Bienvenidos 2010!

2010 has arrived! our year has started off with a bang. we rang in the new year with some great friends at our annual new year's eve party. following the fun and celebrations of the holidays, we had to go through some tough days...first off my mom had a bit of a health scare and had to spend a night in the hospital! she fainted at church and they took her to the emergency room and wanted to do some observations on her to make sure nothing was wrong with her heart. she passed all of their tests with flying colors and found out that she just has an inflamed muscle in her back. (i say just, but she is having quite a bit of pain with it and is now going to physical therapy - we can share PT stories now! i was just relieved everything with her heart was ok.) last saturday my uncle darrell (my mom's brother) passed away after a long battle with several illnesses. it was sad to hear the news, but we all know he is in a much better place now - walking and talking again and hanging out with his brothers and family that have gone before him. funerals are never fun, but it was wonderful being able to see so much of my mom's extended family again. we were able to reconnect with many of our cousins and reminisce about lots of fun memories. we were also able to share details of our adoption journey with family members that hadn't heard about it. and, even better, we found out that my cousin jeff's daughter kelly and her husband drew live very close to us and would be interested in babysitting for our baby someday! yay! we're looking forward to meeting up with them soon.

i am preparing to email bettina all of our dossier information next week (we're still waiting on the fbi fingerprint report, but i've heard that this process is now taking around 10 weeks...it's been about 7 weeks since i sent our's in) so she can begin the review process. ginger, my 'office mom', just renewed her notary license so i can have her help me finalize a couple of our documents. what a process to have complete!

time for me to sign off and start cleaning. cheers to 2010!

ang

Merry Christmas!

can you believe it? the holidays are here! where has 2009 gone? seems like just yesterday we were attending our first adoption information meeting at lss... it's crazy to think that was more than 11 months ago already! there's not much new to report on the adoption front...we've now been officially waiting almost 8 months and we are both hoping that this is our last christmas as a couple of DINKS! hopefully next year we'll have a little one to spoil and to celebrate the holidays with! i can't imagine a more perfect gift! :)

let's see...regarding our dossier, we're still waiting on our fingerprint report from the fbi, we're getting our financial statement notarized by our bank tomorrow (tried to do this last friday on our way out of town, but found out that only a spanish speaking notary could sign it! nothing is ever easy you know!) and we have to take one more psychological test through lss next week (another new requirement for colombian adoptions). once we have all that, i will send it in to bettina for review and then finally we will have everything apostilled and forwarded on to colombia and the orphanage. no one said this would be easy, but it's all part of the fun, right?

i had my 12-week post-surgery appointment for my knee down at mayo today and everything checked out fairly well. i need to continue to strengthen my quad (my right quad is still 2 inches smaller in diameter than my left one!) and work on walking without a limp. believe me when i tell you that i am MORE than ready for my knee to be back to 'normal'. i haven't worked out since july 29th and all of the christmas goodies look and taste so good...it's hard to resist. perhaps some one-legged jumping jacks will be in order?

everyone in minnesota is bracing for the big snow storm that is supposed to hit just in time for christmas. we're planning on heading to owatonna on friday morning...we'll see if that happens or not. if we're stuck here, i guess heath and i will get to spend lots of quality couple time together. i am really hoping we can get out! ha ha.

wishing all of our friends and family a very merry christmas and a healthy & happy 2010!

love,
ang & heath

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