Nuestra Nueva Familia!

hola! we are now part of a new family! heath & i were warmly welcomed to the upegui family & home in coal valley, illinois this past weekend. i believe i mentioned the upegui family in an earlier post, but in case you may have forgotten, jose manuel upegui works for kone in moline. he and his wife, luz helena, are both originally from colombia (armenia for jose & medellin for luz helena) and graciously offered to share their knowledge & love of the colombian culture with us. we had a wonderful time with them on saturday night! luz helena prepared a delicious dinner for us & they both shared very useful information & many stories about colombia in general as well as some specifics about bogota. we were able to meet their son, jose luis, and heard a beautiful story about their daughter, luz angelica, and her suprise "QSS" party (a very special blending of her quinceanera, celebrating her latino heritage, and her sweet sixteen).

it was a very special night for us as the stories shared helped put us even more at ease with our upcoming visit to colombia and also made us that much more excited to travel there to pick up our baby! we take great comfort in knowing how loving and caring colombian families truly are. the upegui's are so proud of their culture and have done a wonderful job combining their two cultures. at the end of the evening they presented us with two small gifts: a package of 100% colombian coffee & a copper replica of an indian mask! we took a few pictures together (i will post them as soon as luz helena sends me copies!) and left with the feeling that we are now part of a new family (nuestra nueva familia).

we look forward to growing our relationship with the upegui family & cannot wait to learn even more from them! we will be eternally grateful for this special connection.

angie

Good News, Bad News

just a quick update regarding our FBI fingerprint background checks...first, the good news. my background check came back on saturday and i am not a criminal! yay! the bad news: heath's fingerprints were rejected due to a 'glitch' (that's what i'm calling it - my frustration with the individual that fingerprinted him is finally starting to subside!) with one of his prints. so back to woodbury public safety went heath on monday afternoon. fingerprints have been re-done and they are being overnighted to the FBI this morning. now we just need to cross our fingers that our process is expedited and it doesn't take another 11.5 weeks to get his back!

now that i am moving past the frustration, anger and disappointment, i am trying to focus on the fact that maybe this happened for a reason. baby reedy wasn't quite ready for us yet and this extra waiting time is necessary for our family to become complete.

think warm thoughts....
ang

Baby Wish List...

i have to admit...this baby thing is starting to feel very real! we decided that it was time to start getting a little more serious about things just so we can feel at least somewhat prepared before our lives are turned upside down! being that the only baby items we currently own are a crib and few miscelleneous items that have been loaned to us by friends, we decided that it was time to register for some baby products and goodies. so....off to babies-r-us we went! heath and i made an initial visit earlier last week to check some things out. we actually agreed on most of the big items so that made things much easier. on saturday the two of us grabbed our checklist from cyndi (thank you!) and our "baby bargains" book and dove into the chaos of a crazy, busy babies-r-us! we managed to pick out most of the big things (heath's favorite part was zapping the gun!) and then decided to call it a day as the chaos became a bit too much for one of us (i'll let you guess who that was). my sister had plans to meet some friends in the cities today so she gladly offered to join me on a return trip this afternoon. we spent a quality two hours in the store and managed to get a LOT done. thank you mel! one more trip with an actual mom (i may be calling on one of you reading this!) and i think i should be able to finish up. i've decided i definitely need some qualified help on picking out bottles, pacifiers, spoons, sippy cups, etc!

don't laugh...i ended up registering for both a boys and a girls bedding set because i really didn't want to go with gender neutral. i figure we will know the gender once we have our referral so i can always remove whichever one we don't need!

no updates on the fbi fingerprint reports though i am feeling hopeful that it will be very soon as another family that sent their's in on 11.30 (same date as us) just received their reports last week. yay! i started filling out our visa paperwork so that will be ready to go once we get our travel dates. by the way, we initially thought we would be traveling as quickly as two weeks after our referral, but now it sounds like it will be 4-6 weeks after based on approvals of our visas (you can't officially apply for them until you know your travel dates). i think this is actually a good thing as it will give us a little time to tie up loose ends at home and at work before we head out on our colombian adventure!

happy valentine's day to everyone!

love,
ang

Hola Shaker Beige!

after a few short hours of painting, here are the results:

i chose shaker beige as a neutral color that we will coordinate with either boy or girl bedding...i've decided that i've waited so long for our baby that i am not going with neutral bedding! now the search begins for the perfect set (and one that we can both agree on).

special thanks to the mcintyres...elle's shaker beige bedroom was my inspiration!

good night!

Bye Bye Blue!

by proclaiming this on the blog i know there is no backing out, so here goes....

I AM PAINTING TODAY! say bye-bye to the crazy blue walls in the nursery! everything is taped and prepped, i'm just waiting for hirshfields to open at 11:00.

in case you forgot, here is a before pic:

stay tuned for the after!

ang

Moving Forward!

just a quick update...i received an email from bettina today telling me that all of our dossier documents are ready to be apostilled (a step above a notary) and that as soon as our fingerprint reports are back from the fbi, we are ready to send our dossier to los pisingos! the best part of her email was this statement:

"I’m excited for you to send your dossier to Colombia as you are one of the next families to be submitted to Los Pisingos, VERY exciting!"

yay!!! things are definitely moving forward. we are now at almost 9 months of officially waiting. someone at my uncle's funeral made the comment that i "look good for being 8 1/2 months along"! :)

stay tuned for further updates. time to get back to work!

ang

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