Blockus, Family Runs and G-Man

That is a strange title, right??? I really haven't had so much to post this last week; we are pretty much at a stand still with adoption paperwork-- the boys and I drove to Clayton for our last homestudy visit. It is about an hour and a half drive from our home; and guess what-- it rained the entire day... just like our day of driving for fingerprints-- is this a sign? Anyway, it went really well; at least from my perspective it did :). I guess our social worker has the last say on that. So, now we are waiting for that report to be complete, and for our I171-H form to come from the USCIS office... this is our clearance to bring the kids home, from an immigration perspective. What I am most excited about is that "our Rebecca" (that is what I call our social worker) has a great desire to organize a Ethiopia support group for all the families in the area who are adopting from ET. Amazingly there are MANY families from our agency alone, who are adopting from ET. I can't wait to meet these families-- in real life, NOT computer life-- and have a place where we can go and hang with other families who will "look" like us-- you know, COLORFUL :)!! I truly believe this will be like oxygen for our family and essential for our kids AND for us, as we walk this "road which is less traveled".

Other than that, in Team Dragovich world; we hit the ground running once we got home from NV. Of course. Work was crazy for Tony, and my week was filled with meetings, soccer and a new gym routine-- I signed the boys up for a homeschool P.E. class which meets at a gym in Fayetteville on Tues./Thurs. for 2 hours. They really keep the kids moving, teach them great, age appropriate skills and I GET TO WORK OUT FOR TWO HOURS UNINTERUPTED... SWEET!!! Sam says he hates the play room and he is already fussy about going today. But, he is having huge separation anxiety these days-- much worse than the other two did at four-- well, I seem to remember Wyatt hating preschool, too. But, he stops crying within a minute of being in the room-- so I can live with the pain, though there have been days lately where I am NOT into it.

Over the weekend we had a chance to do some fun family things-- Friday night Wyatt slept at a friend's house and the rest of us played Blockus for the first time. It is a really fun game!! I am horrible at it-- at least so far. Isaac beat Tony and I by A LOT!! He LOVES board games-- as do I, and we don't play them NEARLY enough. Tony doesn't really like board games, neither does Wyatt... I should play more with Isaac-- we need something special we do together. The other fun family thing we did-- well it is fun now that it is over-- was go on a family run/bike ride... 7.5 miles around our lake!!! Half the route is on thick sandy, hilly paths and the other half is on the main road of our community which is SUPPOSED to be safe for "bikers, runners". There is a huge chain mesh fence in the middle of the route which we all had to climb over and then throw the bikes over... AND we brought the dog!! How this even happened is that I needed to get 8 miles in to make my 20 mileage goal for running for the week. The IDEA was that the kids would all go play with friends on Sunday afternoon and Tony and I would run the loop by ourselves. Instead, none of the neighbor kids were available and Tony decided that we would ALL go and it would be a fun family run... he is always pushing the envelope that way. Needless to say, it was a stop and go run for me-- esp. the first half, BUT I did get my miles in AND because I put it out of my mind that it would be like a "real" run, I was able to enjoy and be awed by my boys' skills in the sand and up the steep hills of our community!!! I wish you could have seen them-- each attacking the challenges of the sand and hills in their own unique way-- yet another insight by the Father, into how He created them each so uniquely.

Last, but not least, I have to share this funny statement made by my sweet husband on Saturday night. I was going through the posts from our YG (yahoo group) and mentioned something about "G-man"-- this is the name the YG has given to our advocate in Ethiopia-- the guy in charge of all our paperwork/referrals/court dates, etc. Anyway, when I said something about "G-man", Tony torqued his face funny and said, "Who's that??" I told him this was our power of attorney in Ethiopia. He just had this bland look on his face and responded; "Should we really be okay with a guy named "G-man" in charge our documents to adopt from a foreign country???"

And having said that... I'm out!!
Grace and Peace;
Shari