Make a Smilebox slideshow

Lilliana had her first swim lesson today at the YMCA. We are doing a parent and me class. Today Scott was in the water with her, she had a great time. Lilliana also had her first experience in the snow today. We bought her a sled and Logan, 7 year old from next door, had a great time pulling her around and she loved it too. At first she wasn't sure what to think, but the faster he pulled her the more she would laugh. She cried when we took her out of the sled.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Our Christmas started out not so great, Angela's dad got admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve. But we made the best of it and took some of Lilliana's gifts and his gifts and celebrated with him on Christmas day at the hospital. On Christmas Eve we celebrated with Scott's family by going to Christmas Eve mass at 4:00 and back to his parents house to open gifts. It was a fun first Christmas with Lilliana and she had a great Christmas and got a lot of presents, she's not a bit spoiled:). She even knew what to do with the packages when they were given to her.

On Monday December 29, we went to Cleveland to the USCIS office for our appointment to get our biometric fingerprints taken. We have been asked what a biometic fingerprint is so we have taken the following defintion from the USCIS website: The use of these identifiers is an important link in U.S. national security, because fingerprints taken will be compared with similarly collected fingerprints at US ports of entry under the US-VISIT program. This will verify identity to reduce use of stolen and counterfeit visas, and protect against possible use by terrorists or others who might represent a security risk to the U.S. These two important programs (collecting fingerprints for visa issuance and verifying travelers’ fingerprints when they enter the United States) will make travel to the U.S. safer for legitimate travelers, and also improve safety and national security for all Americans. This transition to ten prints will enable the Departments of State and Homeland Security to more effectively process visa applicant fingerprints. Our next step is to get our physicals so that they can be sent to the Homestudy Agency with the rest of our paperwork so they can complete our report.

picture with Santa

We finally got a picture of Lilliana with Santa. This was going to be the third and final attempt. She has been saying Santa when we show her pictures of Santa, so I thought that was a good sign we would get a picture. When we got in line she was a little hesitant but watched the children ahead of us. When it was her turn she clung to me, but I put her on Santa's lap, got out of the way and the lady snapped the picture. Lilliana was crying, but we got the picture. When we were waiting for the pictures to print Lilliana sobbed on my shoulder and would not look at Santa.

We had our homestudy visit this past Thursday to update our information. It should not take the social worker very long to write our report, since all she has to do is update our information since we had the homestudy completed for Lilliana's adoption. On Monday December 29 we go to Cleveland to have our Biometric fingerprints done, then we send them a copy of our homestudy report and wait for the government to issue our approval paperwork. Once we get our homestudy report we can also send it to our agency along with our Dossier (all of the paperwork that we had to gather to be sent to ethiopia) and then we can wait for our referrals.

We have officially started the adoption process again. On November 11th we sent off our application to Better Futures Adoption Services to begin another adoption. We have chosen Ethiopia because we feel there is a great need at this time for children who need to be adopted and given a home and family. We are asking for two children, some have called us crazy because we are also asking for them to be as young as possible, hopefully under 12 months of age when we bring them home.