It's hard to believe that we are already a week into the new year. On Wednesday, we went over to Kristin's house for a holiday dinner with Rich, Tor and Nadia. Rich headed back to WI on Thursday. Since then we've been pretty much laying low and catching up on sleep.

We've been shopping like crazy. I have about 7-10 outfits for M, pajamas, underclothes, shoes, boots and even a purple snowsuit! I was lucky to catch the holiday sales, especially Old Navy (LOVE shopping online & having things delivered) and the local Gap Outlet. We are now working on toys, books, DVDs ... things we'll need specifically for the trip.

I am going on maternity leave starting Jan 28 (three weeks vacation) until May 19 (three months FMLA). I have three more weeks to get things organized and handed off to my colleagues. I am in the process of hiring someone into my group and have decided to personally handle that during my leave. I will have to review resumes, conduct phone interviews and go into the office a few times for the in-person interviews during my leave but I think it's important to make that happen.

On Monday, my work friends are holding a potluck shower at lunchtime for me & my co-worker who is having a baby. Our due dates are days part so there may be some betting going on during the shower (10-days waived vs. not / co-workers current due date vs. original). We are also organizing a "We have a court date!" party at our house on Jan 19th. We'll have pizza, beer, wine, and desserts. We are expecting up to 50 or 60 people.

In other adoption paperwork news, we need to repeat some lab work because the lab thought "drug screening test" was a scribble not a request on the lab form. Annoying, but our doctor is very adoption-friendly and actually on New Years Eve called to let us know that he got his new license and the notarized copy was ready to pick up.

We also discovered this week that our USCIS fingerprints expire Feb 13th. We are scheduled to go to the embassy on Feb 14-15th and return to the USA on Feb 16th. So today we went directly to the office that does the fingerprinting but they need us to get a new "request for fingerprints" letter so we'll do that this week.

And we've been invited to speak at our adoption agency about our Trip #1 experiences on Jan 16th.

Other than these few things, we don't have much going on.