I can't remember if I mentioned that a few weeks ago we were awakened in the night by a loud "bang" which happened to be the pipes underneath our kitchen sink erupting. We got the emergency faucet turner things turned off and the water damage wasn't too terrible, but it is amazing the amount of water that came out and engulfed my kitchen and sunroom before we could get those handles turned all the way off!

Anyhow, hubby bought two new flexible pipe things and fixed the erupted part but the emergency handles wouldn't turn back on without dripping leaking a good bit and nearly falling off. So after having the popcorn bowl under the sink for a few weeks, we called the plumber. Our faucet thing was also seeping a bit, so we went to Lowes and bought a new faucet - we were so surprised how expensive they are! I didn't get the pretty one that I really wanted (the old fashioned dippy kind) because the only ones like that were Price Pfister and our plumber said don't get Price Pfister :O(. So, anyhow, the plumber came this morning at 8 a.m. and stayed a couple of hours and now we have professionally installed new emergency faucet turner things and a new modernish faucet on top. It's a stainless steel one of those high arc ones, by Moen.

I spent most of this day in V's room with my scrapbooking stuff spread out everywhere. I had commented about this on Debbie's blog, and nearly wrote a whole post there, so I'll expound here on my own blog. On her comments, I had written:

"For some reason which is way too psychological for me to figure out, I've not scrapped and it is somehow connected to V not coming home yet. I haven't scrapped ANYTHING not just things related to V. Weird, huh? Now, I don't know if I've pushed past my psychological scrapping hang up or if the hope of accreditation has opened my scrapbooking doors but I'm doing it again."

I still don't understand myself. But I do know this - I am sooo behind in my scrapbooking. I also realized today that since I started blogging, I haven't had many pictures actually printed, I just share them online. I hardly have ANYTHING material for 2007 so I'm going to have to go online and order some prints!! Maybe that's the thing - maybe I've transferred my scrapbooking energies over to my blog. I won't bore you with the details, but 6 hours later, I have all my pictures categorized by year and month and they are in a little file box ready to be scrapped. I'm very proud of myself for that, but it was one big job let me tell you!! I have pictures going back to 2001 that still need to be scrapbooked!!

*edited to remove V's real name - oops! (thanks for catching that Esther) and to clarify that it wasn't OUR agency who received accreditation. It's still a couple months away for us it seems.

We had a great family time tonight.

Finally no rain here and we took advantage of it. Actually we've had two whole days with no rain - unbelievable!

After D's swimming lesson this afternoon, we came home and hubby started a fire in the outdoor firepit that we gave him for Christmas. D kept her swimming suit on from lessons and I went and put my suit on (with cover up - the neighbors just don't need to see that!) We roasted hot dogs over the flame and had a picnic on the patio with hotdogs, tortilla chips, homemade salsa from fresh homegrown tomatoes and a watermelon. We spit watermelon seeds in the yard (yes even we two Southern ladies spat!) We just had a wonderful night. After we got our fill of hotdogs and watermelon, we roasted marshmallows over the fire. D loves to just burn them to a crisp and then catapult them off the roaster tongs out into the yard - she doesn't eat them roasted, only raw. Yum, I love them just a little burny - just where you barely catch it on fire and have to blow it out. After roasting marshmallows we took a little swim in our little WalMart above ground pool.

Hubby had spread a huge double person sized beach towel over the patio table as a table cloth and so the watermelon juice wouldn't get everywhere. Right before we went out to roast the marshmallows, I looked down by my Dixie paper plate and saw a long red thread. I silently picked it up and stuck it on my shirt over my heart (which is what I always do when I find a red thread) and walked out to join my two loves at the firepit. That was *V enjoying the night with us if only in my heart.

There is news on FRUA that Cradle of Hope Agency has received notification that they are ACCREDITED and they should receive their official certificate on July 4!!

No, we're not with Cradle of Hope and our agency really expects that we will be about 2 months behind this first batch, but IT'S HAPPENING! HOORAY!

• We left for San Antonio right after church Sunday morning.





• After the 6 hour trip we checked into our hotel and then went to Texas Land and Cattle Steak House to celebrate Father's day.




