Moise playing soccer

Moise is in the light blue shirt and, as usual, has to stop whatever he's doing to imitate his favorite superhero - Spiderman!

Mmmmmm bread!

You have to appreciate the beauty of this french bread. No, it was not bought at the Publix bakery. It was crafted lovingly, by hand, from scratch, by me! Yes, me. It shall be enjoyed tonight with Swedish meatballs...mmmm swedish meatballs. Why does dinner have to be at the END of the day? Grrrrr.

IKEA=B*L*I*S*S

Since we had to go all the way into Orlando yesterday to get our fingerprints redone, we decided to make a day of it. Unlike the first fingerprinting (which took 1/2 the day even though we had an appointment), this time we were in and out in literally 15 minutes. It was a thing of beauty. So, off to the land of bliss we happily went. Keep in mind, neither of us have ever been to an Ikea store. We were Ikea virgins. I have to say, our first time was nothing short of pure, unadulterated BLISS! As we entered the store about 15 minutes before it actually opened, we were ushered upstairs to a land of brilliant colors and whimsical simplicity. The first "showroom" area we walk into was the children's area and our 2 boys immediately went bat**** crazy! And, since you are encouraged to touch, play with and try out everything in the store, the boys happily complied!

There really is a very special feeling that radiates throughout your entire being once you take your first step into an IKEA, like utter euphoria. It is difficult to put into words, but I will tell you that I had to fight the urge to sit down and cry in the middle of the store. (DO keep in mind how stressed we've been over the past 2 weeks with all of the adoption troubles and work situations that this was nothing short of a beautiful release.) After the children had sufficiently tried every toy and every bed, climbed through castle tunnels and hugged stuffed animals, we had the brilliant idea of checking them into Smaland, IKEA's supervised children's playroom. The boys were so delighted to swim in the enormous ballpit, climb the rock wall, slide down the slides and hide in forts to watch movies, that they were actually pretty pissed at us when we had to pick them up at the end of their allotted hour. During that one hour of glorious mommy/daddy alone time, we fell in love with the furniture, textiles and everything IKEA had to offer.

Once we picked up the boys, it was off to the in-store cafe and the moment mommy had been waiting for all week: swedish meatballs! IKEA certainly does not disappoint in the quality of their food, the beauty of their presentation and the ridiculous affordability of everything they have to offer. How can you beat a completely balanced and yummy kid's meal for 99 cents? CRAZY!

Before we left with a birthday present for Cai and a few essentials for mommy's kitchen, we made sure to hit the swedish food market for absolute essentials like rasperberry jam cookies, lingonberry jam, swedish meatball sauce mix and a few other confectionary treats.

4 hours! That is how long we reveled in the beauty, simplicity, whimsy and utter delight that is IKEA. Truthfully, it's my new Disney, my new mecca.

After the IKEA experience, we met up with a friend at the Millenia Mall (right behind IKEA) and chilled there for a while before grabbing some lunch at the Mellow Mushroom - an incredible all organic pizza joint. We shared a tremendous jerk chicken pizza that is not to be missed!

All in all, a full day spent in Orlando, tremendous fun and much needed stress relief. Hooray!

More pics of the boys

Thanks for the awesome pics, Nick! You rock!

Thank you

to everyone who has written and who is praying for our situation. It would truly be a miracle if they were able to come home when their escort is scheduled to come home, and that is exactly what we are praying for. Let;s all join together to pray for God to be glorified in what would be a seemingly impossible feat of miraculous mountain moving!

Thank you Kathy....

...for this awesome video of my musical boy! And super thanks to Nichole who threw me the heads up! I needed this SO much today! For those of you who can't distinguish - they're singing a CrEnglish version of Father Abraham!

whatevs...

so NOW we have to have our entire home study redone. everything. police background checks, physicals, employment letter and financial records, dcf clearances - EVERYTHING.

what REALLY makes me mad is this is OUR GOVERNMENT! you would expect this kind of behavior, this kind of detrimental bureaucratic bullshizz from a third world country, not from our gov. i did all your stupid paperwork, paid all your stupid fees. now my children, who have my last name and passports that say they are my chidlren, can;t come into the country because you want to friggin steal MORE money from me? isn't that what taxes are for?

what makes this worse, is that not everyone that adopts has to go through this. apparently, immigration laws (re: adoption) are different in every state and can even differ from adoption agency to adoption agency. for instance - homestudies in the state of florida must be fully updated (that's everything we have to go through right now at the cost of $500 plus physicals and background checks and fingerprints for a grand total of about $800) every 12 months. now to be clear - there is no country on the planet that processes adoption faster than 12 months. so, for anyone adopting in the state of florida, you are guaranteed to be milked at least twice. prices even differ between agencies. one agency wanted to charge me $1200 for the update (in other words, just for them to type up the new info) and $250 extra because we needed it expedited. SERIOUSLY? shouldn't there be some sort of regulation put on these people? there are regulations preventing gas stations from hiking up the prices during hurricanes, but no regulation on completely taking advantage of a life altering,emergency situation such as this? my children, legally mine, are stuck in a third world country and can't come home until this paperwork gets redone and you are seriosuly gonna sit there and say you need $1450 just to coax your fingers into remembering how to use the keyboard? honestly, doesn't that border on - dip into the genre of - enabling/contributing to - human trafficking - in a way? i know its a stretch, but think about it.

i digress. something needs done, but where to start? i guess i have to start with bending over......

So here's where we're at.....

It's 8:15 am on Monday morning and already I've been on the phone with both the Haitian Immigration office and the one in Orlando.  Though what the Haitian office emailed them wasn't exactly what they were looking for, the Orlando office decided to go ahead and process our fingerprints anyway.  Wow - okay - so, Monday morning is starting off better than expected.  Then the caveat: even though the fingerprints are being reprocessed, once everything gets to Haiti, the state department could still decide to kick everything back, requiring us to refile our i600a, repay all of those fees and redo our homestudy, including but not limited to physicals and background checks.  For those of you not in the know, this could translate to a couple extra months of wait time and a couple thousand dollars in fees and crap.  All of that is a possibility - all small one, but a possibility nonetheless.

So, what we need from everyone right now, is prayer.  Lots and lots of prayer.  Our homestudy update is scheduled for Friday and our fingerprints for Saturday, so we basically have an entire week in which our hands are tied, our train is stuck on the tracks and we have nothing to do but pray for a whole week.  And maybe that's what He wanted all along.....

I know God is sovereign.  I know that part of our calling, as a family, is to be the family for these two beautiful boys.  I know that now that it has come down to the end and they are ready to come home, all hell, literally, is going to break loose and try to prevent this from happening.  I get it.  I don't like it and no one ever said I HAD to like it.  But, I do have to be content, even in THIS situation and trust that what God has on the other side of this is for our good, to His glory.  So, so, SO much easier said, than done.  But, that is what I'm working on this week.  Remembering the lessons I learned in Haiti nearly a year ago - to say (and mean) that "it is well with my soul."  

(Note to God: I said I'm WORKING on it!  That DOESN'T mean I'm begging you to test me on this.  Okay, let's clarify: I'm working on working on this.  Better?)