Happy Halloween!!!

Can anybody guess who this handsome devil is??

Here are a couple pictures of our 1998 1st prize Sumo pumpkin (back when we both worked at Bank of America).

Hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!

p.s. In case you haven't figured it out yet...that handsome lounge lizard above is my husband! He fooled quite a few people that year! :-)

Paperwork...again....

Well our I-171H is going to expire soon, so we got a packet in the mail from our agency reminding us to renew it. For anyone out there that may have forgotten - the I-171H is the piece of paper issued by the US Immigration Department when you file your I600A that gives you advanced permission to bring a foreign child into the US as an immediate relative. Unfortunately it is only valid for 18 months and ours is set to expire in January. So off we go again with the paperchase. According to the checklist from our agency, this renewal process will include getting our homestudy updated (which will probably include more paper-gathering), getting re-fingerprinted, and taking another trip to K.C. to file it all. Think we'll make a weekend of it this time!

The good news is that despite the fact that the USCIS recently raised rates on just about every immigration application out there, including the I-600A to 750.00, they have allowed for 1 free extension if you already filed an I-600A. So, except for the fee to update our homestudy, we won't have to pay for our renewed I-171H. Now we just have to hope we won't have to do it again in another 18 months!!

Happy Birthday Nathan!!

Today is our nephew's 3rd birthday! We had a great time at his party yesterday!! Here are a few pictures from the Blue's Clues Bash!

Lucky 13

Today is our 13 month LID anniversary! We'll probably go out for dinner tonight to celebrate. I won't rehash the wait time in this post since we just talked about it...we'll just say that the wait is long and only getting longer.

On a lighter note - has everyone been enjoying The Office this season as much as we have?! Here is one of our favorite clips from last night:



Have a great weekend - enjoy the beautiful weather!

Six Long Months...

That is how long it took the CCAA to get through referrals for families logged in November 2005! Let me repeat that...it took 6 whole months to get through one month of LIDS!! Referrals just came this week for families logged in from Nov 26-Nov 30, 2005. At least they are finally done with November!! Word on the street is that there were less dossiers received in December than in November....so hopefully they'll be able finish Dec. '05 by this coming January or February.

We found this chart which compares the number of days referred last year to this year - it really gives you a good idea how much things have slowed down since last year.

Once they finally get done referring the last of 2005, they'll be able to start on 2006 and from what we hear, there were a lot less dossiers submitted in 2006 than 2005. Hopefully that means the CCAA will be able to start referring closer to 15 days at a time.

Well, that's probably enough analysis to last you all a while!! Sorry for the dry stats, but sometimes it helps us get a clearer picture of what is going on and when we'll get to see Anna for the first time! Have a great weekend!!