• Bright and early Monday morning we headed to Sea World. The first thing we did was feed dolphins, it was really exciting.





• We spent the whole day at Sea World and were exhausted.

I don't know how clear this picture is because I was FAR AWAY when I took it! D is holding a giant snake - ICK! Don't eat my baby!!!

• We went back to Sea World on Tuesday morning, not quite as bright and early and we hit the water park portion, called Lost Lagoon. We spent most of the day there and got sunburnt even though we applied the sun-scream liberally!







• We went back to the hotel and showered and changed and scrambled to meet Kay at Starbucks.






• We had to be back at Sea World by 5:45 for our Dinner with Shamu. It was really cool to be so close to the big whales!








• Wednesday it came a downpour in San Antonio which is not really common this time of year from what we were told. We visited the Alamo in the pouring rain.










• We headed to the Market Square and had lunch at Mi Tierra which D had seen on Postcards from Buster a few months ago so going there was a must! It was very yummy and the atmosphere was fun.







• Back to the hotel we went and D and I konked out for a loooong nap - till 6:30! We had planned to visit the San Antonio River Walk, but we didn't go back that night.





• Thursday we left San Antonio and headed toward home. We stopped at the Natural Bridge Caverns where we toured the caves and D panned for gems!











• Then it was on toward home. The longest ride ever.




• We were happy to get home and now we must recover from our vacation :O)

This was posted this morning on FRUA!


Content of the Cradle of Hope Agency announcement - so don't know how many agencies this applies to: Finally, some good news to report! All four Ministries have signed off on our re-accrediation approval!! We are told that the last two approvals (Justice and Internal Affairs just signed this week) have already arrived at the Ministry of Education, so we are only waiting for the Min/Ed to issue our accreditation certificate. We expect these final steps to occur in the next few weeks, so we are very, very close. Once we receive the accreditation certificate, we will send out an email immediately to all of our Russia families. (we will probbably close our office a little early on that day for a small celebration for our staff.) We will expeditiously deliver the certificate to all of our regions for filing with each pending case, in hopes of getting some long overdue court dates and first trips scheduled quickly. We will also be hoping to get some new referrals soon. Families who have been waiting for re-accreditation to update their documets are urged to move forward with this process now. Please contact your CHAC adoption assistant if you ar not sure which documents are still needed. Please make sure your BCIS fingerprint clearances and I-171H are still valid and won't expire anytime soon.

Oh how I pray this is real! Thanks Debbie for calling me! I can't see how it wouldn't be real unless that POBES person on FRUA is evil or something and made it up! It seems they copied and pasted the info from their agency's newsflash! Please be real, please be real!!! I never imagined I'd use so many exclamation points for ANOTHER agency getting their accreditation!!

I've not been a very good blogger lately, but there really hasn't been a thing to blog about related to our adoption.

We've been super busy this summer already and are getting ready to go on vacation leaving this weekend. I'll tell you where we went when we get back. I have a fear some creepy person may read my blog and snatch D since I've posted her precious pix on the blog. So, I'll just tell you when we get back where we went. And No, it's not Russia this time :O)

We have been pretty low about the adoption lately. We're at nearly 16 months now, waiting for a court date that is no where in sight. V will turn 29 months on Monday. We don't look for anything to happen toward it till Fall. Nothing concrete to make us think that, but just the way things are going. Our 12 month-old referral will be 3 before she comes home.

We're just living our life and staying busy. But like I told Deb the other day, there is no busy that is busy enough to make you not think about it - especially when she's already a real child that we know and have held, smelled, touched and heard. I check the database every now and then just to make sure she's still there and her sweet little happy face smiles at me from the screen. The same face that is on my refrigerator door beside D's art work.

As I'm sure you can tell, when I get quiet on the blog, I'm not in the greatest of places adoption-wise. Hopefully I'll be "up" again soon.

Off to clean the house and start packing for our trip . . .

"be where your feet are" - that's what I'm doing

Tomorrow (or actually tonight as we sleep) Presidents Putin and Bush will meet together at the G8 summit.

Whether you agree with our President or not, he is our president and he needs our prayers.

The relationship between our two countries could definitely affect adoption. So please pray for God to be all over this meeting tomorrow!