Our Visas Are Here

Our visas arrived on Friday. This allows us to enter China to get our baby. It's almost time for referrals to arrive for this next batch and we are starting to get excited. Some of the rumors going around the internet right now say we might see our referral as soon as Monday. We can't wait to see her picture and finally be able to show it off. Hopefully my next post will include pictures of our new daughter.

Yellow Water

When we came home from Branson, the water coming out of our tap was Yellow! I called the city to see what was going on. Their first response was to play dumb and say "What do you mean? What's wrong with it?". Only after I tell them it's yellow, will they admit that they've had to repair 2 broken water mains recently. They tell me to turn on all my faucets and flush all my toilets and that should clear it up. (yeah, right) It's been 2 more days and it's still not clear yet. I'm thinking this might be a good time to practice brushing my teeth with bottled water. (This is something we'll have to do when were in China)

Yesterday, I was mowing the yard and the tire on the mower went flat. It turned out that I'd got a little too close to the gate and poked a hole in the side of it. I knew it couldn't be patched or plugged. I had to remove it and try to find someone who carried an odd sized tire, so I could finish mowing. I was hot, and sweaty, and mad. And if that wasn't enough, as I was getting tools to work on the riding mower, I found water on the floor of the garage. After moving a bunch of junk and opening the utility closet, I found that the drain for the condensation from the AC and overflow for the hot water tank was clogged and water was all the way to the top and dripping from it. When it rains it pours.

Pictures From Branson Trip

We had a great time in Branson. I'm posting a number of pictures that I took. You can click on the pictures to see the full sized image.

Heading For Branson

I decided to install the new blinds in the baby's room last night. When I got everything out of the box, I discovered that somebody had raided the hardware box and removed all of the critical parts from it. I didn't even have an instruction sheet. So I'm going to have to go back to Lowe's and swap this box for one that has everything in it.

Tonight we're going to a "Waiting Families Dinner", which should be our last one, if our referral arrives next month as we expect.

In the morning we are leaving for a weekend trip to Branson, MO. This should be our last weekend trip we make before going to China. Our plan is to leave first thing in the morning and eat lunch at Lambert's Cafe. I'm sure I'll put on a few pounds this weekend. We're going with my wife's sister and her daughter. They were already planning on going and talked us into going with them. (They had to twist my arm really hard to talk me into it)

Car Trouble

Not much more has happened in the baby's room. I've been dealing with car troubles. It seemed to be a strange and unpredictable electrical problem that would be hard to diagnose, since it was sporadic. After not being able to start it when I was ready to leave from work, having it jump started a few times, and almost having it towed to the shop, I realized it was all caused by a bad battery. The good news to all this is that the battery was still in it's free replacement period and it didn't cost me a thing to get a new one. I did spend $40 to get new lifts for the hood (so it will no longer be falling on my head) and I replaced one of the battery connectors with a new brass one, since the old one would no longer tighten onto the post like it should. Tonight we decided to go to the casino to eat at the buffet and gamble a little.

More Work On The Baby's Room

We finished up the 2nd mural in the room. Here's a picture of it.



Now that the mural is done, we had to get some more projects going, so off to Lowe's we went. We bought some blinds for the window that are cordless. We got a play rug for her floor. We got some paint to work on some letters that spell "Alyssa" to hang on the wall. We also bought some new knobs for the drawers and cabinets in her bathroom. My dad cut out the letters for us and we're planning on painting them and covering the top side with scrapbook paper and hanging them on the wall. Here's a picture of the letters, which are a work in progress.

July Referrals Are In

The July referrals are now coming in. They went through the 14th of Nov., which was only 7 days. Our agency didn't recieve any referrals this month, something that hasn't happened for a long time. It's tough seeing all the other people in our November groups get referrals, when we didn't. The good news is that we are so close now, it would be almost impossible to not get our referral next month. I guess I'll spend some time learning to use the camcorder.

4th of July Holiday

We had a pretty nice 4th of July holiday. On Tuesday, we both took off early from work and drove to Oklahoma City to see America and Chicago in concert at the zoo amphitheater. We got tickets for my parents to go with us and the concert was awesome.



On Wednesday (4th of July), my mom to us shopping for my wife's upcoming birthday. We drove back home that afternoon, went out to eat, and then watched some fireworks before calling it a night.

First Post

Welcome to my new adoption blog. This is my first post, just to get things started.