my sis ROCKS!

It's been another busy week or more since my last post...full of blessings and one step closer to becoming a family…

First off, a couple days after my sister and her family were down here for a short visit, she sends me a text  out of the blue volunteering her painting skills for our house! I was so surprised that I think my jaw hit the keyboard because I totally wasn't expecting this. (she has mad painting skills, by the way, and is available for hire) She told me she had a FREE ride back down to Greenville the next week and wanted to paint our ceilings and trim – which we had discovered previously to be a hideous taupe/not even close to white color. It was totally drab and made our cozy little house so much darker (and smaller) than needed - plus it totally minimized our woodwork and architectural details. So, she was only here for a few days, but that girl went to work and transformed this place into something out of a magazine. Its crazy what a coat of paint can do to a room! I'm so thankful for my sis, it was very generous of her to do all of that work for us. And quite a workout. Thank you, sis!

BTW, she doesn't usually paint wearing high heels but I thought it made for a good picture. It's so 1950's-house-wife-takes-on-the-painting-project-esque. But seriously, she's so good she doesn't even need to use that green painter's masking tape. She can paint in high heels with one arm tied behind her back… Kara, I hope you get a lot of painting projects out of this shining promotional plug. You deserve it and MORE.

On the adoption front…after finally crawling into bed sometime after 1am Monday morning, I had just started to drift off into dreamland when Brad's super loud and annoying text alert jolted me out of sleep. Brad wakes up at the drop of a pin, so he was on that text message pronto. In my half-alert state of awareness I hear him read "…Your USCIS application/petition has been received and routed to the National Benefit Center for processing. Within 7 - 10 days by standard mail you will receive your official Receipt Notice (Form I-797) with your Receipt Number …etc…" Well, this woke me up (which is NOT easy to do) but he had to read it to me again so I could grasp the meaning. I wasn't expecting this to come so fast since I had sent our I-800A only a week earlier. Anyway, it was a nice reason to get startled awake…then I was too excited to go back to sleep, but I managed. The next step in our China adoption will be fingerprinting. I just love all of these little items we get to check off our to-do list!