Cold...

...and not the kind that makes you say "Brrrrr!" either. So here I am, 2 1/2 days before we leave with bunches of stuff to do and not much energy to do it. I've thrown chicken soup, Sudafed, and every herbal cold remedy I can think of at it plus a few extra hours of sleep and I'm holding my own so far. I just hope it's enough to kill it quick or at least subdue it greatly by Saturday. I suspect this is the same bug that bit Erich last week (who is of course feeling better now). He took about a week to get over it but he wasn't as aggressive in treating it as I am. Think healing thoughts, I know I am:)

If this cold doesn't kill me my plan tomorrow is to go pick up some finished pieces from the framer and get a few pictures up. We'll see what happens.

TWCOE ornaments

Now that they've been received by their new owners I can show off my TWCOE ornaments for this year. I did two- one of the squares from Teresa Wentzler's magazine design, A Touch of Holly, and one out of the JCS 2009 ornament issues and that one was the cardinal from Miss Crescent's Crowne (at least I think that was the designer, tossed my working copy already but will try to look that up again).

The cardinal is on my list to do again for Erich's grandma as are several others for Christmas presents this year. I'm hoping to get some serious stitch time in on all the flights during our Russia trip. We'll see.

Speaking of the trip, we're getting close! This time next week we'll be doing the final packing and getting ready to leave the dog at my Mom's. And then it's off to sunny Siberia, at least that's what I'm telling myself. The current weather forecast says otherwise but I'm doing my best to ignore the negative temperatures. And the forecast of snow, snow, and more snow and then maybe a little blowing or drifting snow just for fun. I like snow for Christmas time and everything but I'm not so sure about this much yet. I'm sure there will be new Russian adventures to share when we get back.

In other stitchy news, I did indeed finish the cross stitch portion of Kaleidoscope this week though not until Wednesday night so a little later than planned but not too bad. I still have to add the backstitch and a couple specialty stitches but that'll have to wait until the Christmas presents are done. I'll try to get a pic up before we leave. If all goes well I'll be picking up my framed L&L Celtic Noel and TW's English Garden Welcome from the LNS next week so I'll try to get those up too in all the last minute trip chaos.

Take care and think of me when you see snow!

Time Well Spent

Vacation has gone by way too fast but overall it has definitely been time well spent. I've been able to spend time with family, decorate and prepare for two holidays (yes, my Christmas lights and decorations are up and I even have a few gifts bought!), get travel plans going for our upcoming trip to Russia, and even get some stitching in.

Thanks very much for all the adoption encouragement and kind words, they do mean a lot and I can't wait to finally get there and meet the sweet baby we've been dreaming about. As much as I don't want to get too attached, it's too late but we hope and pray that everything will work out just right this time and we'll have our little guy home by Easter.

And as I said I have been stitching too, 12 little sections are all that is left to fill in Kaleidoscope. If iTunes weren't downloading and I wasn't lazy I'd get a pic up today but they are and I am so I probably won't get one up until tomorrow or so. I'm still aiming to finish the cross stitch portion before I head back to work on Tuesday and since it's a miserable, rainy Sunday afternoon I just might make it as long as I don't get sucked back into the iTunes store. We splurged a bit and are downloading some new TV shows and music to take to Russia with us for the flights and the sleepless nights that we know are coming. Not that we're especially nervous or anxious but shifting 8 time zones the first day, then 4 more the next day, then 4 back two days later and finally 8 back to get home tends to wreak some major havoc on my sleep schedule. At least this time we know to go with the "I'll sleep when I'm tired and eat when I'm hungry" attitude and won't try to force ourselves into the local time zones except for baby visits of course. Those top any need for sleep or food and will not be missed under any circumstance:)

Off to stitch now, be back soon with a finished Kaleidoscope pic. And by the way- 2 weeks from today we'll be landing in Moscow!

Things I'm Thankful For

-My warm winter coat
-Warm winter boots
-My Ipod

Why, you ask? Not just in honor of the upcoming holiday but also because we're going back to Russia! Got the call this morning, we leave December 12 and will hopefully meet our referral on December 15 if I'm doing my math correctly. We should get home again late December 18, just in time for Christmas:) It should be a very Merry Christmas indeed this year! I was truly expecting not to make Trip 1 until 2010 but this moves the whole schedule up, we might be back with the little guy by Easter at this rate. Off to finish making calls now...

Thanksgiving treat

Thanks for the happy adoption thoughts, hopefully they'll bring good things. The update this past week said that they're hoping to start getting the next trip dates from Russia as early as next week so that would be something to be very thankful for come next Thursday. We're trying not to get our hopes up that we'll be in there but that's much easier said than done.

At the moment I'm content with being thankful for the extra week of vacation I have which I will be using starting tomorrow. Apparently no one in our zone wanted Thanksgiving week off and the scheduler was going to have a hard time getting all the floaters enough hours so I took advantage of the situation and now with the way the current schedule falls I'm off until December 1. I'm really looking forward to the time off especially since my Mom is off too so hopefully we'll get some time to spend together. Erich's going to have a few days off too so that'll be nice. My goal is to get all the projects I want done early so I have time to play around the holiday and after. We already got the yard ready for winter and Christmas lights up (but not on until next Friday!) yesterday and there are a few more small projects but other than that I'm looking forward to some extra stitching time, a bit of reading (picked up Stephen King's new one yesterday) and a bit of time with the new Wii Super Mario game. All that and I've still got another week to take if we don't make it back to Russia this year so maybe I'll get lucky enough to do the same thing around Christmas one way or another.

As for stitching pics I don't have much to show as I've mostly been working on TWCOE ornies but this afternoon I finally finished the black outline of Ink Circles Kaleidoscope.

Now I just have to color everything in. Probably an ambitious goal but I'd love to have it done before I go back to work. We'll see.

Jungle HD

Things have been a little busy over here so I'm a few days late in posting but I finally finished, framed and gave away the birth announcement I've been working on for my cousin's new little one...

She was very happy with the surprise gift so that makes me happy too. Design is by Bucilla with many modifications from me.

In other news, I started my new position at work this week. Right before the adoption went crazy I had decided to step out of my management role at work early and into the full-time version of the floater position I had been planning to take post-adoption. After the loss of our first referral I decided to keep with the plan of changing over early so I started that yesterday and I love it so far. The driving isn't always so fun but it is refreshing to work with so many different people and really feel like I'm helping out. Less stress is a big plus too and it gives me something to think about other than the adoption.

Speaking of, no new adoption news but the last update still said that they expect all of us waiters to travel in December so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now. We're still working on a name for this little guy. I know it sounds early but we have to declare a new name for him on the first trip so we've got to get going!

Good news!

Medical info is back and it all looks great so we accepted our referral last night and are in line for a trip date to go meet the cute little 11 month old boy we've been looking at in pictures since last week. We're hoping to travel in December with court in Feb/March 2010. It's much nicer to be on the good news end of this situation:)