The Good and the Not So Good :)

Whew!  Since Christmas, J and I have hit the ground running in preparation for our next little one.

Here's the short-and-sweet version of what we've been up to. :)

House Stuff

Not So Good: A blizzard kept us in PA a day longer.
Good: We got to spend a little extra time with family, we saw the new Narnia movie and our awesome neighbors shoveled our driveway.

Not So Good:  Hmmm...no clothing storage space for little sister.
Good: One very productive trip to IKEA.  3 desks, 3 chairs, one bed, one mattress, 2 bookshelves, 4 lights, a few other odds-and-ends and 5 hours later we returned home with a very full van.

Not So Good:  All of that furniture to assemble.
Good: J had a little over a week off from work to put together above mentioned furniture and to do some other fun (really) house projects.

Not So Good:  New furniture means a lot of rearranging.  Ex. To make room for the bed in T's room the rocking chair moved to my room.  To make room for the rocking chair, the chair in my room had to move to the basement.  To make room in the basement all of the basement furniture had to be re-arranged., etc... :)
Good: The new spaces look amazing and work really well.  (Makeover post coming soon.)

Not So Good:  T is now in a twin-sized bed.  The slats J bought to hold up the mattress are toddler-bed sized.
Good: J had some extra lumber and made some temporary slats until we return again. :)

Not So Good:  There were a few final paint projects in our house.
Good: The laundry room and my bathroom look great.  And I finally finished one small spot in M's room from when I ran out of paint--the very same paint color as most all of the walls in our house ("Captured Moment").  I even touched up all of the scuff marks on the walls upstairs.
Not So Good: The batch of paint I used on M's wall is slightly darker than everywhere else.  Every place that I touched up looks like I was sampling another paint color.  Bummer...more painting in my future...

Adoption News

Good: All of our referral paperwork is DONE.
Not So Good:  Hmmm...found out today that our homestudy needs to be updated.  Very not so good is that the details are fuzzy (how expiration dates and how what information is needed for a simple update are not known facts is just a bit confusing to me).   Just spent an hour working out a plan of action with Becca and J--kind-of frustrating...
Good:  Having someone else (Becca and J) to figure all of this out with. :)
And knowing that it will get done and it's not urgent, but it does need to happen.

Good: A most-beautiful photo or our little girl in our email on Christmas day.  And several more since (Thank you Katie and Adam & Amber!)

Not So Good:  Leaving our Passport Renewal to the last minute (they expire in April)--a bit of an oversight on our part.  ugh...

Good:  Getting closer and closer to becoming a family of 5! :)

(The sweet little lamb we got in the mail this week from our agency.)