On the ball!

So, I have accumulated quite a few stuffed animals in the past month that I needed to clean and go through because I'm going to be getting *hopefully* hundreds more in the next couple of days, so I had a lot of work to do! My wonderful husband had pulled all of my shipments out of the boxes and ran them through the steam/sanitizing cycle, I just needed to sort them and go through them. This ended up taking longer than I thought! I probably worked on this for at least 4 hours to get through the pile I had, but I got it finished up! In case you are wondering, here is what 323 stuffed animals look like piled high and overflowing:

And then all boxed up:

**Note the shameless Lowe's plug :-)

These were going to be mailed out today, but with the "winter storm" we got here at the beach, I hung close to play in the 3 inches of snow!

Our house close by the beach...covered with snow!

Our dog Pugsley didn't like it so well

Anyway, the last of the stuffed animals will be mailed out to the NC Hwy Patrol this week. They are super excited to get them and they want to give each of their troopers 4 or 5 animals to keep in their trunks....all 1,825 troopers! Looks like I will be busy for a while!

I usually work from home, but since my department just went through a major re-org last month and we have mostly new team members, they have asked myself and another regional co-worker to come in for a couple of days. So, I will be commuting on Monday and Tuesday. I let all of my old work buddies know I was coming into the office and they are bringing stuffed animals too...in fact, the word has spread so far and I've gotten calls from all sorts of folks that are collecting for me. I hope I have enough room in the Pilot! All of these animals will go towards the first batch of a rather large Haiti donation to comfort children affected by the earthquake. For anyone reading, if you or anyone you know has stuffed animals they would like to donate, please let me know!

Tomorrow I am excited to be going to Wilmington to see my friend Meredith speak at her church on adoption. I know she's probably getting nervous, but she's going to do great! And how lucky am I to get to see her two weekends in a row!

Hope everyone is well and planning a great Valentine's Day!

I know not to get too excited but......

We finally have movement on the adoption referrals! As of right now we are sitting at.....





Congrats to all families on the list still waiting! I know I wasn't alone in my celebrating at this news! We are still looking at probably September or October for our referral, but we are just incredibly happy to be even closer to our little one! I know there are also several families waiting for travel news, so I will be hoping and praying their good news will come very soon :-)

I-171H Received!

I was shocked today to check the mail and find our I-171H already back! I thought this would take at least a month or so. Now we have done every piece of paperwork we can possibly do...we have processed everything....got it all back. Now we just wait for our referral.

It's been very slow lately. There were no referrals at all in January. So disappointing! Usually there are maybe two a month, but none? It's just discouraging when there is no movement at all. I really look forward to those Friday afternoon emails from our agency...telling us any movement that's happened that week. I know that in years past there was no movement in December and this year there was, so for that we are thankful, but just like any other mama out there, we go through times of discouragement in the wait. Please don't get me wrong, it's completely worth another year of wait or two even! And we have a new social worker at our agency in Korea, so I'm wondering how that is going to affect things as well.

I know how fast this past year has gone and I guess I'm stuck. I want time to stop because my girls are growing up so fast and I want to hit pause and enjoy every second of it...but I want my baby home too!