A Colombian - KONE Connection...

hey everyone! i hope that you all had a great thanksgiving weekend...i know we did! we had my family over on thanksgiving and heath prepared a delicious turkey dinner for all of us. friday mel, heath & i all carried on our annual tradition of shopping til we drop and it was a successful day for all of us. saturday we put up our christmas tree and decorated the house for the holidays. i must say, it's beginning to look a lot like christmas.... call me crazy, but i think i'm even ready for some snow now!

monday it was back to the grind at work. i ended up spending the morning with bruce, a co-worker that was in town from moline, and told him about our adoption journey. as i was telling him our story, i mentioned that we had chosen to adopt from colombia. as soon as i said this, he got excited and told me about a fellow kone employee that is actually from colombia! jose and his family go back to colombia on a regular basis to visit family and friends and have many connections down there. bruce connected with jose when he got back to moline and has already emailed me letting me know that jose is willing to share his connections with us and that he will help "take care of us" when we travel down to colombia to pick up our baby! heath & i are both so excited to learn more and to hopefully meet up with jose the next time we are in the quad cities. what a blessing it will be to have someone with first-hand knowledge help us continue on this amazing adventure.

buenos noches!
ang & heath

The Application is in the Mail....to Colombia!

just a quick update...i received an email from bettina this afternoon and she let me know that our los pisingos application was mailed to colombia today! she said that cecilia will keep it at her office (she's our lss rep down there) until los pisingos is ready for it. yay! things continue to progress...

hola!

september has ended...and so has october! where has the time gone? sorry for the long delay in blogging! i can't even believe how quickly time is flying by - we've now officially been waiting a little over 6 months! 6 months! who would have thought? i kept thinking that this whole 'waiting period' was going to take forever...not so far! if the next 6 months fly by as fast as the past 6 did, we'll be in good shape. (who am i kidding though? the next 6 months here in minnesota will most likely be filled with snow, cold, gray days, etc, etc.)

we've (ok, let's been honest... i've) been working hard on preparing our dossier documents the last two weeks or so. we now have official copies of our birth certificates and marriage certificate, i've set up appointments with a psychologist and our doctor, i've taken an HIV test, we'll be doing more fingerprinting this week and the list goes on. seriously - if everyone had to go through all of this before becoming parents, do you realize how many fewer children there would be?!?! gotta love it.

in my spare time, i've also started taking a beginners spanish class at our church. we meet every thursday night for two hours. let's just say it's even more of a challenge than i thought it would be! i keep mixing up german words with spanish! (thanks frau zishka!) anyway, i think it will definitely help with our trip to colombia to pick up our bambino!

for those of you wondering about my knee...it's finally coming along. i had PT again this afternoon and my range of motion is improving. i need to work on straightening my leg the whole way while i'm walking (need to get rid of my gimpy limp!) - easier said than done! some of you probably haven't heard this, but about 3 weeks post-surgery, i got in a car accident on my way to book club (i was the passenger in a friend's suv and we got rear-ended). my bad knee hit the front dash and i ended up with some bruising and swelling that set-back my recovery about 2-3 weeks. total bummer! luckily it was only bruising as my surgeon was concerned that i may have fractured my patella. i actually go back this thursday for my six-week appointment. hopefully it continues to improve as i'm starting to get sick of this thing holding me back! patience has never been one of my strengths... :)

alright, guess that's it for now. oh, i can't blog without mentioning our UNDEFEATED hawkeye football team!! 9-0! hope everyone is doing well. go hawks!

love,
ang

Wake Me Up When September Ends...

that song keeps playing in my head as i lay here on our couch, right knee and leg elevated above my heart. the good news is, i made it through surgery last week and both the surgeon and the physical therapists say that everything looks good, swelling is minimal and my bending and straightening are both doing well! the bad news is, i'm stuck laying on my back with my leg elevated and iced for many hours of the day! guess i shouldn't complain, but i get bored easily and don't do well without adult interaction. (and i can't drive myself to the coffee shop every day either!) so needless to say, i'm ready for october and the next couple of weeks to fly by! i've had some great nurses and helpers over the last week - heath, mel, my mom, my dad - and for that i will forever be grateful! also, thanks to everyone who has kept me in their thoughts and prayers during my surgery and recovery time.

