MacMafli’s Red Thread

Just a quick update from Ken.  In preparation for bringing our little one home, we have decided to use this time wisley.  I have enrolled at Pierce College as a first step towards a Master's in Marital & Family Counseling.  It will be full days for me, with eight hours of work and two classes, but there is no better time than now.  When Emma arrives, I'm sure my nights will be pretty full helping take care of her.
Love you all!

I just wanted to take a quick moment to greet the family and friends that are just starting to find their way to this site!  As you can see, you haven't missed a LOT on this site, as I have not been an avid blogger up till now...  I hope to be posting much more frequently now that we are in the process of adopting, so that you can all follow along with us!  I will be composing a post to catch everyone up to speed with the adoption process to date, and also what the process should look like going forward (at least to the best of my knowledge!).  I hope to be posting at least once a month, if not twice, with any progress that arises and any other things of interest at the time.  Thanks for looking in on us, and please keep us in your prayers!

We can now officially say that we are "pregnant"!!  No, not in the traditional sense, but we are definitely expecting!  We received confirmation today of our official Log In Date (LID) ~~ 09/07/07.  Very exciting!!  This date is the one we will live, eat, and breathe now.  It is what China bases everything on, and represents our place "in line" to receive the referral of our daughter.  This is what we have been waiting for...  After all the gathering of paperwork and fine tuning each detail, this is the place where we can breathe a little.  Now there is nothing more that we have control over ~ which I can assure you is both annoying and very freeing.  This now becomes an exercise in patience and faith.  I do pretty well in the faith department since I know God is orchestrating the whole thing anyway, but, for those of you who know me well, PATIENT I AM NOT!!!!  The current wait time for a referral is at 21 months and climbing.  When we looked into this process, it was a wait time of 12-14 months.  This will definitely be a growth period for me, and a time to dive into a LOT of projects around the house to occupy my time!  :)  More on that will surely follow...  We covet your prayers! 

I can't believe it's been an entire year since I posted something!  What a slacker!!  I have reason to post now, though!  This site is changing, and will continue to undergo changes as I remodel it to fit what's occurring in our lives as we continue the process of adoption... 

We were just informed by Carol at Faith International Adoptions that our Dossier has left the United States for China as of yesterday (September 4, 2007), and we should be getting our official Log In Date (LID) within a week or two!!  Very exciting to us, though just another step toward getting "in line" to receive the referral of our daughter.  Soon, we'll officially be waiting!!  Goodness...

Anyway, just wanted to update things a bit.  I'll be posting more often - that's the hope anyway - as I want this to become a site that my family and friends can reference to see where we are in the process.

Going to a concert, hiking Mt. St. Helens, Shopping for home improvement items - all in one weekend?!!  I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!!  What a blast! 

We did American Idol on Saturday night...  An awesome time with family, and hilarious to be in such a diverse crowd of people!!  I still think Katherine should have won, but all of them did a pretty good job.

On Sunday, we did Mount St. Helens...  We drove
up to Johnston Ridge and got attacked by flying ants!  These things were THICK!  Instead of being able to take a leisurely picnic lunch, we ended up tailgating in the parking lot so that we could make a quick getaway...  Not exactly what we had hoped for!  We stopped at the Hummocks Trail on the way back down and hiked there.  That was so much better than Johnston Ridge - no flying ants!!  It was a two and a half mile hike through both very lush
green areas and some very sparse desert-like conditions - both of which were very pretty.  The only drawback was that it was a little hazy up there, so we didn't get
the best view of the actual mountain, but no complaints here.

Today was spent running around trading movies, shopping at Home Depot for more items to fix up the home, and grocery shopping.  Ken did very well considering he hates shopping!  We got things from Home Depot that will definitely keep us busy for a while!  We are replacing the linoleum flooring in the kitchen, laundry room, and main bathroom.  We are also replacing a skylight in our kitchen.  We're hoping to do most of this while we are on vacation soon - sound like a fun vacation??!!  Productive, at least.  Hopefully all this effort will pay off with a quick and easy sale of our house...  Please pray that for us!

Finally, some downtime to write something out here.  We have been preparing our house to put it on the market to sell.  This is not an easy process when there are multiple areas that need some attention!  I've predominately been working in the yard, trying to get the outdoor projects done before the weather changes for the winter.  No pressure!  I have blisters under blisters from work my hands aren't used to - and the list is still growing!  We have a skylight to replace, linoleum to replace in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room, and Dad has just painted the entirety of the exterior of the house!  There are many more small projects to do, as well, but I'm too tired (and frankly, you'd be bored!) to list them all.  Now you know why the blogs have been sparse...  I'll try to do better!

What was the first movie you remember seeing in a movie theater? 
Question submitted by mainmor.

For being such an insane movie buff, I honestly can't remember a lot of movies I saw in the theater!  Maybe I'm getting to the age where my childhood is too distant a memory to recall very clearly!  It all seems to run together in my head...  I remember plenty of Disney movies, but couldn't tell you for sure which one was when.  I feel so old...!

I can finally do some more extensive work on the site.  I downloaded Firefox... since Safari didn't seem to want to support the Design function of this site.  It was pretty frustrating until Mr. Sharumpe tipped me off to Firefox!  Thanks!!  So far I haven't done much in the way of blogging, but there are plenty of pictures to browse through!!  You'll find that I have much more fun taking pictures than trying to think of a lot to say...

I am new to this whole blog world, but I think I could learn to like it!  Not a lot of time now, but I wanted to try it out and see if I knew what I was doing!  More to come!