4th of July in NoDak

It was a great, extended weekend in the homeland, but boy am I glad to be home after that drive! Just catching up on the Bachelorette (what can I say...I'm a sucker for a possible fairy tale). 

In other news: We received the preliminary home study report while we were away!!!! We were able to make the tiny revisions and it has already been sent back to our agency. We are getting so close to being on the official wait list. Next up, we will wait for the home study to be notarized and then we will quickly have it state certified. We are done with dossier paperwork (the dossier is essentially the accumulation of all of the paperwork to this point which will go to Ethiopia as our official application for adoption). With the dossier, we also work on immigration paperwork to secure proper status for our baby here in the US. We are so close, I can taste it!

We were able to tell Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins about the adoption. We sold them all a bunch of t-shirts! We now have about $200 to make a donation! Wahoo! We also need to order more shirt sizes! Crazy! I thought we'd be lucky to sell 1/2 of the shirts we did!!! Thanks to everyone who made a purchase! :) Feelin the love!

I am way way too tired to walk to my purse and get my camera out to post pics from the weekend. I'm so tired, I can't remember if I even took any good pictures! So, instead, I thought I'd post some highlights via verbage...

*My nieces went to the World's Largest Buffalo (you have to be from J-town to know what that really means). While there, they rode horses...you know, the live horses that go in a circle). EGW (who is 5) had the horse that was nipping at the behind of the horse in front of it. She exclaimed, "Hey, stay in your own space!" --am thinking she might have heard this somewhere before...as in, "Please keep hands and feet to yourself."

*Watching MRV's face (who is 6) score points when she scored a point in the Washer's backyard game--priceless

*My sister-in-law made me a beautiful scrapbook. Her 3 beautiful 5 year old daughters helped. All I have to do is insert our baby's pictures. Precious!!!!!!!

*Same sister-in-law teared up with me when we talked about how hard it will be in between trips 1 and 2 to Ethiopia. It feels so nice when someone shares your heart and just "gets it"

*MJW (age 5) coming in from the backyard every 30 seconds to check in Nana's chocolate chip cookies were ready for eating. Ahhh, a girl after my own heart :)

*My nieces exclaiming that Aunt Kara (age 19) is a "good cook" after they visited her at work (Dairy Queen) and had ice cream treats

*GFW(age 5) clamping down so hard on my finger in her "knee pit" when I was trying to tickle her, that I couldn't get my finger back! Ha!

*Seeing that my other sister-in-law (pregnant with twins) is past the sick phase of pregnancy. I can't wait to meet the lil buggers, but until then...I'll settle for finding out the gender(s) in a week or so :)

*Just feeling the LOVE....

I hope your family time was as blessed as ours! Happy 4th!