Elvis has left the building....

Or, better yet, our dossier has left the country!!! WOO HOO!!!!! I spoke with D this afternoon and found out our dossier went to Kazakhastan "last Friday". Not sure if that means the 26th or the 19th (until i hear otherwise I am going to assume the 26th), but honestly it does not matter - I am just thrilled beyond words it is there!! This puts us on target to travel to Kaz in late October / early November. It would certainly be fitting to be home by Thanksgiving, but I really don't think that will happen. At this point I can only hope we will be with our son on Thanksgiving.

I guess I need to start thinking seriously about getting his room ready, huh?

Deja-vu

Or rather Deja-blue(claws).

Our luck with Blueclaws tickets continues (now only if we could shift that luck to the adoption). Last night was an absolutely beautiful night so we decided to go to the Blueclaws game. Got to the ticket window and just as we were about to purchase our tickets...someone presented us with free ones again! Yay Us...again!!! AWESOME seats too - not that there are any bad seats in the small stadium, but these were right behind the BC dugout - literally right behind...I am talking 1st row!! How cool is that? It was a MUCH better game than Sundays, although they lost again, this time it was only 2-1.

So...adoption news....there are rumors floating around on the message boards that things in Almaty region (which is where we think we are going) are slowing down and may come to a halt. There is some confusion as to whether this is the whole region or just Almaty city. Our agency says its just the city and the child we are hoping to adopt is in the region, but not the city, so we should be OK (yeah, right - I have heard that before - hmmmm....more deja vu?). There are basically 2 rumors regarding the delay. The first is that they are stopping adoptions because agencies are not submitting the required post-placement reports. The other is that things will stop in September due to presidential elections. Either way I don't like the sounds of this. It is looking more and more likely that we will not have a child in 2005 ~ which in addition to just plain sucking for a whole lot of reasons, opens a whole new can of worms in that most of our papework will expire January 1, 2006 ~ which basically means we have to start over....AGAIN.

In which I learn how to go to the dump

Before I start...for an adoption update click here . Yeah, pretty exciting, huh?

Now that that is out of the way...the weekend in review!

I really needed some "Zabel" time this weekend so I decided Friday afternoon to pack my bags and hit the road to Skaneateles to spend some time with my mom and dad. I had a great time just hanging out and shopping at the outlets with my mom. Mom got a great deal on some silverware and I bought a pair of shoes! NY has tax on clothing, and NJ doesn't, so I didn't buy anything else. Dad was in a big Regatta this weekend, so I didn't get to see as much of him as I normally do, but I thoroughly enjoyed the time we did have.

I got home late Sunday afternoon, and was quickly whisked back out the door to go to the Blueclaws game. Went to get on line to get tickets, and some man offered us free ones! Yay us! The blueclaws however were not so lucky...when we left in the 8th inning it was 12-0! Not a good day for them - oh well, it was fun.

So now the dump story...I learned how to go to the dump!! LOL!! I had never been to the dump...at least not without someone who knew what they were doing. Mom and I were on "dump duty" this weekend because dad was busy with the regatta - he usually takes care of the weekly dump run. So mom and I were schooled in "dump ettiquette" which I must say there really is none. I patiently waited in line only to learn there really was not a line and as long as you could carry the garbage bag it was pretty much who ever could get their bag into the bin first. Fortunately there are no rude people in Skaneateles, so after figuring out the process was able to get the garbage out of the car an into the proper bins - of which there are 5 and are very poorly marked. My fellow dumpers must have felt they were being stalked as I sat starring at people trying to figure out what they were dumping where! Oh well...it was learning experience. Dad is no longer allowed to attend a regatta on dump day.

Lies, cheats, and decption

No, I am not describing the adoption process (although fitting as it may be)...

Big Brother 6!!! holy crap is all I can say! The "friendship" is getting on my nerves and Maggie definately needs to go...she needed to go a few weeks ago. Howie and Janelle had me crying I was laughing so hard...I'll never be able to eat a pepperoni pizza with a straight face again! LOL!!! How funny was that? Yes, April needs to go as well...the whole "friendship" needs to go.

If only there was an "America's Choice" nomination and eviction...how cool would that be? My vote would DEFINATELY go to Maggie.

