Passports & Fingerprints!

hey everyone! just a quick note to let you know that our passports arrived today and we are officially set up to do our next set of fingerprints on august 5th in saint paul. things continue to progress! everything seems to be going smoothly...fingers crossed this continues!



here is an excerpt from an email from our colombian adoption worker, bettina:



"I just wanted to let you know that I received your original application materials today! Congratulations! Another step completed!

The next step will be to complete your dossier materials – and I will send you those materials when we are instructed to do so by Cecilia in Colombia. Until that time, you’ll be receiving monthly Colombia Program Updates. You’re more than welcome to contact me during this time to ask questions or seek clarification.

Again congratulations on completing another step bringing you closer to completing your family!"



her email gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, so i thought i would share.



time for bed after a fun weekend with friends. poor heath had to work, so i was on my own! :)



ang

The Application is in the Mail...

hi again! just wanted to report that our official application to los pisingos is being sent to the duluth office of lss tomorrow! all of our 'not-so-natural' pictures are printed off and have been posted on 8.5" * 11" paper (everything is very official!). i did make doubles of the pics in case any of you ever want to see them and have a good laugh! :) seriously...who stands in front of a plain white wall in their house and takes a full body picture??! oh well - just another fun step in our adventure, right? we are also submitting our family letter to the orphanage explaining why we are adopting, why we chose colombia, explaining who we are, etc. hopefully i did a good job and they want to pick us sooner than later!
that's about all for now. we've been waiting for almost 3 months already! can you believe it?
have a good night,
ang

Photo Night @ the Reedy's!

tonight was photo night at the reedy's! i came home from work and guess what heath was doing? putting together the crib! it looks as beautiful as i hoped! i think you guys will all like it, too...now we just have to get rid of the obnoxious blue paint in the baby's room! still pondering what exactly we want to do.
while heath finished the crib, i grabbed the camera and started some of the 'house' pictures. our application for los pisingos requires one of the front, one of the back, 4 random indoor photos and then a pic of the baby's room. needless to say, i went from room to room moving our little piles and snapping pics! not sure why, but this was more difficult than i thought it would be!?!!? seems like it should be easy, but i felt like everything needed to be perfect and that each room had to be shot from just the right angle. i'm such a nerd.
as i was finishing up, i heard heath get in the shower. we all know how much he loves dressing up in a suit, so i slowly approached him and asked if he would like to just put the 'dress up' clothes on right away and get the rest of the pictures over with. he said yes! i quickly changed into my dress and we started a photo shoot of each other! it felt pretty ridiculous posing for a "full length" shot of ourselves in front of a blank wall! that is so NOT natural! oh well, i think we got them all taken care of (thanks to the camera timer, our dining room table & a stack of books!). i'm going to submit everything tomorrow (photos, letter to the orphanage and orphanage application) for review and we'll see what bettina (our colombian advisor from lss) has to say!
pretty sure heath will kick my booty if we have to re-do any of the pics! :)
good night!

Los Pisingos!

another quick update...as of today, we officially decided on adopting from the los pisingos orphanage in bogota. lss works with two private orphanages (los pisingos and ayudame) and we had the choice of which one to go through. essentially, they are very similar: wait times are the same (they are telling us the average is 15-23 months), number of families in the program are similar, both are run by former adoptees, etc. if you would like to see some pictures, check out the website at: www.lospisingos.com. most of it is in spanish, but there is a small english section as well. (to see photos of some of the beautiful children, first click on 'fundacion los pisingos' and then click on 'Galeria de fotos'.)

after our selection, bettina, our international adoption worker, then sent us the los pisingos application that we now get to fill out. we have some questions to answer, a letter to write and some photos to submit... "full length photos of mother and father, waist up of both of us, head & shoulder photos of us, pictures of our house, the baby's future room, etc." i can already imagine the two of us roaming around the house taking pictures of each other! a photo shoot at the reedy's... mel, we may need to borrow you and your fancy camera! heath especially loves the fact that they tell you that the father should wear a suit and tie and i'm supposed to wear a dress!

i am also posting another link under our favorite websites. i found it on another couple's blog and it has some good basic info about colombia for those of you who are curious.

summer seems to have officially arrived! stay cool!
love,
ang

Exhausted, But SO Excited!

who knew just sitting through some classes could be so exhausting and yet so exciting at the same time? heath and i again had another great day full of information and excitement. no tears today, but we definitely learned a lot about cross-cultural adoption and how this will affect both us and our future child. so much to learn and think about! i will explain more later but seriously, we are both exhausted...we went to the twins game right after class and (as some of you very observant people may notice) we left after 6 innings because we were so tired! we were able to see the entire ulstad clan before the game so that was very fun & it was special to be able to share some of our stories with them. we can't wait for our little guy or girl to arrive so they can play with their kiddies!

good night for now!
ang

Medium Skim Cup of Kleenex?

for those of you who know me well, you know how i love my caribou coffee! well, today was our first day of our adoption class at lss and, being the caffeine addict that i am, we of course needed to make a pit stop at caribou on our way to minneapolis. let's just say that my empty cup of coffee soon became my used kleenex container! i had no idea how many emotions i would feel this morning, but it was absolutely amazing. we learned so much and it was obvious that everyone in the room was very emotional. we had a great speaker this morning that shared her family's personal journies through infertility and adoption and i'm pretty sure everyone was moved to tears at some point (yes, even the guys!).

neither of us really knew what to expect from the class, but it has been very informational so far. we learned about positive adoption language ("birthparent" as opposed to "real parent", "my child" vs. "adopted child", etc.), how to cope with grief & loss in dealing with infertility, core issues of adoption, information about international adoption and attachment issues that may surround it, and to close out the day a panel of adoptive families shared their stories with us and had their children there. as luck would have it, one of the panel families adopted from colombia last fall! little manny is an absolute cutie and it was wonderful talking to his parents about their journey to colombia. at one point, manny's dad passed manny over to heath and said, 'here you go!'. manny enjoyed some fruit puffs in heath's arms and then was ready to start running again. we can't wait to learn more about them and hopefully connect with them again in the future.

speaking of connections, i was also able to have dinner with my friend angie's friend's co-worker's sister (how's that for a connection?!) heather on tuesday night. (from here on out, i think i'll just call her my new friend heather! :) ) she and her husband also adopted from colombia last fall and have a beautiful son henry that turned one in february. we had a great conversation about their journey and experiences in bringing henry home and i look forward to sharing more stories with their family.

tomorrow we head back to lss for day 2 of our training. i'm sure we'll make our caribou run on the way down and then i think i'll make sure to sit at a table with a box of kleenexes....just in case!

good night!
ang

I Thought June Meant Summer?

hi again! the calendar says june, but with the weather we've been having it feels like football season! if only time went that fast when one is waiting for their baby... :)

we picked up the crib from babies-r-us last night and it looks as beautiful in person as it does in the picture! we haven't set it up yet, but we did take it out of the box and i put the stars on the posts. i love it! it looks exactly as i had hoped.

we also found out earlier this week that we are back on for our two-day adoption training class at lss next thursday and friday (june 18th and 19th). they were going to cancel the class due to heath and i being the only parents-to-be signed up for the international portion, but apparently a few others have now signed up, so it's back on. (heath immediately thought it was a good sign that no one else was signed up - he was hoping that meant no one else was waiting and that things would move quicker! awww!)

that's about all to report for now. time to go play softball!

ang