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!

***********************************************************
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My last adoption posting detailed that our dossier was supposed to be withdrawn & resubmitted.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...

Walking In A Winter Wonderland...

A few pictures from our trip to Chicago last weekend. We had a blast at Navy Pier's Winter Wonderland. In this picture, we are just arriving in the city and Marcella is absolutely in awe of the "big buildings". She is telling her Blue Bunny (seated on lap with her) to look up at all the skyscrapers...

George & Mar in front of Viejo Pascuero, who is Latin America's Santa Claus...

A Candy Cane Maze

~~Tuesday's snow fall~~


Video Below: Mar singing Frosty the SnowMan...

Dossier, Take 2

In 2005-2007, while we waited for Marcella through the Guatemalan Adoption Process, we hoped & hoped for a phone call from our adoption agency. The few phone calls that we did receive usually meant great news & progress towards bringing Marcella home. This time around (2008 and beyond), any phone call from our agency usually means something is awry in Peru....

Yesterday, we received yet another one of those phone calls.

Its usually doubly troublesome when we receive a 'conference call' with various directors of the adoption agency. Yesterday's call was indeed a conference call.

Our agency called to inform us that due to the recent governmental upheaval in Peru, the Director of Adoptions in Peru has changed. The new Director has a reputation of being very strict and black-letter. The new Director brings a whole new crew of employees with her. Anything and everything going on with Peruvian adoptions has come to a temporary hiatus. How does this affect our case?

This past fall, our agency predicted that we were headed for some major problems because of George's Peruvian Birth Certificate and series of name changes when he was young (details of this fiasco are detailed at the column on the left, and in a previous blog entry.). However, they told us were were going to weather the storm to determine our next strategy.

Yesterday, our agency decided we have weathered the storm enough (especially in light of the new Director coming on Board in Peru), and its high time to embark in a different direction.

Today, they are going to withdraw our Peruvian Adoption Dossier from the Peruvian governmental office where it has been since August. *The dossier is the formalized set of documents (about 2 feet of paperwork) that we spent months and months, not to mention alot of money, meticulously preparing.* After our agency retrieves our dossier, they are going to remove George's Peruvian Birth Certificate, and all of his Peruvian documentation (which we spent ALOT of time trying to obtain in the first place!) that contains his birth name. Our agency has received an 'informal internal warning' from the Peruvian Adoption Authorities that our case would soon be rejected in its current state because George has a Peruvian Birth Certificate (and other documents) that contain his birth name, and an American Birth Certificate (and other documents) that contain his current name. **It is important to note, that all of these documents were specifically REQUIRED by our agency when we were compiling our dossier.... But, things change quickly in international adoption...**

Next week, they are going to resubmit our dossier without the dossier documents that contain George's birth name (Jorge, etc...). They are hoping that this 'slimmed down' version of our Peruvian Adoption Dossier will be less problematic for the new Adoption Administration in Peru. The hope is that our case will have preferential treatment because our remaining documents 1) still demonstrate that George was born in Peru; 2) only reflect his current name; and 3) show that he was adopted in the USA (albeit by his step-father).

Our agency also instructed us that this in NO WAY guaranteed much of anything, but it was worth trying because the alternative (doing nothing) was looking much worse.

Of course, there are many ancilary concerns that we have, but those are for another day.

Is all of this completely confusing & frustrating? Yes.... But, we just have to have faith and be patient. And we just have to remember that EVERYTHING happens for a reason.... It is much easier to keep this in mind, when we have Marcella, our 2-year old emblem of faith & patience, running around our house looking for Santa Claus!!!

Thanks for taking the time to read about our Adoption Rollercoaster ride! We appreciate your support!

Happy Halloween, Take 3

Now Introducing, Dora the Explorer!!!! Dora La Exploradora!!!