Nope

Nada.............


nothing...........


zip.....................


zilch..................


just deafening silence......



.................sigh......................

Inner Peace

"borrowed" from another blog....credit going to another adoptive family currently in Kazakhstan. This is an amazing family by the way. They are there adoption thier 3rd and 4th Kaz kids. This is in addition to the 2 or 3 bio kids they have.


"Dr. Phil proclaimed that the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see anything I might have started and not finished; and before leaving the house this morning I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of white Zinfandel, a bottle of Baileys, a bottle of Kahlua, a package of Oreos, the remainder of both Prozac and Valium prescriptions, the rest of the cheesecake, some saltines and a box of chocolates. You have no idea how freakin' good I feel."


and in case you were wondering, as of 12:38 EDT, no news on the adoption front.

Withdrawal....

Or is it withdrawl...I don't know...don't care, really! LOL!!

Anyway...I am suffering from a lack of little league tonight. The regional finals are over and we have to wait until Friday for the next televised game. Toms River lost last night :-( but I guess that is OK cuz now I can watch the rest of the LL World Series without any stress! I can just sit back and enjoy watching the kids play. Its fun to watch them play because you know they are there because they LOVE to play...nothing to do with money at this point of their lives. These 11 and 12 year olds just amaze me with their ability and their innocence and down-right love of the game. Truly a joy to watch.

No news on the adoption front...sigh...

Good night! Maybe some good news tomorrow...

Air miles: Good News....Bad News....Good News

As I wait for news regarding our dossier at the embassy, I decided to start looking into using our US Air miles for our trip. I tried logging in this weekend, and could not for the life of me remember my acct number. This prompted me to call US Air this morning to find my acct number. Well lo and behold, I have 3 Dividend accounts with them! Who knew?? Anyway long story short, with all 3 combined accts I have about 50K in airline miles!!!! So that's the good news...

The bad news...US Air does not go to Almaty!!! I have to see if any of its affiliates do.

BUT....US Air does however go to a vacation spot Mike and I have been wanting to return to for a while, and I have just enough airmiles for 2 round trip tickets...making this a REAL possiblity! We are looking for a relatively cheap hotel, and if we can find it, we are going!! We'd like to take one last romantic get-away before we are a family of 3. We are looking at a mid-week getaway towards the end of September for our 4th anniversary! It will take 3 days to merge all the accounts and get my name right on them all (they were all opened under my maiden name); apparentely they can only merge or make changes one at a time...whatever...regardless, by the end of the week we should know if we can take our (hopefully) last* romantic vacation for a while!!!

* I say hopefully last, because if everything works our, our next real vacation get-away will require something kid friendly!!!

Friday Funny

The list below was sent to me, and honestly it was just what I needed! A good laugh!! My favorites are highlighted!!

We are off to the drive-in again tonight. We have a signing in the same area so we figured we'd just make a date out of it! Tomorrow Toms River plays in the finals for the Mid-Atlantic regionals...the winner is on to Williamsport for the Little League World Series! We'll proably miss the game cuz we are planning a day at the beach. If you haven't figured it out yet, I LOVE following the LLWS (even if TR is not in it). I look forward to it all summer! Tonight is the first televised game, but we will miss it (I think its the Great Lakes regional finals but not sure).


And now for you reading pleasure....

Best "out of office" auto-responses

1) I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail
to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.

2) I'm not really out of the office. I'm just ignoring you.

3) You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.

4) Sorry to have missed you but I am at the doctors having my brain removed so that I may be promoted to management.

5) I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless emails you send me until I return from vacation on ______. Please be patient and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

6) Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first ten words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

7) The e-mail server is unable to verify your server connection and is unable to deliver this message. Please restart your computer and try sending again.

8) Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system.
You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

9) Please reply to this e-mail so I will know that you got this message.

10) I am on vacation. Your e-mail has been deleted.

11) Hi. I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

12) Hi! I'm busy negotiating the salary for my new job. Don't bother to leave me any messages.

13) I've run away to join a different circus.

14) I will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Yvette'.

No news to report

Not sure how this post is going to end up, cuz I don't think I have anything to say, but we'll see how that ends up!

