sad day.

today, patrick swayze dies at the age of 57.

growing up, patrick swayze was always my favorite. i have vivid memories of acting out dance scenes from the movie dirty dancing with my girlfriends and trying to do 'the lift'. i have loved so many of his movies (some pics below).

msnbc writes:
Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.
“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.
Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.

2002.

Today I received an encouraging email from the Ethiopian team at our agency (Gladney) with some information about the New Year's Celebration in Ethiopia. Today is the the first day of 2002 in Ethiopia. Below is some info on the holiday.......

September 11th is both New Year's Day and the Feast of St. John the Baptist. The day is called Enkutatash meaning the "gift of jewels." When the famous Queen of Sheba returned from her expensive jaunt to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem, her chiefs welcomed her back by replenishing her treasury with enku or jewels. The spring festival has been celebrated since these early times and as the rains come to their abrupt end, dancing and singing can be heard at every village in the green countryside. After dark on New Year's Eve people light fires outside their houses.
The main religious celebration takes place at the 14th-century Kostete Yohannes church in the city of Gaynt within the Gondar Region. Three days of prayers, psalms, and hymns, sermons, and massive colourful processions mark the advent of the New Year. Closer to Addis Ababa, the Raguel Church, on top of the Entoto Mountain north of the city, has the largest and most spectacular religious celebration. But Enkutatash is not exclusively a religious holiday, and the little girls singing and dancing in pretty new dresses among the flowers in the fields convey the message of springtime and renewed life. Today's Enkutatash is also the season for exchanging formal New Year greetings and cards among the urban sophisticated in lieu of the traditional bouquet of flowers.

happy.

i'm a happy girl. wanna know why? this week, a lot has been accomplished for our adoption! we have rec'd the approval from uscis that i've been waiting on! we rec'd our notarized homestudy in the mail! a few final documents have been submitted for our dossier and we await authentication and then.............the official waitlist!! hope everything goes thru ok and i hope to have great news to share in a week or two.

i know the waiting list just means more waiting but it's been a long road of paperwork over 10 months and this will be a big day for us. another step closer to my little girl.

adoption update.

i check the mail everyday hoping to find our final paperwork from uscis. it's not here yet! our homestudy agency told us that it would take 60-90 days to receive this. everything else is done and waiting......

when our dossier is finally on it's way to ethiopia, i am going to throw a party!! you will all be invited:)

i recently found this on etsy. there are lots of adorable items, like this one, that are sold for a good cause. i have yet to purchase anything, but i love looking at all of the unique things that are for adoptive families.

a great summer.

we are having a great summer. other than this chilly weather, it has been fabulous! summer is my favorite season and at the end of every day, i'm a little sad because i know that it means winter is right around the corner. i know, that's kind of weird but when you live in chicago-land this is the cold-hard reality of our lives!

stella recently celebrated a great friends birthday and i thought i'd share a pic with you. it was a lot of fun and as you can tell-brandon is working hard to blend in with everyone else:) happy birthday sydney!

adoption update.

it's been a little while since i've posted an adoption update. i feel like we are finally getting to the end of the paperwork process! after filing our I600A we received fingerprinting dates in naperville but of course we were out of the state! i had to send in the proper paper work to get a different date-trying to talk to an officer from homeland security on the phone about switching the dates made me want to poke out my own eyes:) the person i got on the phone was reading from a script and using all of this lingo that i couldn't understand. it finally came down to..."do this by mail". both brandon and i had our appointments this week. now we wait....

our homestudy has been submitted to DCFS and they have approved it. i am now waiting on our 171 H to come in the mail so that we can send it on to our agency, etc.....

our dossier is almost complete. once we receive our final homestudy and other important documents we'll put it all together and send it to ETHIOPIA!!

while i'm waiting on these official documents to come in the mail i have a few odds and ends to get done. brandon and i have to watch 2 more training videos, take a cpr class, and make a couple more trips to FedEx and the notary but i truly see an end in sight! it's getting exciting now! july is the 9th month of paperwork......more than twice what i had hoped:). but somewhere in this process i took a breath and re-adjusted my expectations:).

i'm trying to calm myself regularly and pray that everything is working out in the exact and perfect way that God intends. that at the end of this process we'll have our daughter home with us. the little girl that is meant to be a part of our grissom family.

stella already talks about being a big sister. she calls her "baby opi-opia". it's really cute and i can't wait until she has a sister and best friend to pay with.

what was i thinking?

i loved having a nose ring. not a stud....a ring. when i was pregnant, i took it out for a hospital stay and i've never put it back in. when you are 80 pounds heavier than normal-you don't feel very cool:) anyway, the other day i decided it would be "fun" to see if i could put it back in. i thought it might be a little painful but i was wayyyy wrong. it was VERY painful! tears came out of my eyes and my nose was running just like the first time i got it pierced! in my opinion, it's way more painful than a tattoo. anyway, i got it in. then i thought i looked silly and took it out. taking it out was just as painful as trying to put it back in after 3 years with out it! what was i thinking? i think i'll be without a nose ring for awhile. maybe forever. sorry brandon:) i think you are the only one who likes it!