Dyeing Eggs

I don't try to do the fancy eggs with the kids on Easter. I mean, really?! My goal is to not inadvertently dye anything other than a white, boiled egg.

As I was trying to mop up spilled egg dye, Matt called out from the other room, "Are you having fun yet?"

Ha.

The kids enjoyed it though and Oliver's hands were green for two days.

Notice the spilled egg dye?

Adoption Update

No news really. We are waiting on our i800a approval still. It seem a few weeks ago many people were getting their i800a approvals pretty quick, like a few days after fingerprinting. Doesn't seem to be our case.

I called USCIS to check in on our case on the day we were originally scheduled to be fingerprinted, Thursday, March 28, hoping our case had been assigned to an officer but it hadn't. The officer who answered the phone told me a file had been created but that we weren't assigned to an officer yet, which means that no one has looked at our file and it made no difference to get fingerprinted a week early. She then reiterated that "the USCIS has 90 days to approve your application."

I think she picked up pretty easily by my sigh that that tidbit wasn't helpful and she offered a "BUT we're averaging about 45 days. Expect mid-April."

Still not what I was hoping for, especially since we still have to file our i-800 to bring Emma Claire into the US and then have that forwarded to the US and Chinese Consulate.

Fingerprinted

Since it was going to be difficult to make our original USCIS fingerprinting appointment for next Thursday, March 28, Matt and I decided to take a chance and see if we could walk-in this morning after we dropped Chloe off at school.

The officers at the Hackensack USCIS were super nice, very congratulatory on our adoption and had no issue with us getting fingerprinted today.

So, fingerprints done.

Waiting on i-797 approval notice so we can move on to the next step, filing our i800.

Happy Spring!!

I am so ready for sunshine and warmer weather and the disappearance of snow. Enough snow already!!

So ready to have spring temperatures. We have currently been about 10-15 degrees cooler than normal. Everything is blanketed in white on this first day of spring.

Of course, Monday, we got 3 inches of snow and a delayed school opening on Tuesday.

The kids love the snow. Its lost its wonder for me. It's a nuisance now that it is the middle of March. We have to scrape the car off, clear the sidewalks and steps and bundle the kids up in their snow gear, which had been put away in the attic in hopes that the snow was over. But, they had fun. For a few minutes anyway.

It's all fun and games until it ends in tears. 

Wet and cold, he had had enough of the snow---so have I little man, so have I.

Text

Chloe has a cell phone that she can use when she goes to drop-off events or after-school activities. Most evenings though, she uses her cell phone to text Matt to see when he will be coming home from work. I grabbed her cell phone the other day to charge it and saw the text message exchange between Chloe and Matt. I cracked up laughing at the last text message....

While its never funny to have a three year old throw up, the phrasing of the message had me laughing.


** BTW, Oliver is fine. While Chloe has never thrown up, Oliver makes up for that with his super-sensitive gag reflex. Two things make Oliver vomit---crying/getting upset and coughing.  So, when Oliver gets a chest cold, we know what to expect.

Fingerprinting Appointment

We're moving right along in the process....

we received our fingerprinting appointments in the mail today for our i800a. We are scheduled to get fingerprinted next week, but we are going to see if we can walk-in this week since Matt has a conflict with our scheduled date.

Banishing Winter

March means that we have reached the point in the year where we are totally ready for spring. Winter be gone!! No more snow. So when the sun comes out and the temperatures are in the 40s and 50s, everyone ventures out to soak up some vitamin D from the sun's rays.

It rained and snowed on Friday, which was really depressing and to cheer myself up, I went and bought some bulbs and planted them indoors. If it wasn't spring outside, then it would be inside my house.

Saturday though, the sun came out and the temps were in the 50s. The snow melted away and we headed to the track which was just opening for the season. We are the ever eager ones, the people who are accustomed to living in warmer climates and are going stir crazy by March. Besides the owners of the track and a few employees, we were the only ones there on Saturday. That meant that we could have our run of the place and the kids had lots of fun riding the scooter. We returned to the track on Sunday, which wasn't as sunny and warm as Saturday, to find a few more people were at the track. The kids were excited and happy to see some of their race friends and got lots of play time on their bikes, scooters and blowing off stored energy.

Not quite rid of the snow yet. By Sunday it was all gone.

Chloe back on the track for practice for the first time in 2013.

Reviewing the track times on the Micron.

Playing with friends in the empty pits.

Watching a few other drivers practice.

Science Fair

Chloe participated in the school science fair this year. We chose a "go big" project that involved go-karting. Chloe's project was "Jets and Filters: Tuning a Two-Stroke Engine". We went to the track to test the different carbeurator jets and filters to see which would make the kart go faster. It was freezing cold and snowing. Matt and Chloe were troopers out in the cold. Oliver and I were wimps in the car timing.

Chloe also made a video where she explained how her kart engine works, the purpose of a jet and the purpose of a air filter.

She was super excited to show off her kart at school. Did I mention this was a science fair project?

Matt worked from home on the day the kids visited the science fair from the classrooms and in the afternoon went to school to help Chloe present her project to her class. The night before, Chloe and I went to the evening display for parents.

Chloe loved the attention and loved talking about karting with her classmates and school friends. So did Matt!

A New Wait

The home study arrived in the mail on Monday and I went straight out to overnight the i800a  (I didn't storm our home study agency after all). The application and supporting material has been sitting in the office for some weeks completed just waiting on the home study. Now they are complete!

We wait for our fingerprint notice and for the i800 approval now. Then, we get to file and wait again. It does appear that USCIS has sped things up which is good news.