You mean I forgot to blog again!!!!!!!!!!

Yet once again I have let other things in my life come before this blog, thus irritating a few people who harass me that I have not contributed anything to the blogworld in a while.

There is only one excuse for this...we've been busy with life. Larry has been working extra and working late. I've recently started a class to work on my counseling license and had a recent death in the family. Our life has been hectic, but we are hanging in there.

We passed a major milestone about a week ago that I wanted to comment on... it's been a year since we submitted our application to adopt. Sometimes it feels like it has been many years and other times it seems like only yesterday. So what does 525,600 minutes --yes, I love RENT almost as much as Harry Potter--in the land of adoption look like? Here's what ours looked like:

• One application
• Two different agencies. One for our homestudy and one for placement
• One incredible social worker
• Five home visits for our homestudy
• One trip to Fairfax for fingerprints
• Seven separate fingerprinting incidents; five of which were Larry's
• Several trips to Vietnamese restaurants to sample the cuisine (I LOVE PHO)
• One failed attempt to make Vietnamese cuisine
• Being notified by USCIS about a daughter I never knew exisited
• One very patient program coordinator
• At least a hundred meltdowns on my part
• Five handpainted jungle animals on the nursery walls
  
• Countless outfits for a little boy
  
• Reading countless blog entires of others in similar situations
• Connecting with incredible people through said blogs
• Watching the landscape of Vietnam adoption change rather quickly
• One warning from the Department of State concerning VN adoption
• Realizing that we weren't going to have our dossier in by our agency's cutoff date
• Countless sleepless nights
• One program change (From VN to Domestic Adoption)
  
• At least 10 drafts of a birthmother letter
• One picture portfolio that highlights our lives

I could probably go on and on with that list, but I won't bore you. This past year has been a journey like no other. When we initially began the process, we thought we would be home with our child by now. To be exact, we thought that we would be home with our 8 to 12 month old son. Instead, we've just embarked on another journey all together, which will most likely result with us bringing home our newborn son or daughter. I'm amazed at the difference one year has made in this journey, but I wouldn't trade this journey for anything.