Hair Cut

You all know that every so often I get so tired of my hair. So I color or cut it. . . today was one of those days. I have been putting my hair in a pony tale every day for the last couple of weeks and on Sunday, when it wore it down, it just felt. . . fuzzy.

So, today I trotted myself down to get a hair cut.



Spencer took this photo, even though you cannot see the top of my head believe me this was the best shot :). Ahh . . . Short hair again.

Kindle Love

Kindle and I are still on the honeymoon!



I just love this device and I love the man who gave it to me. I have been wanting/eying a kindle since my good friend got one last December. Dave totally surprised me. It came UPS with my name on it and I could not remember ordering anything. When I opened it, it was "shock and awe." I am still wowed by it all. It has been a few weeks and I couldn't be more happy with it.

The top 5 reasons I love my Kindle:

1. I hate reading small print books, (HATE). I will not purchase a book with small print. If I reserve a book at the library and the print is too small I will not read it. I will return it and look elsewhere. BUT on the kindle you can choose the size of font you want. It will never be too small.

2. The kindle fits in my purse. It is under 9 oz. and still has a 6 inch reading screen. I can bring 3500 books with me wherever I go.

3. I downloaded the scriptures and am taking it to church to read in Sunday school. It is awesome. It is easy to navigate and find the book, chapter and verse I want. (Real slick Mav.)

4. There are lots of free books. I downloaded "Tale of Two Cities" and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" for free, two of my book club books. All the classics are free.

(As a side note, I also downloaded a free book I thought would be a fun quick fantasy book. . . unfortunately it was quite "adult" . .yelp! So I need to be sure to read lots of reviews before I download any other free fiction that might be too racy.)

5. And finally #5, I can play games on the kindle two. I have two fun word games (like scrabble) that I can play.

Behold. . . the Kindle.

Autumn Moon Festival

On Friday we celebrated a Vietnamese holiday, the autumn moon festival. We had our good friends over to celebrate with us. We had some yummy Vietnamese treats and some candied fruit and of course the festival favorite, moon cakes.

Moon cakes are a sweet cake with an egg york in the center that looks like a moon. The traditional moon cakes are not. . . yummy. So we had our family substitute, lemon filled doughnuts. We tested several bakeries this summer looking for the perfect "moon cake." Krispy Kreme was the clear winner! So on Friday morning we trucked ourselves down to the nearest Krispy Kreme (45 min. away) to get two dozen of the loveliest moon cakes I have ever seen.

On the night of the festival all the kids ran around with their lanterns, it was a "parade" of sorts. More than anything it was the kids just having fun.





After the "parade" the moon was in full view, we had to walk to the side yard to see it, but it was lovely. Spencer's bed time is 7:30, so seeing the moon was a special treat for him.



We all enjoyed some moon cakes and goodies. Jasmine tea is the traditional drink, but we enjoyed some hot spiced cider.





We finally ended the evening reading some stories about the moon festival and some Vietnamese folk tales. We did a puppet show for one of the stories, "How Tiger got his stripes." Spencer colored the puppets and we taped them to Popsicle sticks. Dave read the story as we "acted" it out with the puppets. It was fun. I only wish we had gotten a picture of it. Well, here are some pictures of us enjoying the stories.





Thank you Aunt Betty for providing us with such wonderful blankets to keep warm and enjoy the stories!

It was a great night all together. One of my favorite parts was having some hanging lanterns. They are solar powered and change colors. They really exceeded my expectations. They looked great. I purchased them online and was happy that they were "as advertised." I can't wait to use them again. It was a great night all around!

Book Group!

It is that time of year again. . . I love the autumn for so many reasons, and one of them is our book group gets together and picks book for the next year. We have a great list of books this year.



We have some Young Adult books, fiction, historical non-fiction, a memoir and a classic. I am quite excited. We are going to read a Tale of Two cities and then go see the musical. (We did this last year with Three Musketeers and the year before with the Scarlet Pimpernel.) It is a great tradition!

I am really looking forward to reading all the books this year. I have already read "Boy in the striped Pajamas," but all the others are new for me. Three of the books I already had on my "to read" list, (Brave Companions, The Help and The book thief.) Perhaps the book that is the biggest surprise for me is "Funny in Farsi" I have never heard of it and I love a good memoir. All of the books have a minimum of 3.5 stars on goodreads.com.

I already have two of the books downloaded to my kindle :)

Lots. . .

Prepare yourself. . . lots has happened this week.

This post week includes, fire, evacuation, traveling to Wyoming and adoption news.

So. . . fire.





There was a wild fire in Herriman. It has been called "The Machine Gun Fire" because it was started by the national guard when they were training at Camp Williams (a few miles from our home.) The good news is that no one was injured or killed. But the fire came very close to our home. We were evacuated (along with 1600 other homes in the area.)

