Still waiting

I'm seriously TIRED. OF. WAITING.

I can't believe how long it's taking Max's papers to leave the National Visa Center. In my months of obsessing over timelines, this is one step that seems to just fly by for everyone. This is so NOT where I was expecting to find a delay.

If you're not intimately acquainted with the international adoption process, the Cliff's Notes version is that you have lots of paperwork from two governments to deal with. Some papers are approved on both sides independent of one another, but Korea needs to receive final clearance from the U.S. at this point before Max can have his visa physical and be scheduled for travel.

We are so close, yet really feeling so far right now.

We spent the day making great progress on the nursery. It's really starting to look like a baby's room again and I am in LOVE with the crib bedding I got for Max. I am fairly certain I can find any Pottery Barn Kids product I could ever need on Ebay... and almost on demand. So far, I've gotten Max's quilt, bumper, pillow sham, bed skirt, and matching valances all for way less than half of what I would have paid in the store. For my scrappy friends, every time I look at the pattern, it makes me think of a yummy Two Sisters digi kit! The colors are perfection and provided at least one day's distraction from my total obsession with our paperwork.

We got to go out to dinner last night with just Kim and Ted for literally the first time in years last night. We almost always just stay at one of our houses while the kids play. We can only think of one other meal in a restaurant that we've had together in the nearly four years Sam's been home. Hard to believe! It was soooo nice to go out for Mexican food (our mutual favorite) and margaritas while the kids happily played at church. Ironically enough, the family that sat down behind us at the restaurant had two little Korean boys with them!

So far, my Lenten sacrifice of all digiscrap purchases has technically been going well, but it has been a LONG week. One of my pastor's gave me the whole reason behind not observing Lent on Sundays when I was at Bible study this week... I'm still trying to decide if I want to look anywhere tomorrow, or just hold off. I will say that I'm getting a ton more scrapping done now that I'm not spending so much time just staring at all the pretty things in various digi shops. I've also got tons of CT stuff to work with, so I'm by no means truly deprived. I've been quite happy this week getting to play with Karah Fredricks' newest stuff. She had a "bring a friend to work" guest CT this month, and my buddy Keely asked me to join them for March. I am going to be very, very quiet in the forum toward the end of the month and hope that Karah doesn't notice that I'm still hanging around. ;-)