We're back on schedule!

I'll backtrack and explain how my day ended up so off-kilter. Sunday after church we went to Freeman to the funeral of an Army soldier who died in an accident last week. Rob's close friend Scott was injured in the accident. We pray for his healing, both physically and emotionally. We then stopped in Parker at my friend Jen's to pick up some baby stuff from her sister. Off to Sioux Falls where we picked up Rob's sister and went SHOPPING! Well, Rob went to Shenanigans for a beer while Christy and I shopped. I really wanted to find something for our baby to wear when we meet him or her. I found the most gorgeous dress at Baby Gap. As you can expect, it was Baby Gap priced, too. But I loved it. If my child wouldn't wear the baptismal dress that I wore that my paternal grandfather wore that my dad's maternal grandmother made (did you get all that?), our daughter could easily wear this dress. We went in Old Navy and Penney's and didn't find anything. But, we found what we were looking for at The Children's Place. You've seen the pictures. They aren't "gorgeous" like the first dress. But they are so cute. AND everything I bought cost what the one dress cost at the Gap. I just need to find shoes. We went out for supper for our birthdays and went home and I fell asleep on the couch. Monday morning she was gone by the time we woke up. We got ready and went to Target and got that handy little gun you get when you register. Rob had so much fun with it when we got married that he ended up registering for Scotch Tape. Yes, we did get Scotch Tape for our wedding. So as we're going through the store, I got a phone call from Karen, our SW in SF. She said that she talked to Pam, the second social worker in MN and Pam said that she was right, the wait would be six to 12 months at the earliest. I asked how LouAnn could be so wrong about the information she gave me. She said the words "Los Pisingos", "Colombia", and "referral at the end of March possibly with travel two weeks later". Those do not correspond to a Guatemalan adoption. But Pam said that LouAnn was wrong. Karen said we could do a conference call on Tuesday to straighten everything out. So of course this took all the fun out of shopping for baby stuff. We just got some stuff for us and headed out to our INS appointment. They were open (thankfully) and I had to stand in this little tiny hallway with about five or six other people who were there to visit the INS. We were there a half hour early and it took us a full hour before we were done. Part of the problem was the fact that the time change caused their computer to crash and we had to do the fingerprints by hand. So then we got into the whole discussion about us going to MN and finding the office closed...I tried to suck up and sound as desperate as I could. I don't know if it worked or not. So all day I kept telling myself to refrain from freaking out about the time frame until I really knew what was going on. I had some things happen at work that took "refrain" totally out of the picture. So I spent a couple of hours bawling at work, at home, and again at work today. This morning then I did talk to LouAnn and Karen and found out that we ARE a month away. They are telling new applicants six to 12 months. We're still second on the list and LouAnn will tell Karen when the couple ahead of us gets their referral. She said they had two couples travel in February and one traveled yesterday. So I don't know if we'll get our referral in March or have to wait until April. But I feel much better knowing it won't be a year. Rob had conferences tonight and I did some taxes at Paul's office. My plan for working ten hours a week is going horribly awry. I'm averaging five. Oops. This was supposed to be spending money for Bogota. Anyway, I sent my dossier to Pam to review. LouAnn told me she'd have it done and back to me this week. I checked on the status of our passports. This isn't good news. It's been seven weeks for Rob and six for me. The Internet said to expect April 8 for Rob's and April 22 for mine. Expedited service is looking really good right now. When we applied they told us six to eight weeks. The Internet says that if we are scheduled to travel within the next 14 days or need to get a Visa I can call and get it expedited. So unless it shows up sometime soon I think I'll be making that phone call. Between waiting for the passports and our I171 (the form we get after the INS took our fingerprints) I'll drive myself (and the mailman) crazy!

Thank you for all of your well wishes. We've heard from so many of you and it truly touches our hearts. Old friends, new friends. You're all very special.