Richnightder and Jerome are legally ours!!

We just got home, turned on the computer and saw email from Vicki. It was outstanding news. She told us that as of October 23, we are in MOI. This means that the boys are legally ours. This day will only be topped when we are flying out of Port-au-Prince and bringing them home FOREVER!! It is getting closer and maybe, just maybe, they will be home in February or March.

This is the last legal step of the Haitian adoption process. After this it goes back to the U.S. side of things for final authentication. Hopefully, Richnightder's DNA tests have been done and the U.S. side of things will move quickly and smoothly. This is where we need the prayers. We are on cloud nine now and I am going to go celbrate with a big bag of Halloween candy. CHEERS!!

Thomas and the crazy things he says

Last night Marc was out ridding our world of yucky drug dealers. But the reason I mention this is that I was really craving Applebee's crispy orange chicken bowl and he was going to pick up curbside-to-go for dinner. Well, as fate would have it, Marc was not heading home until almost midnight. I had given up hope at about 8PM and fed the kids, Mac and cheese and fudge. Yes, I know a well balanced dinner. I had graham crackers in the hopes that Marc would still be able to pick something up for the two of us, but as it got later and later, I despaired.

Finally at 11:45Pm he calls and says they take phone orders till midnight!!WOOHOO. So even though he had just had a night of fun with scuzzy drug dealers, he still stopped and picked up our super yummy Applebee's dinners. Isn't he the absolute best husband EVER!! And no, I am not craving food because I am pregnant!! Marc had a vasectomy 2 1/2 years ago and he still feels pretty macho having done that.

Thomas never sleeps. As Marc and I ate on the couches in the family room last night at 12:45AM, Thomas wanders out of his room and comments on us eating delicous smelling food. We shuffled him back to bed and I was grazing on left overs in the kitchen this morning when he got up. He looks at me and says, " Are you still eating?" What does he think? That I am awake all night eating? I told him I actually took a break to sleep for a few hours, and then resumed my grazing. Sadly, he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Am I twisting him up that badly with my sarcastic sense of humor? Only time will tell. I guess if I discover he is trying to reach the Dr. Phil show, I will have my answer.

Latest pictures of Jerome and Richnightder

The most recent trip to the creche has just returned home to the states and we have gobs of new photos of the boys, courtesy of a couple families.

Beth took Richnightder's birthday present to him for us, and April took some great pictures of him opening it and a tear-jerker video of the traveling families singing "Happy Birthday" to him. Of course I cried watching it, thanks April, but it is so wonderful to know that the other visiting adopting families treat everyone else child at the creche as a member of their extended family. In actuality, our kids at the Creche are living like a large family, somewhat like the Duggars, and when they eventually do make their ways home to us here in North America, it is important to me that they stay in touch with their creche family. I am sooo appreciative of the love, hugs and kisses that everyone shares with all the kids. It makes those of us at home feel warm inside even though we are insanely jealous that we are not there ourselves.

So tonight I thought I would post a picture of my stunningly handsome boys who are getting closer and closer to make it home to us. Beth, April, Jennifer and Laura, I raise my Corona to you in appreciation of the fantastic pictures. Gulp, gulp, gulp........aaaahhh, that was tasty and it only would have tasted better had I popped that open at the dining room table in the creche. P.S....Did Antoine do any late night runs into Croix de Bouquet for 'beverages'???

Happy Birthday, Kathy!!

My slightly(HA) older sister is another whole year older today. I won't announce her age as I am unsure if she has told her new husband the truth. That and the fact that she is 10 years older than I am which would make me a bona fide 40's something. But as all my friends and I have discussed, 40 is the new 30 and damn, I was good in my thirties!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATHY.....OOPS, I MEAN, KATHLEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My entire life, I have called her Kathy or Kath. But to the outside world, she has always been, Kathleen. Don't take me wrong, kathleen is much more refined and grown-up sounding than Kath, but she is and always be, my Kathy. The one who made me sit on the floor of the pickup at the A&W while she met guys. The one who told me when I went to bed at night that mom and dad were paid to take care of me and that someday when I woke up, they would be gone. The same Kath that locked me in the rabbit hutch when she was supposed to be babysitting because a boyfriend called her up for a date. AAAAHH, the fond memories of loving sisters. Thank God, I turned out normal despite her. Who would think that now I actually kind of like her......well maybe I even love her a little.

