Will - Friend - Joy

One of my good friends and boss, Dana, gave me a Chinese calendar as a gift earlier this year. Each month has Chinese art at the top and a Chinese character at the bottom with a description of how the character is formed. The characters for May, June and July are will, friend and joy respectively. I have found these to be very symbolic with the passing of time. In May we were finishing up our paperwork, which took a great deal of will and determination. June, has been and seemingly will be about time with our friends and family. I would like to believe July is joy, because our paperwork will be logged in to China during July if everything continues at the same pace. These are my theories. I have to hang my hopes on something right? (And feed my need to see wee Chinese ones by stealing pictures of Chinese dolls from the Internet....because although I feel it is perfectly fine to stalk other people's Chinese children on their blogs, it's wrong to post their pictures on my blog right?....I mean saving them to my desktop, IF I were to do such a thing is one scenario....but posting pictures on my blog is definitely crossing a line. One must have boundaries.)

To support my theories, I have good news to share. Despite significant delays at passport offices across the country, we got our passports this Saturday. Our mail delivery person even drove to the house twice on Saturday, just in case we were leaving for a trip soon and needed our passports. We also got the final paper copy of our home study, which means that our home study has been submitted to immigration. In a few weeks, they will contact us to get fingerprinted. After the fingerprints we will get immigration approval. Then we certify our documents with the Secretary of State and authenticate them with the Chinese Consulate in Chicago. Once they are all stamped, they go to our adoption agency for final approval, get submitted to China and then get logged in. It sounds like a lot, but it's mostly bureaucratic from here.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with the adoption, but aren't these the cutest little things ever? They are two baby raccoons that were playing near our front porch. Yeah, rabies, dangerous for kids, blah, blah, blah. But cute, right?