My surgery went well, and I am now home. Hanging out...with my good friend...Percocet. Thankfully they gave me a patch in the hospital to stave off the nausea that usually accompanies painkillers. (I'm a medicine wimp...can't help it.) My doctor was able to leave in my left ovary - for that I am incredibly thankful!

Thanks for all of your prayers and notes of encouragement! Now you're going to have to pray that I will SIT STILL for the next several weeks. I'm no good at sitting still for long. I like to get up and boogy. And wiggle. I'm like a 5 year old little boy.

I have to say goodbye to my uterus and one ovary on Tuesday. (I get to keep my other one.)  Should be good times. Not really, but I'll get over it.

She did do me proud, though...carried my two sweet girls for 9 (well, only 8 with Jane) months. But it's those two sweet girls who wrecked her, and made a mess of my insides. Rude. And after all I did for them.

I've been calling her "Bertha" for the last few days. Pretty funny, I think. We shall refer to my uterus as Bertha for the remainder of this post.

My sweet friend, Audra, has arranged meals for my family for a month while I recover. I'm so thankful for one less thing to take care of.  Thanks, Audra!

The irony of all this is that I am pregnant on paper (aka, adoption) during the time when I am losing my physical ability to ever bear children again. And if I sit and ponder the latter point very long, I might get sad. So I shant. Ponder, that is. (I like to talk like I'm in a Jane Austen novel. That's why I say shant.)

That's about all I have to say regarding this event. Except I said earlier that I would refer to my uterus as Bertha, but then I never really mentioned her again. So...bye-bye, Bertha. I'll miss what might have been, old girl. But I also get to say BUH-BYE to all the cramps, pain, and all the rest of the stuff she brought along with her. SEE YA, sister!
 

We took our girls to Winter Jam last Sunday. It was their first concert and we had a great time. They were so cute, falling asleep in our laps while Third Day blared in their little eardrums.

I think Tenth Avenue North was my favorite band (although Newsboys were ridiculously cool). They put the lyrics up on the screen so you could actually understand what they were singing, unlike Fireflight. Couldn't understand a word that girl sang. She's super talented, but she shouts a lot when she sings. The girls and I call her Screamer-Singer.

But back to TAN - their lyrics are beautiful. I could post a song every day. There's a song called "Times", and I just love the lyrics in the bridge... (by the way, when it says, "My love is over," it doesn't mean 'finished'. It means God's love 'covers all over'.)

It came back already! My reject I-600a. So much sooner than I expected.

And not only that, they didn't actually send my entire application back and make us start over. They just sent some official letter (with some official numbers on it like 176-R) stating that I shorted them their cash, and would I please send it to them, along with the letter. Don't mind if I do.

I can't believe they would be that efficient. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

 So of course I went right from my mailbox to the post office to send it on it's way, so they could have it in their hot little hands on Monday or Tuesday, and resume passing us through Immigration.

We're back on track, baby.

I've been nervous about making a mistake on our adoption paperwork from the beginning. Not only do mistakes cost you time, but they usually cost you moo-lah.

Well, I finally got my first mistake over with. It's like getting a good ding on your new car, or accidentally bonking your baby's head on the door jamb (no...I never did that!)...you totally dread it, but then you realize that the world will still turn.

But I couldn't have made a bigger, more time-sucking mistake than to screw up with Immigration. ARGH! I thought I read those I-600a instructions a gozillion times to make sure that I did everything right, because I knew one little teeny-weeny mistake and they reject your application and send it back and you get to start all over again. Apparently I missed the part where it said add $80 per person to your fees for fingerprinting. HOW DID I MISS THAT?!?!?!?

But I did. And I realized it yesterday.

So I called Immigration and actually got a human on the phone (can you believe it...and it was after 5:30 pm!), and in a very monotone voice the lady told me yes, my application would be rejected and sent back to me so that I could send in the proper fee. Really? You can't just take my credit card number over the phone? Really? What year is this?

Then I remembered that I was dealing with a giant government-run department, so I politely asked her how long it would take to get back my loser-rejected application. "Ma'am, it can take up to 30 days." Nice.

Bureaucracy at it's finest, people.

So I will wait. And I will check my mailbox like a crazy person. 3 times a day. The upside is that my postman, Bruce, will start liking me now. I normally check the mail about once a week and he has to cram all my mail in our box until all the catalogs are wrinkly. Well, no more, Bruce! Take that!

That's how many pieces of paper I filled out yesterday.



My eyes are buggy and my bottom hurts from sitting in the same place for so long.

Between filling out my medical history for 3 different doctors for my upcoming surgery (partial hysterectomy...yes, very tragic...let's all weep for my uterus now), getting our house listed with MLS so we can sell it (I don't know, nor do I care how old my hot water heater is and how many gallons it holds!), and adoption paperwork, I am papered out!

Good thing I had a nice pen on hand.

It's a big day in our household...we finally got to mail our I-600a to Immigration. YEAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! To those who are unfamiliar with the adoption process, this is the pre-approval from Immigration to adopt a child abroad. And this is one of the things that take the longest to get on the US side of paperwork. The problem is that you can't just stick it in the mail the moment you decide to adopt. You have to know a lot of details in order to fill in the blanks...details that you don't know on day 1. But we're happy to say that we've now got the details now!

I was a sweaty mess at the post office, making sure I filled in every blank correctly, wrote out the check properly, attached the right documents...one little mistake and they send it back and you have start all over. Rude. We'll see if I got it right!

Here are a few more pictures from my girlie trip to Sedona. When you get together with your girlfriends who you haven't seen in a year and a half, you tend to do a whole lot-o-nuthin' except flap your gums.

Here are some of our more exciting (code word for "super-dorky") moments:

We went to breakfast in our jammies...

We sat in the hot tub in the cold rain...

We got eaten by the piranhas...

We went to a ghost town called Jerome and ate ice cream...

We found a toy store owned by a dude who looked like Pee Wee Herman...

We tried on flower-headbands in a vintage clothing store...

We were total posers in the Mexican restaurant...

Mostly, we had a good ol' time...

...best friends.


I got to see all of them yesterday, as we congregated happily in the Phoenix airport. It was such a fun reunion. We get to spend 4 whole days together, and it's already going by way too quickly.

After piling all of our luggage (I had the most...go figure) into our rental car, we drove 2 hours north to Sedona...the land of beautiful red rocks. We drove straight to the Pink Jeep Tours and met up with Tim, our driver. He took us out on the most crazy-sauce 4-wheel drive roads - at times we thought our jeep would tump over. (Tump...it's a technical word)


We were able to take some beautiful pictures, squeal as we drove over huge boulders, and laugh a lot. Can't wait for the rest of our weekend....