OFFICIALLY on the "official" wait list!!!

Great news!!! As of June 20, 2008, we are OFFICIALLY on the official wait list with our agency for a baby! What does that mean? Basically it means that we have completed all the paperwork necessary at this point to receive a referral for a baby. Now comes the tough part...sitting here waiting for the phone call that tells us we have a baby. Our agency has told us to expect a 12 month wait time. This is typically the max. amount of time we can expect to wait...it could be much shorter though. Currently, there are approximately 22 families, including us, on this list for South Korea. There have been 17 referrals so far this year (14 boys and 3 girls). I am hoping that pace either continues or picks up speed through the remainder of the year. If that is the case, I am hoping that our referral comes to us in early spring. Jason calls my thinking process for this "fuzzy math." But, it makes sense to me in my excitement to be a mother and in my crazy need to rationalize everything out.

Just wanted to share our news! I am changing the ticker at the bottom of the page to reflect our time on the wait list, since officially that is what our agency goes by.

We are pretty excited...and now WE WAIT...

Our 1st Squash!!!

Our garden is coming along beautifully! I get more and more excited with each new harvest...small though they may be. We got our first few yellow squash this week. There are many more blooms, so I expect there will be many more squash! By the way...they were delicious! We lightly dusted them in cornmeal and fried them for dinner one night.

Quick Update

Yesterday, Jason and I had our appointment with Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) to have our fingerprints taken. We drove to Fort Smith in the morning because that was the closest office to us...there for 10 minutes while they thoroughly scanned each finger into their database...and then left. This was part of the pre-filing process for our government...Just one of the many interactions we will have with them in the next year. But it also puts us one step closer!!!

Our Spring Project

For the past 3 months Jason and I have been working on turning our blank slate of a yard into a beautiful and productive garden. We started with our new home, void of landscape and full of deer. Working nonstop, every evening and all weekend, we have turned it into something that we love to work in and also just sit back and enjoy! Our garden is full of tomatoes, peppers (8-10 different varieties), red potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, carrots, squash, and zucchini. The herb garden off the deck steps is a few feet from the kitchen door for quick access. Our fruit rows include red raspberries, 5 varieties of blueberry, and strawberries. We planted a perennial bed on both sides of the driveway and filled the front beds with oak leaf hydrangeas, Korean spice viburnum, a river birch, and columbine. Please enjoy the pictures of our hard work! The pictures as you scroll down are...front of the house before, fruit rows going in, front of the house now from the top of the driveway, garden, fruit rows, oak leaf hydrangea bloom with Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly, and blue salvia with coreopsis in the background.