March 21, 2008

A Few Twists

A seasonal twist: Its the 2nd day of spring and it's Easter weekend, so naturally...we're avoiding all responsibility and have decided to celebrate Christmas. It's been a bit of a week so a Christmas in March is definitely called for. We do that sometimes, it's just nice every now and then to end a stressful week with Christmas movies, Christmas music, Christmas food, and one fun gift to each other. This year's Spring Christmas will be the first one where we get to paint Easter eggs to the tunes of the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas album. There's just something fabulous about those songs!

An adoption twist: We had to set our wait time ticker at the top of the blog back by a few weeks. We found out that CHI starts the official "wait count" on the day your dossier leaves for Ethiopia, not the day it arrives to their St. Louis office as originally thought. New wait start date = December 26th. This still keeps us right around the 3 month marker though and from what I can tell the wait times have hovered around 3-5 months pretty stably, so we'll see. I'd be lying if I said we aren't at all worried about not being able to travel to Ethiopia before the courts close on August 8th though, in fact quite the opposite is true. This year the courts will be closed August 8th through sometime in October and although referrals can be given out during this period no court dates can be held which means no traveling families. So, there is a chance that even if we get our referral in May, June, or July we wouldn't be able to travel until after the courts reopen in October.

Alright I just finished staring at the cursor at the end of that last sentence for about 10 minutes...I don't know what I could possibly say to wrap the idea that we may not be traveling until next fall with some semblance of confidence that this would be both ok and completely frustrating. Ok because we're going to wait as long as it takes - period. And we're going to do it as patiently as possible - period. And we trust and respect that this will all come to fruition the way that it is meant to - period. Frustrating because, well, that one's kind of obvious I guess.

A tagging twist: I've been double-tagged by Brooke and Amanda to post 10 events that happened at half my current age and 100 interesting things about myself. Honestly right now I'm having a hard time wanting to do anything other than celebrate Christmas. Count that as one of the 100 interesting things about me. So sorry to be a little lame here, but I need to knock the zeros off of those numbers and settle for 1 thing that happened at half my current age and 1 interesting thing about me. I promise not to avoid tags like this in the future, but the modified list will have to do this time.

* Half my current age: 1993 & 1994 mark the years of the official end of apartheid in South Africa and the election of South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela.
* An interesting thing about me: I can logic my way through anything. I once convinced myself that it is normal to celebrate Christmas in March and sing Christmas carols in June. Oh wait...

Happy egg painting, basket finding, and chocolate bunny eating!
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

7 comments:

Stacie said...

I sure hope you make it to Ethiopia before the courts close. That would be a killer to have to wait through that.

Dan, Misty & Ashar said...

Jo~
I'm sure it's a frustrating place to be. I had illusions that we would be able to travel before the courts closed, and we just sent our dossier off to CHI today. So, reality check! Oh well. I really do hope yours comes any day. It can totally happen - stranger things have! Also, I just had to laugh about the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas. Brought back so many memories! Have a good chistmas celebration!

LISA said...

Jo,
I'm worried about the closing also!
Do you wanna borrow my HANSON Christmas CD? I LOVE it year round!I used to listen to Oak Ridge Boys,A long time ago.Just thought of something they have in common!!.....MMMM BOP!!!!

Gamma! said...

The only thing missing in a March Christmas celebration is decorating the tree to the Oak Ridge Boys! But memories are memories, and this is a great one for our family. I'm so glad to hear you are starting some great traditions that your children will talk about for years to come too.

And tomorrow we celebrate Easter (in the snow!) complete with colored Easter eggs, jelly beans, chocolate bunnies, egg hunt, 18 for dinner(wish you were here!) but especially Resurrection morning - He is risen! You can't celebrate Christmas without the Easter story, so you've chosen the perfect time to celebrate Christmas! I love it! Let's web cam tomorrow - all 18 of us will squeeze in and talk to you! Happy Easter!

Amanda said...

Jo, I'm sorry for the adoption twist. But, the good news is it still puts you in that 3-5 month window.
It would be worse if it didn't, I think?!
Anyhow-Merry Christmas (even if it is in March).

We're doing our Easter get together tomorrow-I'll post about that later.

Take care and enjoy singing.
I was just singing to O Holy Night. I honestly don't know who it was because it was on my iPod and I loaded that thing so long ago.

Seasons greetings!

Gamma! said...

Happy Easter - HE IS RISEN and because He lives we can face tomorrow! That's everything, including the wait for our beautiful Baby Bean! Love you both and wish you were with us to celebrate! Easter eggs got dyed (that was fun!) and with the Easter baskets are ready for the Papa Bunny to hide :) No, the kids are not up yet - amazing! We'll webcam you later. Love, mom

Anonymous said...

Not to get your hopes up but in 2006 we got our referral on May 9 and had a courtdate of July 24--our case didn't pass the first time and our second date was Aug 4 (the last day court was open) and we travelled Aug 18.

Best of luck to you, I know how hard it is. We received our referral on 2/27 after over 8 months of waiting. Hang in there.