What's a Girl to do when it's 40 below???

FINGERPAINT !!!!!!!

And FACEPaint
And FOOTPaint


And, Dress like a Princess for good measure!

2 things

Great Thing #1: The Brewers just signed Trevor Hoffman, the all-times Saves leader, to be our Closer. Whew. Collective sigh of relief heard throughout baseball world in Wisconsin. The LA Dodgers were also in the hunt for Hoffman, and it appeared they had a clear advantage as Hoffman is a California guy. However, our efforts to sign him apparently paid off. {Who really could resist the allure of coming to the true Dairyland?} Doug Melvin, our GM, just keeps working his magic. He has this incredible "baseball business" mentality that keeps paying off for the Brewers.

Great Thing #2: The movie "7 Pounds". Amazing. One of those movies that you keep replaying in your head for hours and days after you leave the theater. One of those movies that makes you want to become a better person, and just do the right thing. http://www.sevenpounds.com/

Our Christmas Present from Mom: A trip to visit Uncle Andy in Virginia from 12/27 to 12/31. Andy is the Men's Basketball Strength & Conditioning Coach for Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond. We were privileged to have courtside seats to watch the VCU Rams beat Hampton.

2 VCU Rams fans!!!!!

The "Polar Express" train that Marcella boarded & Grandma conducted, at the hotel in Virginia.

Fun times with Play-Doh in the hotelroom. Thanks for a GREAT trip, Mom!

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George assembling the pink play kitchen on Christmas Eve.

Time Started: 11:30 p.m.

Time finished: 2:30 a.m.

Excellent craftsmanship, Santa George!

Chef Marcella making some delicious Christmas cupcakes.

Only my brother Luke would spend months planning & scheming for his "perfect" Christmas outfit. He specially grew a beard, just so that he could carve it into this lovely mustache on Christmas morning. The high-buttoned flannel underneath the tight reindeer sweater only added more glitz to the get-up. What a guy....! By the way, the handle bar mustache was allegedly shaved off before he returned to work after Christmas! hopefully the sweater was too!

Auntie Elke & Marcella, sitting on a beautiful Baby Grand Piano at a fun Christmas Recital.

The Adoption Anthology

Many more twists & turns in our anthology!

My last adoption posting detailed that our dossier was supposed to be withdrawn & resubmitted. About a week after this was supposed to have happened, I contacted our agency to inquire if it actually did happen.

Guess what? They informed me it was NEVER withdrawn or resubmitted, as they had planned. Instead, our case was basically TERMINATED. .

Our Peruvian adoption represenatative requested a face-to-face meeting with the new Director of Adoptions in Peru, as a last-ditch effort to plead our case. This meeting happened shortly before Christmas. We don't have alot of details about this meeting, but what we do know is that:

• The Director did not terminate our case on-the-spot;
• The Director suggested that our Representative submit George's American Birth Certificate (which we thought had been submitted already last fall!!!!!!!!!!!)
• Our Dossier will be referred to a "Technical Committee" in Peru, and this group of adoption professionals will make the final determination about whether our case proceeds or whether we are "terminated".

We really don't know the who/what/were/when/why about the Technical Committee. So, for the time being, we are happy to at least have a chance to continue on towards our dream of adopting from Peru.

We will let you know if & when we hear the results of the Technical Committee meeting...