Hope and Change

Tuesday was an amazing day. Sitting on my couch, a mere 16 miles from the Capital (yes, that's right, I live 16 miles away, but stayed in my toasty warm pjs!) we witnessed history. There are no words to describe the feeling of watching our 44th president be sworn in. I keep thinking of how our daughter will live in a country where the color of her skin will not be a barrier to her dreams. And I am full of optimism for our country. It truly is cool to be an American again.

In the midst of the unbelievable joy of the Inauguration, it's been a tough week in the world of our adoption wait. Our USCIS (immigration) paperwork has to be renewed AGAIN, and we have to re-do our homestudy (and all its parts...medical reviews, abuse clearances, fingerprints, financial reviews, etc.) a third time as well. It's tough - it's a huge time suck, as well as another rather large and unplanned expense. If all this money was going towards helping kids I would feel better about it. But it's going to our government and our agency. In short, it stinks. And the wait is not getting any shorter. Referrals for this month came out today, and after rumors of a speed-up, this batch covered two measly days. March 1 & 2, 2006. That's it. The rumor that spirits are high at CCAA is still out there, and it's possible that when they come back from the Chinese New Year holiday they could do another batch, but who knows. I continue to hope, but it's getting harder and harder.

I'm still sticking with Project 365...these are the next 9 days of our lives. And we are completely re-doing our kitchen. I thought that would make the universe laugh enough to speed things up (because it would be pretty funny to come home to a completely torn apart kitchen, right?). So our new stove arrived Saturday - our 1970s double oven is no more. And we picked out new cabinets and a new counter on Sunday. It'll be a month or two before they are installed, but we'll do the floor after that. Home improvement has never been so much fun. :)