Chelsea's New Court Jester Collar

Our little cat, Chelsea, is known as the courtjester in our household. She is the funniest, silliest little cat so when we made a recent visit to the new Pet Smart we found this little fun collar for her to wear from time to time in order to live up to her name and role in our family!It even has little bells on the ends. She loves to wear the thing! Go Chelsea Go! Just looking at her makes me laugh!

Postcard From Secret Pals (the world travelers!)

Today we got a postcard from our March 2006 DTC Secret Pals. It came all the way from Italy! They have been to Venice, Pisa, Naples and Rome. What a treat to know that they are thinking about us (a little) while they are enjoying their vacation!
Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Secret Pal!

LeapPad Learning System

I found an AMAZING deal on this LeapPad Learning System today. Got it for only $12.00! My niece had one and loved it so I got this for our baby to play with and learn with one day. I guess now I'll be collecting those little LeapPad books/cartridges to go with it now in case it is obsolete by the time we get her and she gets old enough to have it! hahahahahahahaha

We got our Jeep back today!

Hey everyone.......well we turned in the rental car and went to pick up our Jeep! FINALLY! It was a sight for sore eyes! It looks PERFECT! I was nervous driving it again so I guess it will take me some time to feel comfortable in it. Just wanted to let you all know, we got it back! YAY!

Started Back To A New School Year Today!

Well, my summer break is officially over. Today was the first day of school for teachers. The students start back August 2nd! I was sooooooooooooooo busy today moving boxes, arranging, cleaning, and I still have TONS to do! This year I will be teaching Reading to my homeroom class and then Math to my class and two other classes. I spent the day trying to move the Science and Social Studies stuff to the other teacher's room and then tonight I loaded my Language Arts stuff from the garage into the car to move to the school tomorrow! WHEW! I am so sore! I set up this really cute little patio set in my classroom to use as my Math Center and got rid of an ugly old table that I used to use. I think the children will enjoy working there! I'll try to take a picture tomorrow and post it here on the blog. In fact, once I get EVERYTHING finished in my room, I'll post some pics on here. Would everyone like to see that? Well, time for Mrs. Appleton to hit the hay........gotta get back in the habit of going to bed at a decent hour again! Hopefully some time during this school year we will get little Rebekah! Of course I said that last year and the year before.........we'll just keep praying and working on things around here until we get the news that we've been matched to our precious baby girl!

Doug's Tomatoes

Doug LOVES to grow plants and he's really got a green thumb.....most plants that I work with end up withered and dead or don't grow at all, but Doug can make ANYTHING grow! These are his tomatoes this year. One day we hope to move further out in the country and have a big enough piece of land to have a REAL garden and Doug can get himself a tractor! I can't WAIT til the tomatoes are ripe! Maybe we'll get enough tomatoes that I can make a couple of jars of salsa! YUM! Go Farmer Douggie!

Oh THIS was fun! TRY IT!

I saw this on someone else's blog and gave it a try. I took a quick picture of myself to use and then laughed my head off. You guys HAVE to try it! hahahahahaha

Updated Homestudy Visit

Today our agency's director came to our home from Roanoke and completed her visit with us to update our homestudy which has expired. The first homestudy was NOT a good experience and we were kind of nervous about this one. Boy were we pleasantly surprised! Gloria was wonderful and we had such a warm and open conversation. We actually hated to see her leave! She told us that our update's first draft will be ready by Tuesday for us to look over! WOW.....go Gloria....go!
She also gave us a new book that is wonderful (yes, I've been reading it tonight) and she gave us one of those magnet thinggies that you put on your car that is shaped like a big ribbon but it's about adoption. I've been wanting something like that to put on our Jeep when we get it back. It's so cool. This visit was a WONDERFUL experience! Thanks Gloria! Now once we get the update, we can file the I600 again after the July 30th date and get new fingerprints so we will have our free I171 done. (Thank goodness INS implements this new one time freebie update).
I just HAD to share our good experience! PLUS, my house is now SPOTLESS from all the cleaning I did! hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Cybershower Gifts

We joined an online group of first time parents who are adopting from China and today we got a box of cybershower gifts from Tara and Bill Stachacz from Oxford, CT They are our cybershower buddies and we hope they enjoy the gifts we sent them! We only send cybershower gifts once every 4 months so it's different from the Secret Buddies that we have with our March DTC Group. This time the theme was "Fun In The Sun" and these are the great things that we got yesterday:
1. A pink terrycloth coverup for baby
2. White sunglasses
3. A bag of plastic beach toys
4. Nemo and Dory swimming bath toys
5. A plastic float for baby that looks like an airplane
6. A CUTE adirondike chair for baby that has ladybugs on it
7. A beautiful card
We loved everything. I even sat down yesterday and put the little chair together and sat it in the nursery. It is soooooooooooooooo cute! THANK YOU Bill and Tara!

Funny Cat!

Well, my little cat, Chelsea, has come to the rescue.....today has been an emotional day for me. And then my little cat who we nicknamed "the clown" has been running around and made me laugh! I just had to post these funny pics of her. Thank goodness for our little furrbabies! Fliss, the package that she is in is the one that you sent the Vegas shirt in! She knocked it off the sofa and crawled inside! hahahahahahahaha I guess she wants me to mail her to Melbourne Beach to visit Aunty Fliss!

Our Wrecked Jeep

Well, the claims adjuster did the estimate on our poor car. It is close to $7000 in damages. He also posted some pics of the damage. Hopefully they will have it fixed in a couple of weeks....good as new!

Belated Happy Birthday To Our Wonderful United States!

Yesterday I didn't even think about posting on the blog. So, "Happy Belated Birthday United States of America!" I love living in the U.S. and we can't wait until we add a new citizen to this country one day when we bring little Rebekah home from China!

15 MONTHS and STILL WAITING!

Well, with an LID of 04/05/06 today marks the 15th month that we have been logged in. When will we get a referral? WHO THE HECK KNOWS! Enough said........

At least we found out that referrals for some people through November 14, 2005 are supposed to be coming out this week, so I'm sure that peoples' spirits SOMEWHERE are soaring like this ladybug hot air balloon. I loved this picture when I saw it, so here's to those families!
I guess our turn will come SOMETIME.

Happy Canada's Day

To all of Doug's friends and family(who are now my family and friends) back in Canada we would like to say Happy Canada's Day today! We also have made a lot of online friends as we've taken this adoption journey. Have a wonderful day! We love you guys!

Chelsea's 1st Birthday Today

Today was our kitty, Chelsea's first birthday! We got her a bunch of kitty toys and a pop-up cube that hooks to the one we got for Tabitha. She had a ball playing in it and her kitty sisters did too. It was fun to watch them playing and made us feel better after our wreck the other night. Thank goodness for our sweet kitty girls! You can also see Chelsea's birthday fancy feast with her candle. Yes, we spoil these cats like crazy!