bank was open and we got mail today, so apparently the observation of this so called holiday is not mandatory. The frustrating part is that I only had today to get this form notarized, certified and sent off to the Chinese consulate for authentication. So, Susie is going to attempt to get it done tomorrow with the boys in tow, but unfortunately for her it is not a quick process (see previous note on the speed of SoS workers) nor is it a pleasant experience (see note on friendliness of workers at our government office). Hopefully it will get done and we will be finished with this last step!

Happy Birthday Evan!!

Friday night we went down to the Brookside Art Fair. It was completely jammed and our double wide stroller was difficult to navigate through the crowd, but we managed to have a good time anyway. We were lucky to get a table to sit and relax at while we ate dinner. Then we did some more walking/art viewing and headed over to Foo's for frozen custard. After that some of our neighbors had an "art fair" party, so we stopped by their house on our way home. It was a really nice night.


In addition to Saturday being Cinqo de Mayo, it was also our nephew Evan's first birthday. We tried to get his parents to name him Juan or Jose, but they opted against our suggested. They had a big first birthday party for him complete with pinata and the obligatory first birthday cake face shoveling. We had a really good time and it was nice to see some of Susie's old sorority sisters and their families that we rarely get to see. We were actually able to get a picture of (most) the kids that were at the party. I think there were about 3-4 additional kids that were either too little to get in the picture or too young to sit still long enough! I think Evan was a bit overwhelmed with the whole experience, but I think first birthdays are all about the pictures. Later you can show them the pictures and let them see how much fun they had getting that cake all over their face. Evan raked in the presents and as Jane put it, I think our boys realized that Evan's house became a lot more fun of a place to visit!!

After the birthday party, Susie and I headed over to some of our friend's house who were having a Kentucky Derby party. It has been a busy weekend of parties and today I think our biggest plans are to lay on the couch and watch the rain.

171H

Today we received our immigration approval to adopt an overseas orphan!! This is the form we filed with the local immigration office on April 3 and were told it could take 90 days to receive the approval. (The application is called the I-600A and the approval form is called the 171H) Anyway it arrived today at just over 4 weeks. Susie had to call our agency and read it to them over the phone to make sure it really was the 171H because the wording is so odd. This is our final piece of the puzzle needed to turn in all our paperwork to China. Now we just need to get it notarized, certified and authenticated and we will be done with the paperchase!! Unfortunately then our looooooong wait for a referral begins, but at least at that point it is out of our hands.

We have a busy weekend coming up. Dave and Jane (Susie's parents) are in town for our nephew's birthday party. Plus we have a local art fair going on in our neighborhood and our friends are having an annual party that coincides with the art fair. Should be a great weekend! I will take some pictures this weekend and post them Sunday.