What to do while you wait......

Something about this grey, pacific northwestern fall day has inspired me to blog. I'm just sitting here listening to Regina Spektor (shocker) thinking about how, to steal a line from Weezer, life is so rad. We've been on the wait list in Russia since July which means, when you factor in the mandatory 6 month wait period, we're half way through!! I've been told over and over how waiting can be the hardest part. Umm...maybe we just don't get it at all and we're crazy insensitive, heartless people but....waiting has been nothing short of a blast. We're using it as an excuse to go on a ton of epic adventures and check a few things off of our bucket lists. I'm sure if I didn't have such and awesome family, killer friends and yep, a husband who is soooo cool, it would be far more difficult. But I really have no complaints at this point.  I think this is where I launch in to the photo shout out section of the blog. So, without further ado,  here's a list of some things you can do when you're waiting for something.....

Host a murder mystery dinner party.

Go to a Regina Spektor concert with one of your favorite people!

Spend a night in the ER with some strange, unexplained but ultimately non-life threatening heart issues.

Take in a Monday Night Football game. GO SEAHAWKS!!

Go to California with your besties!

Go to Disneyland and spend way too much time coming up with stupid photo ideas.
Exhibit A.

Exhibit B

Help your friends make a short film for a film festival.

Go on a 20 mile backpacking trip and be blown away by this freaking amazing earth!

Wake up on top of a mountain. 

Go white water rafting with your family.

 And that my friends is my recipe for killing time. All you need is some awesome people, a beautiful state to live in and well, more awesome people. Here's to hoping this process continues to go smoothly. You never know what may happen tomorrow. All I know is that today is pretty great.

Ta Ta for now!

The Dirty Thirty

Well, I'm officially no longer in my 20's. Today I made it to the big 3-0! I know I'm supposed to be feeling all depressed and sadly introspective but on the contrary I'm feeling rather incredible. I had a few moments of quiet reflection this morning at the U.S Department of Homeland Security while waiting to get our biometrics taken for immigration services. (Yeah, not your average start to a milestone birthday.) Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined, 10 years ago,  for myself the life I'm living now. What a trip it has all been.  Our dossier is 100% complete and will be mailed to Russia next week. We can officially say we're on the wait list for a child! Words can't even express what it feels like to finally be able to say that. And on my birthday no less. Technically we mailed our dossier in on Wednesday (D-day.....so symbolic of us!) but got the confirmation that everything was accurate and ready to go last night. So, today was really the first day that we were able to truly bask in the glow of this significant event. Now we wait. Could be 6 months, could be longer. All I know is we're closer today than ever before to having the family we've longed to have for so long. So far 30 is feelin real good!! In fact, I'd be so bold as to say that this will be one of the most memorable birthdays of my life. Cheers to 30!! I almost added a "shout out" paragraph to this post but went ahead and deleted it. I feel like its a bit preemptive to be delivering thanks as if I've won an academy award when we're only half way there. If I give you a shout out too early you might think that I don't need your help anymore........ and we wouldn't want that. I have to say though, what a lucky girl I am to have the raddest people in my life. Much love y'all! (hmmm....as it turns out, I've been quite introspective after all)

Hurry up and wait.

I'm gonna go ahead and save you a few seconds this time around and skip the part in the post where I go on and on about my lack of blogging consistency and just get right to the good stuff. We are so close to finishing ALL of our adoption paperwork. Actually, if I'm being honest, I am completely finished with everything on my end. I'm just waiting for a few things to come in the mail. As soon as said items arrive and we get all 10 thousand papers notarized and apostilled, we're ready to mail in our dossier! This is big time. This is everything. I can officially start to breath again and even maybe sleep a little without this weight pressing down on me.  Now we get to launch into the next phase of this process which is pretty much just a whole lot of waiting. I feel like I've rushed around like a chicken with my head cut off all so  I we can get to this point where we sit around and wait. But i'll take it!!! Because what comes next is gonna to get all sorts of crazy. Traveling across the globe, meeting the little guy that will become ours and well, the craziest part of all, becoming parents. Which I hear is a total trip. I have a feeling that one day I'm going to look back on this and shake my head with wonder as to how I managed to stay completely sane. I guess I can't take all the credit for that. I've been able to fill my non paperwork filling out,  non letter writing, and non fingerprint taking time with my favorite people doing my favorite things. I'm not much one for scrapbooking so I've thrown together a few little "movies" to sum up my good times.

Anyone who knows me knows I cannot turn down an invitation to Disneyland and this spring was no exception. This was one of those trips that just oozed with perfection from beginning to end. It's like the stars aligned and all was right with the world. The Marshall's, Winder's and Valentine's (yes! even Connor!) finally reunited in the most magical of all places to get our party on.  And party we did!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXPA57MkzIQ


I also had the sad task of saying goodbye to one of my favorite people ever, Sharon Hubbell. She so selfishly decided that her husband's career and family stability was more important than hanging out with me so she up and left to Southern California. The bonus was that me, Jana, Sharon, Leche the cat and Amelia Hubbell the newborn baby got to set out on a very epic road trip extravaganza that spanned from Seattle to Aliso Viejo, California. It was one for the books and I'll never forget it. Sharon, you will be missed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Nr3A9c-Tk


I'm so very blessed to have my family, friends and a fat orange cat who just totally rock. I don't know how I'd do it without you guys. For real.

Dossier. Pronounced Doh-see-ay.

Ahhh!! Finally I'm blogging! I'm the worst blogger in the history of bloggers. Mostly I'm lazy. But also, not a whole lot has gone down adoption wise for a while. I believe I jumped the gun on my last post stating so exuburantly that we had finished our homestudy. Well....turns out I was off a bit. And by a bit I mean about a month. So, along with being lazy, I felt slightly embarassed to have made such a big proclamation. Oh well, alls well that ends well. I can now say with 100% certainty that OUR HOME STUDY IS COMPLETE!! Not only that, but our registration for Russia is also complete. Check me out!! And to think I called myself lazy.

So the next step is a little thing called our Dossier. It's actually not little at all. In fact, it's a bit daunting to think about. The good news is that the dossier is the last phase of this never ending, stress inducing, black hole that is the adoption process. The bad news is I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm doing or exactly how to approach this. I have to get so many documents notarized and apostilled (which, by the way, I have no idea what that is) that I don't know where to begin. It'll happen one way or another. Of that I'm sure. Knowing that this is the last step before the fun stuff begins, motivates me to figure it out and get a move on! Not to mention the sooner we finish this the sooner we get our child. And the sooner I get my child the sooner I get to take said child to Disneyland. If there was ever a reason to have children, that's it right there. So here's to dossiers and Disneyland.