Busy Summer

I can't believe I haven't posted a blog in almost a month... oops!

So here is a bullet point update about what is going on here:

- We finished our PRIDE training (the 27 hours of training necessary to adopt through the state) last Saturday. Now we are just waiting for a social worker to contact us to do the home study and live scan. I called our contact person with the county this week, but unfortunately (thanks to budget cuts) we now only have 3 licensing workers for the entire county so it could take longer than we want. I would love to have everything done by the end of July so that we could be licensed by September, but that may be a little overly optimistic :)

- We've set up the "kid's room"! My sister gave me her beautiful crib and we bought a toddler bed that extends to a twin bed at Ikea so the room is "homestudy ready". We are hoping to be approved for up to two children (siblings) between the ages of 0-4. We don't have a lot of kids stuff, but the beds are a start! Here's a picture of the bed we bought:


- Speaking of my sister, Kristi and Doug are in China right now! They left yesterday morning from San Francisco and will be returning home on July 17th. Here's the email they sent me today:

Hi all, We are in Beijing. We arrived on 7/2/09 @ around 1:30 PM Beijing time. The flight was fine with us getting an emergency exit row. We were served three meals. We cleared health inspections teams with no problems. About 6 department of health ladies came abroad the plane at the gate and took the all the passengers temps with a thermal scanner (about two inches from our foreheads). They were wearing gloves, masks and goggles. We made two shopping adventures and ate at Yoshiko's Fast Chinese Food for dinner. We are leaning the art of negotiating with Chinese teenagers for a watch and belt. Also went by McDonald's for a shake and Dairy Queen for Oreo Shake. It's 100 F here (but a dry heat like Fresno). The natives are friendly and helpful. They put up with our attempts to speak Chinese. We will update the baby blog tomorrow (in 12 hours) Love you, Kris and Doug

They will be getting Ben on July 7th, so the next few days should be fun just sight seeing and taking tours. Please keep them in your prayers as they travel!

I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July! We were invited to join some friends on their houseboat on Lake Trinity near Shasta, so we'll be headed out tomorrow. We are looking forward to the wonderful relaxing weekend on the lake with our friends.