It's the end

of my second day of school and I think that I should buy stock in the Coca-Cola corporation!  It's amazing how exhausting caring for, loving on, guiding, and teaching 19 little pumpkins nonstop for 8 hours can be.  Last night I came back to the school after Allie was going to bed and stayed WAY.TOO.LATE!  I'm beyond tired and now I'm REALLY missing my Keurig coffee pot!  I think I'm going to have to break down and get one after I get paid...we'll see!

I do just have to say that I think I (SERIOUSLY) have one of the most amazing classes I've ever had.  I have such a wonderful mix of sweetness, spiceyness, playful, yet hard working kids!  I think this is going to be an amazing school year!!!

Back to school ramblings...

It's hard to believe that another summer has come and gone.  Cory, Allie and I have soaked up every second of the summer and it's been a summer we'll never forget.  Instead of taking thousands of pictures, I selectively captured important moments and allowed myself to enjoy all of the rest of the summer fun.  Even though I LOVE to take pictures, sometimes I get so caught up in the pictures that I forget to enjoy the moment.

I knew that this summer would (fingers crossed) be the last summer that Allie has our sole attention.  Next summer we will have two little daughters to love on and as wonderful as that sounds, we don't underestimate how different that is going to be for us.

Allie has had so much fun in my classroom this summer helping me prepare for the upcoming school year.  It's been fun to make the memories with her and I look forward to many years of our girls helping mom get her classroom ready.

Tomorrow I will be meeting and getting to know the 19 little darlings that are going to be my focus for the 2011-2012 school year.  I'm excited to get to know each one of them and find out what it is that makes each one of them special.  I am implementing many new things in my classroom this year which is always refreshing while I'm also continuing with the Daily 5, LIPS, VV, Visual Phonics, Calendar Math, and numerous other things we've implemented throughout the last 2 years of my first grade teaching assignment.  I'll be a great day, but I'll also miss being will Allie every day!!!

Next week, Allie will begin her first year at preschool.  She's very excited to go to school and her classroom is actually right next to mine (which I pray goes well).  Her teacher is one of my best friends who just adopted the little baby boy in one of my recent previous posts.  The adoption is a HUGE blessing, but VERY last minute (they only knew about it for 11 days!)!!!  So...Allie will now start the year out with a different teacher, but Kari should be back a couple of months into the school year.  Allie was all ready to have Kari as her teacher, so I hope having a different teacher at the beginning will go smoothly that first day.

I'll post pictures of Allie's first day soon and I hope everyone is doing well and has a great first few weeks of school!!!

Another update on "C"

We received a new update on C today!  We are excited to hear that she's doing well, beginning to talk more, and is even beginning to be potty trained (I cried when I read that)!  It's hard to be so far away and be missing all of these moments with her.  According to her latest update, C is TINY!  At 23 months old, she's actually 18.5 pounds and about 31 inches long!  I think my girls are going to be on opposite ends of the spectrum seemings though we just bought Allie her first size 13 shoe and she's not even 3 1/2!!!  we can't wait to have our girls together!!!

Can you tell...

how much Allie loves babies?  I hope to blog about this little babe someday soon, but until then...guess who Allie will be loving on?!

Article 5

I received an e-mail today that our Article 5 was approved...which is great news.  Now I'm not sure what's going to happen or maybe I should say when something is going to happen.  The next step is to have the NOC (takes typically 1- 2 months) issued by the federal government of India called CARA, however CARA isn't looking at dossiers until (we have VERY conflicting information about the date) October 1st.  Another issue that sounds like we may have is that December is a month full of holidays in India and there are many days where government offices are closed.  After we have the NOC, we are issued a court date and our court date takes about 2 months.

We really had hoped to have C home by the end of the year, unfortunately it looks like that's now impossible.  We've shed more than a few tears over the past couple of weeks wishing that C was here.  I know that many people say that it's all in God's plan, however I don't believe that's true.  It's not God's will that C is in an orphanage instead of a family.  It's not God's will that placed her there in the first place.  We know that God loves C and loves us.  We know that He can give us strength and can keep C safe.  We also know that God has helped us find this precious little soul to bring into our family for a reason and that's what keeps us going.  We love you C & Allie can't wait to be your big sister!!!

#4

On my list of great loves in my life the first three in Chronological order would be Cory, Allie and "C".  The fourth great love of my life is was my Keurig coffee pot.  I'm sad to say that this morning (after getting MAYBE 1-2 hours of sleep) I rolled out of bed, walked down stairs, reached into the cupboard to get my coffee pod only to see that my coffee pot wouldn't turn on!!!  How on EARTH am I going to make it through teachers meetings all next week and through a year of 20 little 6-7 year olds without my morning Kona coffee?!?!
I'm going to try to live without one for as long as possible.  We'll see how long this lasts!

I800 and a delay...

We received our I800 back from the Department of Homeland Security yesterday.  This document is one of the document that goes into the Article 5 I believe.  I scanned the document in and sent it to our social worker and here's the reply we received back:

"Great!  I had seen a copy and had sent on the DS-230 visa application to the Embassy in Delhi.  Once the Embassy receives the provisional approval from the NVC, they will put it together with the DS-230 and will send the Article 5 letter to CARA.  That will begin the NOC process…  CARA has indicated they are not going to review new NOC’s until after September 30, so that may delay us there, but I’ll keep you posted."

We are crushed to say the least.  It's hard to understand why our daughter has to sit in an orphanage for a few months longer than needed.  We knew going into this process that things don't always go smoothly, but I don't think we realized how excruciating the wait was going to be.