now, on to some adoption news! i received a call from bettina today and it's time for us to start working on our dossier! basically what this means is that things are progressing and we now have the pleasure of filling out / responding to fifteen (yes, 15!) documents that will then be sent down to cecilia in bogota (she is the lss bi-lingual representative in colombia) for translation to spanish. once the translation is complete, our dossier will be ready when los pisingos is open to new applications. (don't worry, we're already waiting there, you can only turn in your dossier so far in advance as they expire after a year and they don't want to make you have to re-do everything or pay for translations again.) bettina let me know that it typically takes families 1-3 months to complete all of their documents for their dossier, so i'm guessing we have some work ahead of us again! (what else do i have to do right now anyway?!)

well, the twins/tigers game just started, so i must turn my attention to that! one of our new favorite players, orlando cabrera, just got a base hit. yay! why is he one of our faves you might ask? well, he is from colombia! yay!!!

oh, by the way, in case you're wondering how the picnic went last sunday, unfortunately we had to miss it. i woke up feeling awful that day (nauseous & dizzy) and couldn't shake it. needless to say, i was very disappointed. bettina told me that they had a great turnout. guess we'll have something to look forward to next year.

happy fall! (apparently it's arrived in full force...)

go twins!
ang

Waiting...

that's about all that's been going on lately... wish i had something more exciting to report, but i got nothing! i guess the one good thing that came out of my knee injury is that it has definitely preoccuppied me from constantly thinking about the wait. it's been a good distraction, if nothing else. we've now been waiting for about 4 1/2 months and honestly, i can say it has flown by...hopefully that continues!

a few other reedy updates:

• we enjoyed watching our hawkeyes crush the iowa state cyclones today!
• heath is playing fall softball and so far the team is 5-1 (i have to admit, i'm the best scorekeeper ever!)
• my ACL reconstruction surgery is set for 9/23 - i continue to go to physical therapy twice a week & let's just say that's waaaaay more work than i ever thought it would be!
• we are looking forward to our first latin-american family picnic on 9/26 (heath may be pushing me in a wheelchair, but we'll be there!)

hope everyone is doing well! go hawks and enjoy this beautiful fall weather we're having!

ang

Approved!

we received a very important document in the mail yesterday... our I800A forms have been approved by the government and we are officially approved by them to adopt a child (or children - we said we would be open to twins) from colombia! yay! some much needed good news after my injury and some flooding in our basement... needless to say, heath has been #1 husband lately. i'm gonna owe him big time when this is all done! :)

An Unfortunate Incident...

in case you haven't heard, i suffered an unfortunate incident at softball last week. after all my years of playing sports, my luck finally ran out and i injured myself. i was playing left centerfield for our undefeated softball team, the foul swingers. a ball was hit over my head and as i turned to run after it, i decided to try and jump while turning to my left. not a good idea! my right cleat either got stuck in the grass while the rest of my body turned or i twisted my leg as i landed...either way i was in extreme pain and knew something was wrong. after being aided off the field by several of my teammates, i sat on the bench for the rest of the game (well, i did try to bat one more time, but that didn't go so well!). after a visit to the emergency room and sports medicine doctor the diagnosis was: torn ACL and bruises and minor abrasions in the outer bone of my knee. not good! needless to say, my softball season has ended and all sports are out for approximately the next six months. boo! i meet with an orthopedic surgeon tomorrow at 1:00 to find out what he has in mind regarding surgery and when it's going to take place. great way to end my summer!

on a positive note, we just got back from our round of fingerprints for immigration and that went smoothly. i guess we can be glad that our little one is not with us yet as i can't even imagine how we would be dealing with that as gimpy as i am! heath is doing a great job as my nurse and is keeping up with the housework as well. he took over for my mom after she did a great job this past weekend!

heading to the scene of the incident tonight...gotta cheer on my team in the finals!