So here's to you big sister! In honor of you today, I have put on my nice clothes, my new Stuart Weitzman pumps and my Burberry handbag and am heading into town for a nice afternoon of shopping at.......(walmart)!!! Schocking horror of horrors, what a waste of perfectly good high end products. If you were here with me, I could drag you to Walmart too for a fun, down home, Joe Six-pack kind of afternoon. HAHAHAHAHAHA Thank God we are Democrats and not linked to Palin.

Oh, I thought I would post a picture of my neice or neices, Kathy's two daughters and Kathy's new grandson, Conor. I may be partial, but they are all gorgeous.

No adoption news yet. I am hoping to find out that we are legally their parents, out of 2nd legal and into MOI. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.

Tifanni, the coconut top went out in the mail today. I hope Mike enjoys it as much as Marc did!

It's just us now

When I was a little girl, I always had so much fun listening to my mom and her friends talking and laughing at the kitchen table. Usually they had a bottle of wine, or during the colder months, mai tai's. Nonetheless, I was usually surrounded by all of their kids and we had a great time goofing around. But what I remember the most, was hearing my mom and the other women laughing. My brain can still recall the sound of my mom throwing back her head and letting out a heck of belly laugh. For the most part, our kitchen was always full of my mom's friends and their kids. It was safe, predictable and now provides me with my warmest childhood memories.

My mom passed away a year ago on the 17th of October. She would have been 75 years old on October 22, but sadly slipped just short of reaching that day. She passed away from Alzheimers which is a terrible, nasty disease that steals the personality right out from under their feet. She was a feisty woman; Irish Catholic, and her favorite saying was "My feet are always pointed towards the door." She was never one to let a good time go by without her, and yet that is what the disease stole from all of us. When she passed away, she was in chronic pain that she was unable to articulate, and panicked all the time. She lost her sense of kindness and acceptance. My mom became highly irritable and at the same time, a hopeless flirt. It did seem to send her sex drive into overdrive.

There are funny things about the disease, but only now are they somewhat laughable. She developed an eating disorder and was terrified of being overweight. She was always a skinny-minnie, but feared food making her fat. She flirted with other dementia patients who were blissfully unaware of her come-ons. SHe wouldn't rest until my sister took her to the mall and bought her an I-pex bra from Victoria's Secret. She wanted her boobs to be pushed up and look sassy for the men.

What I am most grateful for although I was not with her when she died, was that she got to see a picture of Richnightder and Jerome. She spoke to their pictures as if they were real and there in person. She stroked their faces and told them, "Nana loves you." I think she knew then that she would never see them in person here on this earth, but I know that she is with them in Haiti watching over them everyday. She loved children and my mom would have been thrilled to be able to bake cookies for the boys.

What gets me these days, is that my sisters, Nancy, Kathleen, and I are now the OLDER generation. All the kids I grew up with have lost parents and it is shocking to be hit with the realization that we are now the mature generation. My dad died on father's day in 2001 and I have officially been an orphan for a year now. It is odd to feel that way even though I have a terrific husband and wonderful kids, but the reality is that I am parentless and my generational status has moved up the ladder. I still feel like I am 25 and God knows I act like it most days, but to think that my sisters and I are all that is left of my parents (besides our offspring) catches you and pulls you up short sometimes. So my sisters and I raise a toast to all of you kids, and warn you to watch out, because someday........you will be it too!

Madison the wonder girl

Now everyone knows by now that I homeschool the kids and sometimes, there is a very real thing of too much togetherness. Yesterday was one of those days.

My friend and neighbor, Jan was feeling sick and asked if I would mind picking her up some 7-Up and other things for a queasy tummy. Sure. It gave me a reason to get out of the house and separate the bickering kids and tormented mom. Madison joined me at the store and Thomas was left home alone(for the 2nd time ever) with strict instructions....you know the standard drill. Off to the store we go and reurn in an hour and a half. I dropped the stuff off at Jan's and she told me that she had seen a car at my house while I was gone. She called and Thomas told her it was the religious women. ???? When I questioned Thomas, he said the Jesus people came to share the word with us and he told her I wasn't home, but she still read the bible to him. Give me a break! Are the Jehovah Witnesses so hard up for new members that they felt it prudent to preach to a child home alone? And yes, we did have a nice long chat with Thomas about answering the door when he is home alone.

Yesterday morning, before the Jehovah Witness lady showed up, Pebbles our Rottweiler barfed all over the front steps. I mean it was projectile vomit and she got all the front steps sprayed with undigested food. The religious woman, had to tip-toe around the barf to even get to the front door and she ended up stepping in it. She told Thomas that she had to go home now and wash off her shoes!!!! YEAH. So the moral of this story is to always keep fresh dog barf on your front porch....it makes it difficult for the zealots to ring your bell.

