Why Vietnam?

So, I have been getting that question alot lately, and a very wise person advised I should write a post about it here on the good old blog, so here goes. My first response is "Why Not?" But that is not really the reason.

1. Chris worked in Thailand for a while, so we have a place in our hearts for South East Asia, but Thailand has an extremely small program and most of the children are over 2 (closer to 3 or 4) when they come home. Which brings us to our next point....
2. Vietnam has very young infants in its International adoption program. This was very important to us because of attachment issues, etc. Plus, we just wanted to be with her when she is a baby.
3. Again leads us to our next point, you can specify gender. Many countries allow you to "request" a gender, but there are no guarantees. If I wanted another boy, we would just have one of our own. :)
4. While Vietnam is not the cheapest of the programs, it is far from the most expensive, so that was a consideration.
5. The travel is not prohibitive. Some countires require 2 trips. Now if you know me, you are well aware of my issues with flying. Being honest, I am already trying to psych myself up for TWENTY hours on a plane. Not sure how much valium that equals, but having to do that twice, not sure I could do it. Also, we will get to experience the country while we get to know our baby, so she will have familiar smells, sounds, etc. during the stress of accepting that we are now her parents (poor baby).
6. The wait for a referral is also a factor. Many programs have over a 2 year wait for a referral, and since we would prefer the boys not be in high school by the time their sister comes home, this was a consideration.

So there you have it. In a nutshell, Why Vietnam.
We also got our fingerprint appointment yesterday, so in December, we get to go to the USCIS office and get printed! WooHoo. No news from our agency yet, but we will let you know.

Crazy Weekend

So, if you don't already know, Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday, and we are starting to be like old people and do the same thing every year.....and you know what, I love it! It involves lots of eating, shopping, football, and trains. So lets recap the weekend, shall we.....

Wednesday: We started the day at Northpark Mall at the train exhibit. Every year, they put on a huge train exhibit that is a fund raiser for The Ronald McDonald House (a cause near and dear to our hearts, we stayed at one after we had Avery, really a remarkable thing they do for families there). Not only do we go see the exhibit, but we purchase trains each year. This year it was Bradon and Ryan's trains (purchased with the assistance of my wonderful parents Tom and Sheila), and their trains were actually running on the track when we were there, I was so excited!! After that we hopped on the DART in Dallas and went to see Nemo on Ice. The kids had a ball, and really any excuse to eat cotton candy and watch people in funny costumes ice skate cannot be passed up.

Thursday: We got up early and made pies. This year my mom let Brandon help make a special pie just for him without cinnamon, he was so proud of his little pie. Next, we went through all the ads and picked out the specials we wanted. We went to see Enchanted, kid movie and chick flick all rolled into one, can't beat that. Then the eating commenced, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean cassarole, rolls, raspberry salad (really a desert cleverly disguised as a salad, yumyum), cranberry relish, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. This day was a winner.

Friday: Shopping, shopping, shopping, oh and did I mention shopping. We left the house at 7am, with all the kids in tow, and headed to the mall. The day started with a special kind of torture for the kids, Christmas pictures. My mom insists on having a picture with all 5 grandkids every year. Then Santa pictures. We go to the same mall every year and my mom has pictures of all the kids with the same Santa for the last eight years. I hope that guy doesn't decide to retire until my kids are too old to visit Santa anymore. At around 8:30pm, we were all shopped out, so we headed home.

Saturday: Lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant and then more shopping. Can you ever really get enough. Then we had to come back to reality and head home.

Overall, it was a great weekend, the boys could not have had more fun with their cousins, they cried and cried when we left, but, we will do it all again next year, so we all have something to look forward too. Maybe there will be a sweet baby girl in the mix of the insanity next year, I sure hope so.

