A Fun Night with Friends

Last night (Friday) I headed to a surprise birthday party. My friend Ed is turning 40 in November, but it's hard to surprise him so his wife, Tina, decided to throw him a birthday party early. He was completely caught off guard and it was so fun to see him genuinely surprised. :) We had a taco fiesta and the backyard was decorated to the hilt! Ed had also organized the first annual Adult O"limp"ics. There were different events we each had to participate in and scores were kept for each one. We started out at riflery. We had six shots to try and hit the target. Then on to ladder ball where we got one chance to throw the six balls and have them land on the bars for points. Then off we went to jacks, where we tried to score points by throwing large plastic darts into round circles. Finally we ended with bow and arrow. We were given three arrows to try and hit the target. I must admit, I was pretty excited to try the riflery, especially since I had just practiced this on my vacation. Needless to say, I need quite a bit more practice. At least I wasn't in the bottom five on any of the events. We were going to play a game of kickball, but the mosquitoes were out and we were all getting bit. I think Ed was happy that we were all there to celebrate his birthday together. He wore his birthday hat from the Creevys all night and carried around his special mug from Misha.

Today Abby and I headed out really early to Grand Rapids to get fingerprinted at the USCIS. It went smoothly. There weren't that many other people there and I was able to get through the line quickly. Abby somehow seemed convinced that we would be able to bring home her sister as soon as the fingerprinting was finished. I hated to break her heart and tell her that it was going to be a lot longer wait. We still have quite a bit of paperwork to complete. I'm headed to the doctor's this coming week for blood work and when I receive the official letter from the doctor, my dossier is complete. The only paperwork I'll be waiting for is my I-171H form from USCIS. That should come sometime in early September. Then I'll send all the paperwork off to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington D.C. and then finally off to Ethiopia. That's when the "official" wait will begin. I'm getting more and more excited to be the mom of two girls. I think the Lord is preparing my heart for another one. He is the giver of good gifts and I can't wait to see what he chose for us!

Misha and I got our pictures taken to add to our collage of pictures we're going to send out to our second graders. We're adding a few from everywhere we've been. Here are Tina and Ed. It was Ed's surprise early 40th birthday party. He was completely stunned and speechless. It's not often that we have seen him speechless. Mark and Velvet (we had the party at their house) Here are Chad and Dana Here are the three winners. Mark took bronze, Matt had silver and Chad had the gold. We (the girls) think it was rigged. The games seemed to be centered around the talents of the men. Riflery, bow and arrow....hmmm....