Guessing Game

Sandy and I are 2 weeks away from our 11th wedding anniversery!! Yep Valentines day will be 11 years so I figured since we are all waiting to travel a fun way to pass the time is to have a little guessing game as to where Sandy and I exchanged our vows. I don't mean the city or state that would be to easy it has to be the actual place we were married and believe me it won't be easy to guess.
Sorry this is only for fellow bloggers and those reading along no family and friends who already know the answer that would spoil all the fun
I'll give clues each day and post pictures and our story on Valentines day
Please only 1 guess a day per person
Clue number 1: Not your traditional wedding

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison

FUN WEEKEND

This past weekend we took advantage of winter clearance sales and did some baby clothes shopping. Pictured above is an outfit we bought for our little Kaz Princess. We bought several sweaters, shirts, pants and more, picking out sizes was a little hard not knowing size, age etc.... Most of the clothes we bought were 1- 2 years anything that is too small will be a donation to the baby house. While we were shopping we ran into my good friend and one of our homestudy references Nick. The 3 of us had so much fun shopping together. Nick has a beautiful 15 month old daughter so I forsee many playdates ahead. Nick's wife Carolyn had her birthday on Saturday so the four of us went to Jr's. Last Laugh comedy club saturday night. I guess we have to enjoy these nights out on the town while we can. Next time we just might be needing a babysitter. :-) MOM
Still no news about when we'll travel. My mother has a gut feeling we will get the call in March. The latest update from our agency about the status of adoptions from Kazakhstan puts the waiting time for new families at over a 2 year wait!! I hope we don't have to wait much longer I've been reading Kazakhstan is beautiful in the spring.

Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny.
Alfred A. Montapert

Travel guide

Today our Lonely Planet travel guide to Central Asia arrived in the mail :-) We searched Borders and Barnes & Noble they had every travel guide except for the one we were looking for. After a quick search on E-Bay I found one and even with the cost of shipping included I saved $7 off the cover price of $29.99. What a great book !! I can see why the Woods family listed it 1st on their tips post on their blog. I sat here for 2 hours after work reading thru it over 500 pages of Maps, Tips, Do's and Don'ts Russian phrases and so much more. It will be so nice having all this info after finding out what region we will be going to. Well no new Adoption news today except we all are-
One day closer to meeting our children.

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson

10 month point

We are offically within the 10-12 month timeframe for traveling :-) although we have been told it will most likly be closer to the 12 month end of it. No new news yet, we're just spending our time buying a few items for the trip and saving up more money. It was one year ago on the 17th that we made the trip to Buffalo for our fingerprinting and it was the crazy waiting room day at the local police station.
We have been going thru blog withdrawals since no families are currently in Kaz, then we realized that we are one of the next families who should be getting the call and it will be our blog everyone will be reading. It seems like we've been waiting forever but still have so much to do. I don't now if you can ever really be ready for this journey, knowing somewhere 1/2 way around the world is a child that we will one day call our son or daughter. I sit here and wonder where are you, what are you doing, what do you look like, when will we finally be together and I wonder there on the other side of the world of the children that wonder the same.

All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney

Helpful Link

Here's a link to a page that list all of the questions you should ask the caregivers about your child. I've already printed them out and will have them ready when the day comes for us to meet our child.
After 24+ hours of travel, jet Lag and no sleep remembering all of the important questions might be a little hard so I hope this will be helpful to everyone.

GOOD FORTUNE

Today our citizenship form came back Apostilized !! I'll make a copy for our records and then mail it off to the CHI office were it will be sent on the way to Kazakhstan to be added to our dossier.
Speaking of dossier here's the story behind the fortunes above.
1. Courtesy opens my doors.
I mentioned this in one of my older post about the day we went to the police station for fingerprinting. Courtesy and being polite in a chaos filled waiting room got us in the door on a day when fingerprinting normally isn't done.
The other two are from the day (Feb. 19th) we finished our dossier. Sandy and I went out to our FAVORITE CHINESE Restraunt (we love chinese food) to have dinner and celebrate this milestone of our adoption journey. These are the fortunes we found in our fortune cookies. We hope this is a good sign.
I don't know how delightful the journey will be with all of Adoptions ups and downs, but we have already met so many delightful people along the way. I don't know what the journey will hold for us in 2008 but I hope everyones dreams come true.