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22 Months!

22 months since LID of 11/13/06
OK, I have been getting a lot of questions lately about this adoption. I don't know when, or even if, it is ever going to happen. We let all of our paperwork expire (had to, our Social Worker wouldn't work with us while Joe was in Iraq) and now have to file under the Hague. According to China we are good to go, we are just waiting for our referral. Our wonderful country doesn't think that is good enough anymore, and the new rules are leaving thousands of China adopters in limbo. I only hope that the USCIS (or whoever it is now), will get their crap together soon, or we may have to abandon our dreams after 3 years and start over.

On a much happier note, my friend Nancy and her husband Brent, just gave birth to their third bouncing baby boy, named Brody John Acaldo, my cousin Denise and her husband Pedro, just adopted their first child, a baby boy, which they named Rafael, and my friend Tiffany and her husband, just gave birth to their second daughter, whom they named Gabrielle. Congrats guys! We are so happy for all of you.

Karate Konection

In August, Blaine started taking Karate (Tang Soo Doo, I think) at Karate Konection here in town. He loves it!

GUSTAV

OK, that was one nasty hurricane. We lost power around mid-morning on Monday September 1st, and it didn't come back on until Friday, September 5th at around noon. It was hot and miserable, so on the following morning Joe, Blaine and I packed up the Jeep and the truck and took a trip to TX to see the family and gather supplies for what we were being told could be 3-4 weeks with no power. My sister and her friend stayed at our house to keep an eye on it (she didn't have power either). We spent all day on Thursday, Sept. 4th buying a generator, fans, gas, food and other supplies, and a Wii fit (I finally found one, thank you TX)and on our way home the next day, just as we were getting out of the car in Beaumont TX to buy a window AC, my sister called to say our power had come back on. YEA!!!!!!! I didn't believe her at first, and made her swear on our mother's life that it was true. After calling my home phone and hearing my voice on the answering machine, I finally decided that she was indeed telling the truth. We decided to keep the generator because IKE was already brewing in the Caribbean and was expected to come into the Gulf soon. Good thing, because a week later we lost power again because of IKE, but thankfully this power outage only lasted 12 hrs instead of 5 days.
Joe is in the Louisiana National Guard and should have been called up, but he was still on leave since coming home from Iraq. His entire unit got called up but not him. He had more leave saved up from the rest of his unit because it was his second tour of duty in Iraq (his first was served in 2003 with the Army Reserves in Conway AR)
As you can see from the pictures, we didn't have any structural damage, we just had a huge mess to clean up. Some of our neighbors weren't so lucky. Some had roof damage, and some had trees in their homes, but the good news is that all were OK, and most of our neighborhoods damage has already been repaired. Glad it's over!

Getting ready for GUSTAV

OK, see this tree on the side of our house? No, not that one, the one behind it that you can't see very well, closer to the house? Trust me it is there, and it is a good size too. Our neighbors puny tree is kind of hiding it. Joe and some neighbors had to cut it down during the storm because it was coming out of the ground and threatening to take out gas meter with it. Can you say BOOM!? Thank God we noticed it in time, and were able to chop it down before that happened (actually, I was the brave soul who ventured outside in the middle of the hurricane to chek out what was making so much noise. Joe was busy sleeping)

All boarded up and waiting for the storm.

First day of Kindergarten

Blaine's first day of kindergarten was on August 7, 2008. He is at the same school he has been at for the last two years, so it was really no big deal. Blaine is loving kindergarten, and even enjoys his nightly homework assignments (I don't know about you guys, but I don't remember having homework in kindergarten). I think his favorite thing is being able to check out books from the school library (they were not allowed to do that in Pre-K) He spent so much time his first trip to the library trying to find the perfect book, that he didn't get a chance to check one out. On his second trip, the following week, he waisted no time picking up a disgusting book on spiders.