Two Months!

Yes, it's official - we've now been on the Wait List for two whole months!  At the risk of repeating what I said last month, the time has really flown by.  We've hung out with friends;  prepared and/or delivered many a meal to friends who have had babies or surgeries; ended up in Franklin for a week attending my Grandmother's funeral and helping clean out her house; and I attended Women of Faith.  In our spare time we've been dreaming up plans for the baby's room and even making some changes to our bedroom.  The latter will inevitably include a new t.v. purchase, but I'm standing my ground AGAINST the 55 inch behemoth that my husband really wants.  (Love ya, Babe!)

As well as telling everyone how we've been doing over the last month, I also want to introduce some great friends who have been on this journey with us from the beginning.  Friends and Family, I introduce to you the H family.

We met these awesome people (almost) five years ago when we began attending our church.  I can honestly say that they are one of the reasons we initially loved our church so much.  T and J truly have the gift of hospitality, and we've spent many a night playing games at their house over the last several years.  Their beautiful girls are so sweet and fun to be with - just like their parents.  They recently moved out of our area, and now live about an hour away.  It will certainly make game nights a little more difficult, but definitely not impossible.  And... it also helps that they live about 10 minutes away from Ikea :)

They were among the first people we told about our decision to adopt, and they have been nothing BUT supportive.  I can still remember the day I told J...  We were at another friend's house and they were making these super cool photo Christmas ornaments.  When I told them we had decided to pursue adoption instead of having biological children, one friend said something about how she wasn't surprised because that totally fit with the kind of people that we were.  I can't tell you how good it felt to receive that kind of affirmation from good friends who knew us well.  J has also expressed her desire to adopt at some point, and it's so great to have a friend who understands where we're coming from and feels the same way.  I think they're leaning toward a domestic adoption, but I secretly would love it if they also adopted from Ethiopia :)  No pressure, friends!

P.S.  They're not crazy about the color of the wood on their fireplace surround.   Anybody have any thoughts about what they could do to change the color of the surround so it looks better with the brick?  If so, feel free to post a comment!

Flashback: CIS Appointment

Flashbacks are fun stories or memories from our paperchase phase that never made it to the blog.

For our CIS (Immigration) fingerprinting appointment, we were summoned to appear at this awesome place:

La Gran Plaza is a mall on the south side of Fort Worth (very near my old Seminary stomping grounds).  It's a mall geared completely to the Hispanic population and is about as close as you can get to Mexico without actually leaving Fort Worth.  The CIS office is on the back of the mall.

 

Our appointment was scheduled for 8:00 that morning, so we left our house at 7:00 since we weren't sure what traffic would be like getting down there.  Well, of course, traffic was very light that day and we made it down there with plenty of time to spare.  So, we just walked around the mall and looked in the windows of all the stores that weren't open yet, all the while listening to very loud Tejano music.  [Sidenote:  I'm sure it's a perfectly acceptable volume when people are actually in the mall, but when it's just a couple of you, it's a bit loud.  I'm just sayin'.]

 

As it got closer to 8:00 we headed back to the CIS office.  By that time there were LOTS of people hanging out in front of the office and we started wondering how everything was actually going to work. 

Pretty soon a guy opened up the door, told everybody who had an 8:00 appointment to line up single file in front of the door, and then enter as we were waved in. 

 

The line moved pretty quickly (we were about 10th, or so, in line) and soon we were waved in.  We sat in very functional plastic chairs, filled out our forms and were soon called (by number) back to the lady who double-checked our information.  From there, we were moved to another set of functional plastic chairs and then were called back for our fingerprints. 

 

The guy who fingerprinted me was super cute.  He reminded me of an Hispanic version of Gupta from The Terminal ("Do you have an appointment?").   So cute.  Anyway, as he was entering my information into the computer, we had this conversation:

 

GUPTA:  Rebecca Miller!?  Are you on t.v.?  Do you do the weather?

 

ME:  (Laughing) No, I'm not the weather lady, but I used to get that all the time.

 

Gupta begins to fingerprint me and says...

 

GUPTA:  Too bad, I thought I was fingerprinting a celebrity.

 

ME:  (Laughing some more)  Sorry.  I could pretend if you want.  [I know, so not very funny, but I couldn't think of anything clever to say!]

 

Meanwhile, Rob is having his fingerprints done, and this is what he gets...

 

FINGERPRINT MAN:  What color is your hair?  (Rob has already indicated on his form that his hair is brown.)

 

ROB:  Brown

 

FINGERPRINT MAN:  No (pointing at his very dark hair), my hair is brown.  Your hair is sandy!

 

This was after the lady who checked his form yelled at him for checking the box that said he was born outside of the U.S.  (He was born on an Army base in Berlin).  Note to all future adoptive parents:  Apparently it doesn't "count" as being born outside the U.S. if you were born on a military base in a foreign country.  Go figure!

 

Such fun times.  And to think, we would have missed out on this had we never decided to adopt!  I wouldn't have it any other way :)