We're back!

I actually tried to post in Mexico, in Mazatlan, but I couldn't get the "new post" page to load. :)

Yes, we're back, and Mexico was wonderful. And warm. Did I mention warm? We had a wonderfully relaxing week and really enjoyed our time there. Quick summary:

--Saturday: left San Diego onboard the MS Oosterdam with Holland America
--Sunday: at sea; myriad of activities and making lots of new friends
--Monday: Cabo San Lucas; we wandered all over Cabo looking for a place to exchange money. This was a great experience and we saw a lot of the city. We finally went to a bank to exchange money and then to a grocery store. After that, we wandered the beach for awhile.
--Tuesday: Mazatlan; in Mazatlan we opted not to pay for one of the cruise ship excursions and instead created our own. So we took a taxi to a different pier and took a water taxi to Isla de la Piedra (Stone Island) with some of the locals. We walked a long way around the island and popped out on another beach. We wandered the beach for awhile, helped two guys put their boat into the water (thus using two of the few Spanish words I remember) and then went horseback riding on the beach and through part of the island. It was so beautiful.
--Wednesday: Puerto Vallarta; here we opted to do an excursion to go hiking in the Sierra Madre mountains. Interesting, but not nearly as beautiful as hiking in Alaska. The highlight of that excursion was the "tourist tree" or "gringo tree". This is a tree that has white bark which turns red in the sun--and then peels off!! :) :) :) That's my new official tree, even though I managed not to get sunburned this trip.
--Thursday and Friday were at sea and Saturday we arrived back in San Diego

The sea days were great and we participated in several activities on deck. Mark displayed his amazing skills at hole-in-one putting (he actually made 9 in a row!) and I displayed my lack of ping pong skills. :) The things I miss the most about being back home are the people, especially the crew. I miss seeing Agus every morning at breakfast, Vlajko taking lots of pictures of us, Jaya at our table at night, and the many other crew members we saw so often. They were so friendly and helpful--they really made the cruise a wonderful experience!

Update on adoption stuff:

Tonya, no we haven't heard anything about our dossier because it's still in the US. :) We're waiting on updates (still) and Kostya can't submit our dossier until he has them. On the note of updates, all we still need are our marriage license and our HS addendum (to reflect my job change). I picked up my employment letters today. I sent off to Texas for our marriage license before we left for Mexico. They needed to go to Ft Worth for the license, then to Austin for the apostille, then back to us. They skipped Austin. *sigh* So today I sent them to Austin to be apostilled, and hopefully we will have those back by the beginning of next week. Our HS addendum is coming along but she needed my employment letters before she could do it...so what can I say? It's a process. :)

Ideally, we would have all of our documents by the middle of next week, take them to be apostilled (here in town--very convenient!), and send them to Kostya at the end of next week. Then MAYBE (that is a huge maybe--I should probably put it in 40 font) our dossier will be submitted by the end of this month. *sigh* I don't really know if that's a possibility--it's just wishful thinking on my end. I'll keep you posted.

And, on that note, congratulations to Beth and Steve whose dossier was submitted!! They're waiting to hear back from the SDA as to whether or not it's accepted, and I'm quite sure they're on pins and needles. Prayers for their dossier and their peace of mind are much appreciated! :)