Anyway, today is not a good day. I am feeling really down today, and my commute home this evening did not help at all. 4 accidents turned my 1 hour communte in to nearly 2 hours (including a stop to pick up dinner). I was not a real happy camper when I got home tonight. If I didn't like my job as much as I do, I'd probably look for something closer.

No word on the adoption front, but I really am not expecting anything for a couple more weeks. I sent another email asking for the receipt for our document submission to the embassy, but still no response. I am starting to worry that maybe they have not been submitted and just not wanting to tell us the truth - in all honesty, it would not surprise me in the least. I am holding on to hope that because R got word yesterday her docs are in Kaz now, that mine did at least make it to the embassy...hope....its a funny thing.....

I have been reading a lot of blogs lately about other families going through this rocess. It seems the process goes totally smooth for some and is a real bumpy road for others, with no middle road. I'd give anything to be on the middle road...I know better than to ask for the smooth path. I can at least hope for the middle ground...again hope....I guess though I must settle for the bumpy road.

Regarding the referral...I have gotten several emails about details. Please don't be offended, but I think we are going to keep the details a secret for now. At least until things become a bit more solidified. It's hard to explain the rational for this, but please know its more for my own mental well being than anything. Believe me, I will fill in ALL details if and when we finally finish this process.

Oh and to add to my "great" day...TRLL lost again today.

There is hope...

I have not heard back from Asst. Stork about whether or not the other agnecy submitted our paperwork through them, but I did hear some good news about a friend of mine using the same agency that are using. Her dossier was submited to Kaz yesterday!! YAY for her! I know she is excited and I am sooooo happy for her! So whether it was Asst Stork or someone else - the documents did make it to the Embassy (at least hers did - LOL!!)

Not only is that good news for her, but good news for us...I hope. We were both notified on the same day that our dossiers had been submitted to the Embassy, which I hope means that ours is not too far behind theirs in terms of making it across the big pond (and some land too). I have an email to D to get an update. Update: apparently theirs was a couple of weeks ahead of ours. The response I received from D was that "a family a couple of weeks ahead of you had theirs sent to Kazakhstan yesterday" (OK not an exact quote - but you get the idea). I can only assume this is them. If that holds true we have a couple more weeks to wait - so we wait....

Also, we may need to get a new INS clearance. The age of the child we accepted is not within the age range we had originally been approved for. I am not sure if the INS cares or not - so that is another email to D, asking if we need to do anything about that. So that may be another little bump in the road - we shall see. Update: according to D the age is not listed on the clearance paperwork for the INS (I cannot remember the name of the form right now H-something I think). So we are good to go on that front.

If I get any more news today, I will be sure to update this post!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
R sent me a link to the blog of another family who is currently in Kaz. It seems I am not the only one with bad luck (although it seems as if theirs is getting better)!!! As soon as I figure out how, I will add the blogs of the families currently in Kaz so you can get an idea of what we are in for!

Uh - oh

Earlier I had posted about wanting to get the receipt for our dossier being submitted to the Embassy. I had not heard back from D regarding this (not that I really thought I would), so I contacted the Assistant Stork, the courier they supposedly used to get our dossier where it needed to go. This is the response I got:

"Dear Kim,

We have not processed a Kazakhstan dossier for [your agency] since March of 2004. I don't know who they use now, but it's not us."


Hmmmmm.....OK - I am not going to over-react....YET. I am going to go on the assumption that it was submitted under XYZ - (the agency ours is working through). I wrote back asking about XYZ, so I'll have to wait and see. This could make for an "interesting" phone call to D tomorrow!
I need to go put on some protective gear because I sense that big pendulum beginning its downward swing to send me back onto my ass again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But good news...TRLL won again this morning. After losing to PA yesterday they came back with a vengance and gave Maryland a butt-kicking.

Adoption Update

Well...we did it. We accepted a referral of a darling little boy. It feels....well strange. I am not feeling that excitement I thought I would feel. Rather I am feeling skeptical, like this will never happen. Maybe its because we have been burned so many times in this process, that until I hear the judge say "he's yours" I won't be able to able to actually enjoy this process again. I want to be happy about this decision. i want to say "This will be my son." But I can't. I won't. Not this time. It hurt too much last time.