Madison is trying to earn the privilege of having a Halloween party with some of her homeschool friends. She would like to have 10 girls over to our house to bake treats and then eat them all up while watching scary movies. Sounds great to me, but one caveat! She must be polite, and respectul to us as a way of demonstrating she is trying to be nice MOST of the time. This morning she got up and went outside to feed and water the horses, change the puppy piddle pads, and made us a hot fresh pot of coffee. All I can guess, is that she really wants to have that party.

And one more thing, Marc would like everyone to know that he has been busy this morning cleaning the house and doing laundry. Now I have told the world what he wanted me to. He is laboring under the assumption that by doing the domestic chores I no longer have time to do as I am homeschooling, he is going to get lucky on a much more regular basis. Actually, I do find it sexy when he is swiffering the floors. Now that he is busy doing grunt work, I am going to run outside and catch a quick ride on my horse. The weather is outstanding today and it just might be our last 70 degree day for many months.

Richnightder is 6 years old October 14th.

It is utterly inconceivable that one of my sweet, handsome bright boys will be 6 years old tomorrow, Oct. 14th 2008. I am so sad that another birthday will pass without him here at home with his family. A peice of my heart is left in Haiti and I only wish that my little fellow could understand just how much he is loved and the hole that is left in our hearts without him with us.

To you, my beautiful Richnightder, a hope and a prayer that you feel our love across the ocean and will always know how much you are treasured by your mom and dad. You have so many wonderful and unique gifts to share with this world, that I just know God has something special planned for you.

A special thank you to Beth for taking Richnightder his birthday gift on the next trip to the creche next Monday. Make sure you whisper in his ear that his mom and dad love him more than he could ever imagine.

of course I can't drive a tractor and other stupid questions

There are some weeks I realize you just shouldn't get out of bed. The roofers came and I have been joking that being such sharp-dressed men and looking so well rounded, that they are probably all on work release from jail. Well, gee I was right. Yesterday I was outside with one of our horses at about 8:30 AM because she had spent the previous evening at the vets due to colic, when the roofers began to arrive. One shouted loudly to the other guy about how he was enjoying his "vacation." The guy responded with, "Well, they only give you a snack if you are out all day and then you have to be up and out by 7:30AM. Who would have thought that part-time jail was so inconvenient?

So having solved the not to difficult mystery of whether or not the roofers were convicts, I tried to squeeze in a little education for the kids while nursing the still under-the- weather pony. Lolly doesn't seem to want to drink water right now, which is not uncommon due to our first major seasonal change of cold and snow. She has a small impaction in her pelvic flexion which is just fancy talk for "Hey, my stupid pony didn't consume enough water and all the hay dried out in her intestines and stopped moving thru to the exit." Every couple hours I mix up a lovely batch of dried beet pulp, lots of salt, water and corn syrup and slop it out to Lolly. She begrudgingly eats it as we are with holding hay until she starts to poop normal turds and not dried up goat turds. My whole life seems to revolve around crap. HMMM, a trend here??

In the midst of listening to heavy metal rock from my roof, the constant checking on the horse and school, I get a phone call from LeRoy advising me that our new pre-fab barn is soon to be delivered. I told LeRoy that Thursday was the only day Marc could not be home to help with the siting of the barn and was tied up at work. Well the barn was about 30 minutes away and was going to be delivered! Up drives a semi hauling our pre-fab barn which is all steel framed and 15x30 ft. LeRoy meets me out back and tells me all I have to do is get on our tractor and using the chains and grapples drag the barn off the skids as he drives the semi forward. WHAT!! Seriously, I was panicking. I don't want the barn ruined and I sure as hell can't drive the tractor so I imposed on the driver, LeRoy to do it all by himself. I did lend moral support and stood around outside watching the action when I noticed the roofers waving at me. Kind of weird, but I waved back and thought they were just enjoying the fiasco with the barn. LeRoy jumps of the tractor and jogs to the house and I was thinking he was just running away, when in fact, the roofers ladder had fallen and they couldn't get down. Yeah, there I was waving at them when they weren't being friendly, just needing the get back on the ground. Can you only imagine what they were saying about the dumb blond out back waving at them??

LeRoy completes his job without any catastrophes and got the heck out of our place. I grabbed the kids, loaded them to go to homeschool gym (football) and the guy doing our siding drives in. So I had to stand around and discuss which product to put up on the house. At this point I really don't care; just put something up that doesn't have holes and isn't pea green. We made it to football and Thomas gets hit straight in the face with the ball and then gets a direct hit in the nuts. He whinned and cried on the way home until I found the snicker bars and he felt much better.

