BABY SHOWER!!!! (and an update too)

This past Saturday I had my first Baby Shower!!! It was given by the wonderful, sweet, godly women I'm so proud to work with in the children's choir at my church. These women are so precious to me, and have been praying for our family throughout this entire process. My friend Linda was the hostess, and her husband through me off when I received an e-vite from him stating he was throwing Linda a 'Surprise Birthday Party' 2 hours after my shower was to end. How the confusion came about is that my shower was going to originally be this upcoming weekend, and Linda never told her husband she had changed the date. Linda had called me one morning and was all excited because she had just mailed out the invitations. Two hours later I get the e-vite from her husband. I had to frantically try and find his cell number to let him know about the scheduled conflict!

What we came up with was to try and have my shower end as early as possible. I had to send out an email to all the guests and let them in on the secret. It was really funny because I was basically telling everyone, "If you plan on coming to my shower, you need to leave by or earlier than 4:30 PM."

On the day of the shower, Linda was so confused because we were orchestrating the shower, instead of her! Everyone had an excuse why they had to leave around 4:00 PM, so we needed to speed things up. I felt so bad because I didn't want her to think that I was not appreciative of her planning such a beautiful shower.

Her surprise party was AWESOME!!! She had no idea! My friends and I all begged her for forgiveness if we had offended her in any way, shape or form. She did mention that we were all kind of in a hurry, and she thought that the shower ended rather early. Linda had called her mom after everyone left and told her, "I think I should of had more games because the shower was over really quick."

Here is a little slide show of pictures from the shower, and Soowan painting Amanda's room. (Yes, we've finally started on her room).



Now for an update......

Let me tell you that this whole process is an absolute roller coaster ride, and it has really taken its toll on me emotionally. Please keep me in your prayers because I feel like I can lose it at any second if we have any more major delays at this point. What has occurred is that our legal documents came back from Korea with errors, a little over three weeks ago. Our agency said they would expedite new documents and hoped they would be back in a timely manner. Apparently our opinion on expediting documents, and Korea's idea on this matter cannot be any more polar opposite then they already are. We were thinking a week maybe two tops! Nope, we're still waiting. Our agency did get an email from Korea today saying they did send the documents to the US on 2/28/07, but I'm holding my breath at this point. I want to have our documents in my hands and know that they have no errors before I start doing the 'happy dance' at this point. We need these legal documents to apply for Amanda to enter into the US. So basically we've been sitting at a stand still as far as getting our little girl home for the last 8 weeks.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE PRAY that these documents that are being sent will have no errors and will be in our hands sometime next week!!! Also, the I-600 form we need to submit to the USCIS can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 8 weeks to be processed. Please pray that it will be approved in a timely manner. Honestly, I don't think I could emotionally handle waiting another 8 weeks for documents to be processed. All we want is to hold our precious little girl, and start a life togehter as a family. It seems so close, yet still so far away. We were hoping she would be home this month, but now reality is sinking in and she will most likely be home in April. Truly adopting is like being pregnant with no due date. I heard someone say this, and it is the best way to describe exactly how I feel at this point!

Thank you all for your prayers!