The last few months in pictures

Riding a big girl bike

On adventures with Claire

Apple-picking (and tasting)

Playing coy at the orchard/pumpkin farm

The family

The prettiest peacock on the block

Feliz Cumpleanos, cuatro anos

Ballet recital

The Slimers

For the last few weeks, Alayna has been playing in a Rec Department Pee Wee Ball league for 3-4 year olds. The game is played like kickball, so the kids learn the rules of baseball. She is loving it, especially when practices ended and the games started (when she got to start wearing her team shirt - green because they are The Slimers).

She gets better and better at the game each time, especially focusing on what's happening. A few games ago, when she wasn't up to bat, she was either picking clover flowers and giving them to her coach, or she was waving to us every three seconds. She still waves to us, which is so cute we can't stand it, but she is also kicking the ball and running the bases, and chasing the ball in the field and throwing it. She runs over to us at full speed for water breaks, and loves at the end of the game when them put their hands together in a circle and yell GOOOOOOOOOOOOO SLIMERS!

From Summer 2009

From Summer 2009

From Summer 2009

From Summer 2009

Exciting news

Blogging has fallen pretty far down the priority list lately, so we apologize if there are any disappointed readers out there. We do want to share some exciting news. Our dossier for our second adoption was sent to Ethiopia on July 1, which means we are officially on the waiting list. We don't know how long the wait will be. Current families who are in Ethiopia adopting had waited about a year from when their dossier went to Ethiopia to when they traveled. We expect things to go a little slower than that as more families join the program. We know from last time that nothing is certain, and the wait can often far surpass estimates, so we're not going to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, we'll just enjoy not having any paperwork to fill out for a while.

The summer has been busy, though unseasonably cool most days. We enjoyed celebrating Alayna's two-year Gotcha day in June and have spent a lot of days at the playground and zoo. If we didn't have road construction going on right outside our house, I think Layna would be tearing around on her big girl bike (with training wheels) even more than she already does, but at least when they're done, the road won't be so bumpy.

Here are a couple of photos from earlier this year:

Always hard when it's out of your hands

We took another incremental step forward yesterday by sending all of our dossier documents that require state seals to the Secretary of State for certification. This is essentially the state verifying that the notaries who notarized our documents are legitimate - something that is necessary before a foreign country will accept your documents as legitimate.

The hardest part about this is actually sending your original documents away and knowing that if the state makes a mistake, your original document is ruined and would need to be redone. And as many of you know, redoing documents is sometimes no easy task, plus the loss of time is infinitely frustrating. I know that everything we sent is organized properly on our end, so here's praying that they are handled properly and returned promptly.

Everything was sent to Madison, except for my birth certificate, which was sent to Springfield.

When they return, if everything is correct, we will be ready to give our complete dossier to the agency for translation and submission to Ethiopia!

And as if this post isn't exciting enough, here are a couple Alayna photos to spice things up, They're not very new, but not terribly old either:

Layna and Kari

Jer & Layna at Dora the Explorer Live

One step closer

We received our I-171H in the mail this weekend, which was a great surprise. This is the document that indicates USCIS (U.S. immigration) has approved our advance application to bring home an orphan in the future. It always strange to talk about these acceptances when there is no person yet to connect them to. Be fore we knew Alayna, we got about 5 of these in the mail during our long wait, so we know it's just an early step in the journey, but exciting nonetheless. After we get it notarized, we need to send all of the dossier documents that need state seals in to Madison (or to Springfield in the case of my birth certificate). Once we get them back (if done correctly, knock on wood), we will send copies to Bethany who will turn around and send them to Ethiopia. Then we will be on the list!

We had a very busy weekend, but Sunday was nice with the first cookout of the season, with our parents and Christy & Eva joining us for the afternoon. Maybe the weather has finally turned for good...