Business as Usual

As always, I'm just a bit behind in keeping up on the blog. And life has changed quite a bit since my last post. For the first time ever, there are no teens or young adults living in our home which feels quite strange. If it weren't for Mara we would officially have an empty nest. We are very happy that we don't officially have an empty nest.

Katelynn's life has been a blur since Christmas and so ours has too. She decided to take a job with BKD, the tenth largest CPA firm in the country with an office located in downtown Denver. So after returning from the Urbana conference on January 1, she had until the following Sunday to nail down a home, a car and some furniture, before she had to travel once again. Amazingly she succeeded nicely. She rented an apartment in the Congress Park area of Denver, only a 10-15 minute drive to work. She and Jeff spent an icy evening at a car dealer, coming away with a great deal on a used but much newer car. Then she and I spent an afternoon at American Furniture picking out a few crucial items like a table and chairs and a sofa.

All new hires at BKD spend 5 days at their headquarters in Springfield, Missouri for training. Katelynn's visit stretched to 8 days when that city fell under the throes of an ice storm which closed down all air travel from the area. Finally after three days of cancelled flights with nothing but more predicted by the airlines, she and several other employees drove to Kansas City for a flight to Denver. After digging out of newly fallen snow at long-term parking in Denver, she finally made it to her apartment where Nikki and Jeff had set up her things enough for her to get by until she had more time. She started her new job the next day. What with it being busy season for accountants, she's had little time to organize and finish moving in, but she is getting there slowly and has even invited us down for dinner this Sunday. We're excited to see her and what's she's accomplished in her new place. Whew--what a way to jump into adult life, Katelynn!

Meanwhile, on the adoption front, things grind on slowly. The good news is that referrals seem to have stabilized though they are not speeding up. It looks like we can safely predict that we will receive our match in May or June. Of this year! That means we would travel this summer. There are no guarantees, but it looks very likely that this will happen. Now we are praying that our travel time will NOT coincide with the family reunion this July.

The bad news is that because it has taken so long for referral, our vital document, that elusive I-171H will have expired before we travel. Yep, you guessed it, we are once again on that roller coaster ride to the I-171H. Last Sunday our social worker came up for a home visit. Thanks to Colorado's new requirements for home studies, we had to start from scratch and do an entirely new home study rather than a simple update. Aren't we lucky? This means a big chunk of money and time and has frustrated us a bit. But now we are at the point where the social worker simply has to write up the study and get it in for approval. Next week we will return to Denver for yet another round of fingerprints--oh yeah, those expired back in December. (You know those rascally fingerprints--always changing when you aren't looking.) And then we will once again wait for the Denver USCIS office to approve our paperwork and send us that new I-171H. So I figure in about 7 weeks from now, we will be at the same point we were 15 months ago except with another $1500 having been drained from our bank account. Kind of a one step forward, two steps back deal.

As everyone who has talked to me recently is already aware, I am absolutely hating this winter. We have had snow once a week, with one exception, ever since December 20th. And not pretty little fluffy snows that melt off the next day, but several big dumps followed by extreme cold which keeps much of it from melting. When a small amount does manage to melt, along comes another storm to replace it. Bottom line, it is icy cold here, we have 3 foot piles of snow in our front yard and the filthy, crusty snow lining every street is ugly, ugly, ugly. While I've recently run into a few people (you know who you are,) who are actually enjoying this yuck, I firmly maintain that this is NOT a fun winter and, in fact, is quite reminiscent of those winters in Minnesota that drove me to move back to Colorado 25 years ago. With the single digit temps and 1/2 inch of new snow this morning it would appear that Puxatawni Phil's forecast of no more winter was incorrect but still I am holding out for an early spring and looking forward to it even more than I usually do. And that is saying something.

Okay, so that about catches me up. Maybe the next time I get around to this we will be enjoying warm weather and clean streets. (Though I'm pretty sure those piles of snow in the yard will still be hanging around come the 4th of July.)

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.