We spent the night with Dave's parents and after a long sleepless night we were able to come home and found our home in tact and all's well. The house smells a little smokey but other then that we are all good.

When we got back the hills by our home were burnt and you could still see the smoke from the other side of the hills. This photo is taken from our driveway.



Last weekend I also went to Wyoming for a 2-day Adjunct Leadership Academy hosted by Western Wyoming College. It was great. I had not been on campus since I was in high school. It was great to see the campus again. They have some great dinosaur displays.

This is a photo of the campus cafe, pretty cool. . . Dining with a T-Rex.



Finally on the adoption front. . .

This afternoon we got our fingerprint appointment cards! Yippy. It has been 3 weeks since we applied to extend our I-171H. We rushed to USCIS as soon as I opened the letters with our official forms. I called Dave and he met us at the office. Our appointment was set for Oct. 12, but since they were not busy they did our fingerprints.

Now we wait. . . we still have no news on the adoption front. Just waiting. . .

So, a busy and crazy week here. At least I had my Kindle to keep me busy :) I LOVE IT! I have not been able to put it down. Sweet, sweet husband. . . what a nice surprise.

More delays

More delays? Yes, more delays. . you read that title correctly.

Last night we got news from our agency. The U.S. state department posted this:

Kazakhstan: Adoption Alert
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Office of Children’s Issues

September 9, 2010

A new Kazakh passport requirement has created a processing delay for all passports of about three months. This delay directly affects inter-country adoptions since adoptive children must acquire a passport before they can travel to the United States. Although applicants could previously pay a fee to expedite processing, this service is no longer available. Adoptive parents should anticipate this delay and discuss appropriate arrangements with their adoption service providers.

This was also posted on the Kaz Adoption boards this morning too. It seems other people are as depressed about this news as we are. Adding three months to the process seems unbearable.

I asked our coordinator what this means for us, she said:

It will probably mean a two trip process like most other countries: you will complete court, go home, the team will get the child's passport and then you will return....... But this is just my guess how is may work.

Truly it is too soon to tell what it may all mean for us. There was a bright note though, our coordinator said:

I only can trust [our in country facilitator]: I always have . . . I believe that if she knew anything at this time, she would tell us. She has a plan in place for your family.

So. . . a new time-line could be:

1. Travel in Nov. 2010
2. Come home Dec. 2010
3. Wait 3 months for the Kaz passport process for little one
4. Return in March 2011 to bring home little one.

I think it will be a blue-blue Christmas.

Surprise!

Guess who surprised me with the most fabulous gift! Total shock. . . not my birthday. . . not our anniversary. . . no special occasion.

I announce the arrival of the New Generation Kindle in our home!



Ta-Daaa!

I will post more later. . right now I just need to play with my new eReader! I already have downloaded 7 books!

Temple and Painting on Labor Day

We had a great Labor Day! It was filled with work. This morning I got the opportunity to clean the temple. You may remember that 6 months ago I also got the clean the temple. On Mondays the temple is closed, so cleaning was in the morning this time. It was a wonderful experience. Even cleaning in white scrubs you can feel the spirit there. I got to clean the baptistery, so beautiful.



We also finished painting Spencer's room. . . it turned out great. It was hard to get a good shot, so this is as good as it gets:




Three walls are blue with the red wall. The red was very hard to paint with (4 coats of paint), so I can safely say. . . no more red painting in our home.

It was a great "holiday."

Sunday

Adoption Update:

I thought I would start with what is always foremost on my mind, Kaz. Our I-171H extension application was Fed-Ex'ed, it was received on Wednesday Sept. 1, 2010 @ 8:49AM. On Friday Sept. 3, 2010 our payment cleared! So the good news is we got in before the holiday weekend. Now we wait for fingerprint appointments. I read that a lady in our area got her fingerprint cards in 5 days! That is pretty fast. The longest we had to wait was 6 weeks for fingerprint cards.

It feels like I am holding my breathe all the time. I am just so excited and anxious.

In other news update:

The painting for Spencer's new room is almost done. I think we will do the finishing touches tomorrow and if it isn't too smelly Spencer can sleep in there tomorrow night. The room is rather dark. I did not think the colors would make the space so . . . dark. I am keeping my eyes open for some fun lighting ideas in his room. I promise to post photos soon.

We had the crowd over here an Saturday. It was a low-key baked potato bar lunch thing. It was great to see my sibs (Jay. .. w/ Sarah and Dean of course, Janelle and Tiff.) I think we all had a great time.

Spencer's second week of preschool was good. He has been having some anxiety when I drop him off (some tears). But he is always happy as can be when I pick him up. He tells me he loves school and Miss Kim (his teacher) and always is talking about his friends at school. There just seems to be some separation anxiety during the drop off. We will see how this week goes.

That's about it. . . Hope your week is going well.