FFF - Summer in Review

Hard to believe, but Labor Day weekend is here and another summer is coming to an end. As a farewell to great summer, I thought I'd post pictures from all the good times we've had this season.

Afternoons at the Splash Pad
Playing in Papa & Grammy's old backyard
Playing in Papa & Grammy's new backyard
Addison's 1st Birthday
Watching fireworks on the Fourth of July Aidan's Referral Andy's Family Day Riding the train at Blackberry FarmPost fingerpainting
California Trip
Enjoying the outdoors
Petting goats at Brookfield Zoo
First Boating Lesson

Bye Summer, see you next year!

"What's going on with Aidan?"

We are getting this question alot!

I know I haven't posted any updates on his adoption process since our 1st posts about his referral. Unfortunately we have no new updates to write about and each week I keep thinking "oh, next week I'm sure I'll have some news to report!".

The 1st step after accepting a referral is to wait for the caseworkers in Korea to gather a bunch of paperwork, such as Aidan's birth certificate, known as the "legals". Usually it takes 4-6 weeks for the legals to arrive and we are at 6 weeks and 1 day. I checked in with our agency this week and they told me Korea said they'd be sending them "soon", though its unclear whether "soon" means a few days or few weeks. So we are doing the hardest part of the adoption process...waiting.

I like to think I learned something during Andy's adoption about patience and accepting things I cannot control and am currently taking the philosophical high road by telling myself things like "Maybe Aidan's process is going to take a bit longer b/c Andy needs more time alone with me." Of course, deep down I still tend toward the obsessive and neurotic, so at least 3 times a week I play the "if we get legals next week and step 2 takes 4 weeks and step 3 takes 5 weeks, etc....Aidan will be home by..." game. If you are interested, my latest calculation has him home Dec. 15th :)

So that is the Aidan update...or non-update I guess...we will let everyone know when we finally complete step 1.

FFF - California Trip

We had such a great time introducing Andy to the West coast Gorskis! Here's some pics from our trip:









This marked Andy's 13th & 14th plane rides over the past year and I have to say he is an excellent traveler. We got him his own seat this time and he sat in his carseat and was happy to watch movies, read books and play with his "travel toys" that I save only for plane rides. He was also very captivated w/the lights and activity outside the window while we rode to the gate in CA and actually cried when it was time to get off the plane. I wish I was as good of a traveler!

Our visit was busy with visiting w/family and just relaxing. It also marked the official celebration of Eloise's engagement to Dennis & we were glad the whole family was able to celebrate together. We are looking forward to them joining us here for Andy's birthday in October!

We're Back/Favorite Foto Friday

As so many people have pointed out, we missed last week's FFF. I am glad to see we're developing a group of loyal blog readers :) We were in CA visiting Chris's family and I was trying to go the whole vacation w/o going online (I made it until Sunday night, by the way, that's a record 4 days offline!).

Unfortunately, I haven't uploaded our vacation pictures yet, so I'll have to do a post later today about our trip.

This week's pictures, which should've been for last Friday, are from our recent trip to Blackberry Farm with Andy. Anyone who grew up within 30 miles of the place probably remembers it from school field trips. For those of you that haven't had the privilege of a visit, its a pioneer village & museum that fortunately for Andy (and for me) has a train, carousel & other "non-educational" activities. Andy's favorite thing to do there is to ride the train again and again, which was fine w/us because all we have to do is sit next to him and occasionally join him in saying "choo-choo"...pretty easy job :)