Girl.....Interupted

Well, we got bad news from our agency last night. Vietnam adoptions have become very unstable. The relationship between Vietnam and the American Embassy is strained at best, and both sides are posturing right now. All this being said, our adoption will have to take a break until things are more stable. When adoptions reopened in the country 2 years ago, a 3 year agreement was signed to continue adoptions until August of 2008. This contract is to be renegotiated in March of 2008. If the US and Vietnam cannot come to an agreement, then adoptions will once again stop as of August 2008. Our agency is being very cautious, something that is really impressing us right now, instead of taking a bunch of people's money and promising that they will finish if the program closes, they are taking a very conservative approach and not allowing dossiers to be sent after December 1st. The hope is to take dossiers again in March of 2008, and we will be hanging around until then. So basically, we are victims of bad timing as far as this goes, we will miss the December 1st likely by just a couple of weeks with our dossier. We are really bummed. Chris had some special words regarding the situation that I will not type here as this is a family blog, but it pretty much summed up our frustration about the whole thing. Warning *** A little pity party ahead, move on if you don't want to hear it. I just don't understand why everything always has to be so hard, this was supposed to be a good thing we were doing, and now it is not working out how we planned. Welcome to our life. Ok, pity party over, back to reality....We cannot change the situation, so we will sit back and wait and see what happens. Please send good thoughts, prayers, etc. that adoptions stay open in Vietnam, there are many other families who have no children who were counting on this program. In the end, whether I get my girl or not, I will always have my precious boys. Something to be more than thankful for.

Sweet, Silly Boys

My boys are so much fun, but you really never know what they are going to do or say. While pushing Brandon on the swing this week he was telling me about Hawaii. He told me that Hawaii has volcanos. I answered, yes they do have volcanos, the islands are mostly made of lava and the volcanos still erupt. So then he tells me he know what else Hawaii is made of, so I of course ask him what. He tells me that Hawaii is made of volcanos and Mexican restaurants. What?? I asked who told him that, and he said no one, he just knows. So just in case you were wondering, Hawaii is made of volcanos and Mexican restaurants.

This week we were at a friend's house for dinner. Ryan must have been playing upstairs with his dad (I consider him one of my sweet, silly boys too even though he is older than me) when he runs downstairs to show me what he had done. Well the pictures say it best, but Ryan comes downstairs in a Build-A-Bear Buzz light year costume. He is kindof little, but how did that happen? He was so proud of himself and treated us all to a few "To infinity and beyonds!" I love my boys!!

Step Number 217

OK, maybe not really step 217, but this process seems so long and complicated. Whoever said adoption was the easy way out, never tried to adopt before. Like my dad said, if people could only expand their families through adoption, only 2 or 3 families in the world would have kids. We recieved our notarized home study this weekend! A huge step, and very quick if you ask me. We sent it off today to the USCIS office in Houston, and now we wait for them to either send it back to us and say that something is not complete (a good possibility) or they send us our fingerprint appointment! We also sent a copy to our agency so that they can start translating it. We recieved several forms to sign when we get our referral that are in both Vietnamese and English, they are very disorienting, but cool at the same time. Anyway, it is another hurry up and wait scenario and we wait for the CIS office. Pray that they process our paperwork quickly so that we can get our I-171H form. Once we have that, we can get all of our state seals, and then authentication and then paperwork off to Vietnam! Each day brings us one step closer!

Halloween

We had such a great evening of trick or treating! We went with our good friends the Chapelles. Their son Caleb and Brandon are so cute together. Caleb is a couple years older, so there is defintiely a bit of hero worship that goes on, but he and Brandon play so well together. Also their sweet little girl has a bit of crush on Brandon, which makes all of us smile. And Ryan, well he is just Ryan and follows along with whatever the big boys are doing. We did have a bit of an incident when we walked up to a house that had a smoke machine. Ryan became hysterical and ran across the street crying. (I guess he was scared?) Then every house we went up to he would say "Smoke, that house?" We had to reassure him at every house that there was not going to be smoke. Poor baby. The boys made quite a haul, now I have to deal with 2 wired boys on candy every day. The first thing Ryan says when he gets up in the morning is "give me my punkin." He wants his candy.

In other news, I am not usually all that thrifty, but I went to Disney store to check out their costumes the day after Halloween. I found the cutest little Tinkerbell costume (very much on sale), and had to buy it (silly, I know). We will keep it until next year, hopefully she will be here to wear it. Or we will let her wear it whenever her first trip to Disneyworld happens. When we were getting ready to walk out of the store, Brandon informed me that I forgot to buy the Tinkerbell shoes for his sister and I needed to get them. We did skip the shoes, but how sweet. I almost wanted to buy them just because he wanted them for "His Sister!" I love my sweet boys!

First Gift!

We received our first gift for the new baby. My sweet friend gave us a fuzzy pink blanket. She insists it wasn't a gift, but it was to me. Thank-you!!