a perfect 10!

Well, maybe not perfect, but pretty darn great! On Friday Joe and I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe a decade has passed since we said "I do."

To celebrate Joe and I spent this past weekend (by ourselves, thank you in-laws!) in lovely Fort Worth. We had a great time going to the art fair, dinner at Joe T. Garcia's, and watching a friend perform in a play.

But far and away my favorite part of the weekend was receiving two great gifts from Joe.  The first was a digital photo album from the last 10 years. Boy, we have had some pretty amazing times.  And the second was word art of our vows.  Joe recruited my talented friend Erin from Perfect Sentiment to create the art in my favorite colors.  I just love it!  It is a great reminder of what we promised to each other 10 years ago and now it can be a daily reminder to live those vows every day.

Three wild boys, two lazy cats, and one loud dog later life is always entertaining. We have everything we need, almost. Here is hoping to an even more entertaining house next year with dreams that little Mae will join us soon!

and just like that, approved!

Wow, I can't believe it but we have our I-800 approval! We went in for our fingerprinting on Thursday April 17th and by Monday we had the approval in our hot little hands.

Ok, so what does that mean? Well, it means that all of our documents for China can start to get translated and authenticated, a process that takes about 3-4 weeks. Then we get to send all of our paperwork (called our dossier) to China and get logged in to the system.

We can not get a referral until we are "logged in" and given a LID (log-in date). We should get this date about 2 weeks after our paperwork is sent to China.

So, big picture is that we are about 1-2 months away from LID and from being able to get a referral for Mae! Yahoo!!