Monday, December 01, 2008

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

I had the best of intentions of posting on Thursday evening with pics of the boys' Thanksgiving feast at school--complete with pictures! But our laptop has decided to have a mid-life crisis (it's 7 years old) and is not being very cooperative. As in, it currently won't access the internet. We do have another computer but I'm not on it very often as it's down in the basement office and I stay upstairs when the boys are awake.

We did have a very nice Thanksgiving. We went to the Masseys' house for Thanksgiving day and spent several fun hours with their family, including their son Garrett who came home from Ukraine a few months ago. Friday after work we headed to my family and spent the weekend there. The boys ate and ate and ate this weekend. We got home last night and they wanted to eat more--I seriously don't know how anything else could fit in their tummies. They are amazing eaters. Hopefully we they gained a few pounds this weekend. :)

The Thanksgiving feast at school went really well last week! Both boys participated and there were some spots where Dima participated more than Zhenya, which is nothing short of amazing. Dima was a little stressed in the morning (his teacher said he spent the entire morning saying "Why?" to everything that was said--another of his stress responses ;)) but did a great job not chewing on his clothing (he did have short sleeves on) and did a great job at the performance. He had a really good weekend although we did have a meltdown on Sunday before we headed home. And due to some other continued disobedience as a result of him being VERY exhausted from the weekend, he went to bed early last night and was out instantly. But both boys had a great time getting to see some extended family and playing with some (first cousins once-removed? second cousins?) cousins that are close in age. Their 5 yo girl cousin was very disappointed that there were only boys to play with. ;) Hopefully next year we'll have some girls for you, Q! :) :)

On that topic, we submitted our I600A last Friday! Hooray! For those of you not familiar with the process, we have to get approval from the US government to adopt internationally. The I600A is a request for approval to adopt internationally. Now we wait for our FBI fingerprinting appointment and then our approval to adopt. As we wait, we'll continue collecting some additional documents for our dossier in the hopes that as soon as we have our 171H (I600A approval) we'll be able to submit our dossier to Ukraine.

6 comments:

Debora Hoffmann said...

I love hearing about your boys, and I'm so glad to hear about your journey to your girls. :-) We are wanting to submit our I-600A soon, but we have questions about a couple of areas that are more state-specific. Guess we'll have to ask our home study agency. I keep feeling like this is dragging on longer than it should, but then I have to remind myself that GOD is in control, not ME! :-)

Tami said...

I am so excited for you! Its hard to believe that its been a year since we sat in that little restaurant in Kiev, the night before your appointment and the day before ours. Wow! How time flies! I'm thinking you'll be experiencing some deja vu in the coming months...wish we were coming along for the ride. ;>)

Audrey said...

Wow - that was fast! I guess that you know what you are doing. ;)

We should be submitting our I600A this week. So excited!

Courtney said...

Debbie--There shouldn't be anything on the I600A that is state-specific, so as long as your HS is done you can submit. I can tell you what to put in all of the blanks if you like. The answers are the same regardless of whether or not you're using an agency or going independent.

Audrey--It does seem fast, but we started our HS back in early September, long before we ever posted anything on the blog. :) So getting the final HS took 3 months, and we waited to submit our I600A until we had the HS. Maybe we'll get our approvals and submit our dossiers at the same time--and then travel at the same time!! :)

Debora Hoffmann said...

I should send you the I-600A I filled out (it's all digital now). I think I have it filled out correctly. I think our home study agency will advise us to wait to submit it until we have our home study in hand...we SO want to be in the quota, and we feel like we're racing against time. You might feel that way, too, but you're farther ahead than we are. :-)

As He Leads is Joy said...

I just want to say that I am so excited for you.