Pine Line...Marathon?

A few months ago Ryan signed up for some races this summer. He needs something on the books to stay focused and keep in shape. We left at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning and headed to Medford, WI. He was suppose to run the half marathon and then he planned to run an additional 8 miles with me afterwards. It was 30 degrees, snowing, and freezing rain! Once he started he figured I might not want to run in that kind of weather (good assumption!), and he decided to run the whole marathon. What a doofus. He hasn't been keeping up on his weekly mileage, and it showed :) We had a long talk on the way home about how he's too old to just go out and randomly run a freaking marathon! He's strong, and a pretty solid athlete...but 26.2 miles?? Ugh. He was back to normal in less than 48 hours. His next race is May 10th in Eagle River. He's suppose to do the marathon...I'll keep you posted!

I've been training and contemplating running a marathon. I ran my first 1/2 marathon with a friends last August and I had so much fun. 26.2 miles is a long way though. So far my training has been good. Just need to continue to make time for training. Finding an extra 2 or 3 hours on the weekend is hard!

Adoption news is at a stagnent. The Kyrgyz Embassy is still closed. We finally got the last piece of our dossier (another form changed). Now I can mail it to the courier and they'll have it all set to go for the day when the Kyrgyz Embassy opens back up. I was told by our coordinator that this shouldn't affect any referrals so that's a relief. Those kiddos need to come home to their mommas! Oh, and their daddy's too :)

Paper Clips...

Well I've been sitting on our completed Dossier now for about a week. Our agency has changed another document and I should've received it today...maybe it'll come tomorrow. We were told it doesn't make sense to rush to get it in anymore, since the Kyrgyz Embassy isn't accepting them anyhow. We'll probably send them to the courier early next week. I just hope everything opens back up soon and we'll be on our happy little way. I've made my copies..and fifty hundred thousand of them. I swear I went through a whole box of paper clips! What a nightmare. You don't realize what a toll all of this paperwork is. Good thing I have a great student who stays at my after school program :) She has been a gem and helped me a ton with all of the coalating. She's also been begging to be our baby-sitter. She has 3 certifications, score! Who ever heard of that? I was baby-sitting when I was probably 10 years old and I look back now and I didn't have a fricken clue what the hell I was doing.

3 Weeks

The embassy for Kyrgyzstan announced the other day that they are closed to new Dossiers. Meaning...they will not accept any new Dossiers, or process the paperwork. I spoke with our coordinator and she is expecting this to re-open in 3 weeks, either May 12th or May 19th (she wasn't exactly sure). Unfortunately, this doesn't guarantee that it will necessarily happen at that time. The good news is that this is suppose to be an "in-house" cleanup and should be able to provide for a smoother, more efficient transaction for future and current PAP's.

We were rushing to get our Dossier out by this weekend, but were informed not to worry because nothing will happen with it anyway. Kyrgyzstan is also no longer translating the dossiers, so we were waiting on them getting done stateside. In the process of all of this, they (our agency) also decided to change the Post Placement report, so now they want me to use the new one in our Dossier as opposed to the old. So many changes!

we'll take this next week and make sure everything is in order and then we'll mail out the Dossier and hope that the Kyrgyz Embassy will open up and start accepting them again!

Sending multi-vitamins to Kyrgyzstan

I will be purchasing some more of the infant multi-vitamin mix to send over to Kyrgyzstan. If anyone else is also interested in purchasing additional bottles to send, please leave a message at this post. Just in case anyone is wondering, this is not a for profit venture. I'm doing this because John Wright has contacted the Kyrygyzstan yahoo group asking for help.

I am willing to pay for the shipping to get them to John Wright (http://actofkindness.blogspot.com/) so that he can distribute them. They are $14.72 per bottle including tax - this is a 30 day supply. Although I do typically make money on the items that I sell, I don't ever pay for shipping. By offering to ship, I will be breaking even. Unfortunately, being smack dab in the middle of our adoption process, I'm not in a position to buy the quantity of vitamins that are needed for the orphanages.

Again, this is not away for me to make money, just another opprotunity to provide assistance to the children in the orphanage in getting them adequate nutrition.

Listed below is the information from the Shaklee website.

Vita-Lea® Infant Mix
30 servings Multivitamin and multimineral powder for infants and toddlers. Natural flavor.

Help Infants Say "Yes" to Good Nutrition
Are they getting enough food? More importantly, are they getting enough of the right foods? Ensuring your infant's nutrition can be a challenge, especially if they're picky eaters.

Vita-Lea Infant Mix is an easy way to guarantee they get the nutrition their growing bodies need. It mixes easily into juice, water, or food, providing 23 essential vitamins and minerals - more than most children's vitamins on the market. And the pleasant-tasting powder means they'll always say, "yes" to good nutrition.

Directions
Infants (6 - 12 months): mix 1 level teaspoon once a day in 4 ounces of fruit juice, water, or food. Stir well. Toddlers (1 - 4 years of age): mix 1 level teaspoon twice a day in 4 ounces of fruit juice, water, or food. Stir well.

American Idol

Ok...so I'm a sucker, but I can't help but watch American Idol every single week. I don't even really bother to see the results on Wednesdays - and I don't think that I've called in to vote once in the 7 years it's been on! I'm really loving on Jason Castro. He has such a soothing voice and I'm loving the dreads. I told Ryan tonight I can't wait to buy his cd - I'm such a weirdo!

GOOD NEWS! Gramma had surgery (lumpectomy) this afternoon. She also had one of the closest lymph noded removed. She's home and resting and sounds in good spirits. They confirmed that it didn't spread into her lymph nodes and she should only need the radiation as opposed to chemotherapy. Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts!

Today

We got up bright and early and left by 6 a.m. for St. Paul to get our fingerprints done. Kind of intimidating, but not as bad as we anticipated. We stopped through Hudson on our way home and talked with the officer manager of our adoption agency. We're still waiting for the notarized copy of the agency license and social worker license. The problem was that the notaries commission expires in July 2008 - it was recommended that all of our notaries are one year out. One the way out of town we stopped at our favorite Mexican restaurant, San Pedro's. Mmmmm...it was good! Unfortunately, we got a parking ticket while we were in there! Only $5, but $5 is still $5 when were trying to raise $35,000.

Just got back from my haircut - not loving it, but I don't hate it...so that's making ground :) I got just a little trim, and she put some purple/brown lowlights in. I was hoping for something a little more dramatic, but it's still pretty cool.

This afternoon, gramma had a consultation with a surgeon for a lumpectomy. She found out yesterday that she has breast cancer and they're trying to decide the best way to remove the lump. Currently, they're thinking just the lumpectomy and concentrated radiation. We'll know more after the surgery is done, which was schedule for next Tuesday already.

We'll spend the rest of this week cleaning the house and starting to get items together so that we can list them on eBay. Ryan works at the library all weekend and Saturday I'm planning to reconcile all of the paperwork from the Boys & Girls Club fundraiser last weekend. This is our biggest fundraiser and it's always so much work, but so worth it.