They say that no news is good news, but that’s just not the case. We have had the kids unofficially living with us for almost 3 months and the proper steps to have them legally placed still haven’t happened. Every fifth night I have to take them “home” crying and pouting because they can’t be out of their “bed” for longer than 4 nights in a row. Our fingerprints have been lost, the request for background checks was submitted to the right department but they didn’t submit it to the FBI, my (not Aleks’, suspicious) FBI clearance letter said foster rather than adoptive and that caused major problems, we couldn’t get a reasonable appointment for our NEW fingerprints so I had to complain, our background checks finally came through but expired while we were waiting for other issues to get resolved, so now we are waiting for a THIRD round of background checks before they can be legally placed with us and we can start counting the 90 day wait period to get consent for adoption and then about a month to get a court date for the finalization. On Tuesday we are hopefully getting them here in a non-relative placement (for those of you who know about George and Amber, it’s that same arrangement), not quite ideal because it will not count towards our 90 day wait period, but at least they won’t have to go back to their foster home anymore. And I’ll get to sign her school papers and mover her to another school. I could go into crazy detail about how horrible her school has been about all this, but I think for my mental stability I’ll just say that they are not as supportive as you probably think they would be.

Enjoy some January pics! I took Allison’s hair down and she wore it straight for a few days before I rebraided it, which I think I am getting pretty good at. The trampoline has been a big hit, Gabriel always begs to get it wet. And sadly, there is a new queen of the dogs ;) I guess I can share!

This was taken 3 years ago, during my reign :)