I fed the horse again, took the puppies out and Marc got home with Pebbles and Chowder who had been at doggy daycare. Both neighbors came over and Michelle brought Steph and Bryon and all of the kids ended up inside eating my hidden stash of halloween candy. Now I was pissed.
But the real topper of the day was that the roofers had to lift our satellite dishes and couldn;t get them put back correctly so I had NO TV OR INTERNET!!!! Finally at 7pm tonight, the DISH guy came out to align our dishes and voila' we are out of the dark ages.

Marc is gone picking Madi up from a birhtday party conveniently located in bismarck a mere 50 miles round trip. She has made a lot of neat friends from homeschool and I don;t care what it takes to keep her active with a nice group of kids. And some of the moms like to drink, so that is a plus for me.

All I know, is that life really does come at you fast. It works for me to stand there and act stupid and blond and somebody usually picks up the peices for you. Lame, but true. Oh, and our boys updates finally came and it says we are being preparation for MOI. It is getting closer, which is hard to believe. Keep your fingers crossed as we are hoping February or March they may actually be home with us.

No updates yet

I have been following other people's blogs who are adopting from our creche, and they all seem to have gotten their updates and pictures, but not us. A lot of the families are excited because their updates have noted progress thru the system, especially for those of us stuck in 2nd legal. I am anxious to get out update to see if we have completed the third leg of second legal and are heading into the home stretch of MOI. I know we haven't been in second legal very long; only arrived there on August 13th, but am hoping that we have a speedy trip thru it, since we spent an exceptionally long time in IBESR.

So to occupy my time, I thought I would post a picture or two from today of the two new puppies, Gucci and Carlos. They are 9 weeks old and have been home 6 days now and are oh, so much fun. Gucci likes to chew on the baseboard molding and Carlos is a major food piggy. Pebbles, our Rottweiler is very gentle and patient with the puppies and poor old Chowder, just can't believe they are here to stay. He just gives them a quick sniff and motors on his way.

Pebbles and Chowder are at doggy day care today. Why you ask?? Well our second new roof since June is being put on and the dogs go crackers hearing the ripping and tearing on the roof. So to save my sanity and theirs, they are spending a couple days at the local dog day spa and living it up.

And just for laughs, I received my THIRD jury summons since June. Incredible and unbelievable. I have called the Clerk of the Court and explained that I have been called 3 times, not been deffered and had been excused from the last session. I would think this would be clear to a woman whose job entails putting together jury pools, but she could not understand why I was asking to be excused since I had not been seated on a jury. what a flippin' idiot. As I very patiently went over the reasons why....which are actually blatantly clear....she got so upset with me that SHE hung up on me. Yes, the Clerk of the Court, hung up on me. Mind you, I was calm, polite, perhaps a bit frustrated, but never raised my voice nor said anything demeaning. Heck, the kids were in the car with me when I phoned and can attest that I was pretty cool, given the idiot I was dealing with. Now I am composing a biting letter to her supervisor who is a judge that Marc just happens to know professionally. I sure hope this woman gets her hand slapped for being so unprofessional and just plain old rude.

I am now done complaining for at least the next 20 minutes. Well, maybe not. Seems the roofers did not return today as it is very windy and I guess that could cause possible bodily injury.....wimps! But they left tools, open sacks of shingles, extension cords, etc., on the roof, all of which have blown off in our little wind storm. The noise is charming as you hear things scutter across the roof, and then silence until it hits the driveway. Ah, my glorious life. Now the house looks officially trashy with debris lying everywhere. Hopefully it will all blow away to Minnesota!

Palin want a cracker??????

Is she for real? At this point I would be more likely to vote for Tina Fay than Sarah Palin. Give me a break! All I saw last night was a woman who has shown who she really is; in candid interviews with Katie Couric and last evenings obviously coached performance. She is no smarter than a parrot. She can remember key phrases and reguritate them, but not have any understanding of what she is saying. Scary for our country. I can't believe the U.S. population is so stupid to actually think that she has any fundamentally deep understanding of foreign policy, finance and terrorism. When I think of Sarah Palin, I think of a woman in the grocery store handing out samples and coupons for new products. She tells me how great the cookies taste, but can't tell me anything about what goes into them, how they are made, or where they came from.

So the next time my kids ask me a really tough question about our finances or maybe why Haiti is so geographically close to the USA and yet people are starving, I am going to pretend I am Sarah Palin and give them a wink, and tell them to ask "Joe Six-pack," to look up the answer. Palin want a cracker????