I have felt sick to my stomach all day today. Not sure why...I keep second guessing our decision, but then I look at his picture and look in his eyes and feel again like we did the right thing...like everything will work out and we will all be a happy family. His smile can melt even the coldest of hearts. His precious little face just makes me feel at peace...like this saga of ours will be worth every tear that I have shed. I cannot wait to hold him and hug him and tell him everything is going to be OK and most of all that I love him - no matter what. Then I close the picture and the sick feeling comes back. I am really starting to hate this whole process. This is supposed to be a happy time...happy like how I felt when I heard our papers made it to the embassy - but even that joy and excitement has long faded.

The grant paperwork is still in limbo. We are still trying to figure out how to list our income. I really need to speak with D about this, but have not been able to get her on the phone. She was away this weekend, so I'll try again this week. They do not fund the grant until the adoptinon decree is final so I guess we have time, but I'd still like to at least know if we are getting the grant or not.

Now that we have a child to focus on I have been giving a lot of thought to his bedroom. I'd like to put pergo-type hardwood floors down with a rug like the one in this picture, but I cannot find that rug anywhere on that site, so I'll have to look around for one that is close to that one. I have not decided yet on the wall color yet or bedding. But again...I have a lot of time to plan this out. I want it to be PERFECT for him!

And They're off....

No....not us....not to Kazakhstan....(yet)....


The horses at the Haskell Invitaional. Sunday was Monmouth Park's "big" race. I still don't know what the big deal about that race is, but we went, and we got our free bright orange hats.

Mike was the big winner this weekend...I didn't win a single race. My trusted method of picking horses simply by name, failed me (surprise...i didn't win anything). Anyway, Mike "won" on the big race by hitting the trifecta (picking the horses that come in 1, 2, 3). Don't get excited...his "win" netted him -$12....no that is not a typo...he lost $12 on a winning ticket. Yes, only someone associated to me could be that lucky. But even the racing gods apparently know when I've hit my limit of humiliation, and smiled upon us (rather Mike, god fibid I have any luck) and he again hit the trifecta. This time he netted close to $250!!! I guess I need not be bitter about that! In the end it was a good day. We came close to breaking even, including the fortune it cost us to get our butts into seats for the day. Even got dinner out of the deal!

Saturday we went to see Wedding Crashers...HILARIOUS!!! I haven't laughed that hard in a movie in a long time. Not a movie I'd go see with my mother, but funny none the less! Go see it if you haven't seen it.

Go Toms River!!

Our "infamous" little leaguers are on the path to Williamsport! This is not the same little league that made it to the LL World Series three years in a row a few years ago. This is the other TRLL. There are two LL organizations in Toms River. TRLL and TRELL (Toms River East Little League). This year "our" LL made it.

The are 1-1 in the regional play-offs in Bristol, CT.

A look into our pending adventure

Here is the blog of another family who just today landed at JFK bringing their son Otis home. The blog chronicles the ups and downs of their time in Kaz. It'll definately make you laugh, and may also tug at your heart-strings as the obviously fall in love with their new little man!

Much ado about nothing

Not a whole lot to post...in fact I have nothing regarding the adoption. I am starting to think that maybe I will just post a weekly update until things get moving again.

As for everyday life, we had a great weekend. By Monday evening we were joking that we needed a day to recover from our "relaxing weekend"

Saturday we had a picnic with some old friends of ours. Sunday we went to our god-daughters b-day party, then Sunday night went to the only drive-in theater in NJ. I did not even know there were any left until I stumbled onto the website of this one. The only problem is that it is nearly 2 hours away! But, it was worth the trip...until it was time to go home...you see the only problem with driving 2 hours there, is that you have to drive 2 hours BACK HOME!!! The first movie started at 9, and the second started about 12!! We decided around 12:30 that we should start the 2 hour trek back home! We slept in a little on Monday then headed out to "Old Barney", the lighthouse on Long Beach Island. It was a gorgeous day! The sunburn on my back proves it!! LOL!!

Bye for now...I think I will make Wednesdays my "update days" for a while...this way I only bore you once a week instead of daily!!