"Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you" [going]?

First of all can I just say that I am so so so so so so so jealous of ALL this snow my North Carolina family and friends are getting!! Gez! I mean- I really love this warm weather here and the fact that we are growing veggies in the garden and what not, but you guys got a TON of snow!!! My friend Kim sent me a picture of her boys playing in the snow and Jessica blogged about their snow fun.  I just can't believe how much snow there is!!  NC hasn't seen that much snow in a long time and I'm not even there to enjoy it.  I am like a little kid when it comes to snow. I'm the one begging Chris to take me sledding and to build a snowman with me. I can't help it. Both of my parents ALWAYS played WITH us IN the snow growing up. I don't think our kids will have too much trouble getting mom out there in the snow when we are in NC. Just know- that I'm REALLY wishing me and my kiddos were playing in the snow with you all and your children right now. :(

Okay- so enough about wishing I was in the snow. Are any of your wishing you were lounging in my lawn chair in shorts and a tank top catching some rays, whilst reading a good book by the garden? Any one wishing you were picking fresh veggies for dinner?

Now for the meeting update:
Yesterday we had our initial interview where I handed our social worker everything I had in my possession so far. I thought that between what Jane is bringing (papers from home), what Chris and I had collected, and what I'm waiting on from OCF and Robyn (Kenya coordinator at CAS)- I thought we had EVERYTHING needed. Right? Wrong. I was a bit confused on the record of convictions. I got no real instructions of that. I just thought that our record of good conduct in Kenya was enough, but actually we have to have fingerprints from the FBI saying that we don't have records in the US. No one at Little Angels knew where I could get this done. Assuming it was the Embassy I called when we got home. At first, the consulate said they don't do it. I explained a little better what exactly I needed to do. He put me on hold and did some checking. After a few minutes he came back and said they DO the fingerprinting I needed. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2pm. Well the problem is we have our sequence of homestudies almost every Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm. (BTW, we have 10 homestudies now b/c of the
I-800!!! And they are VERY specific. But the good part about the I-800 instead of the I-600 is that when the time comes for the children to be officially "ours" we don't have to wait on the US like with the I-600. It is so incredibly detailed and it will already have been approved- so that is the good thing about it). We are trying so, so hard to get the homestudy done before we come back at the end of April. Little Angels keeps telling us that it will be no problem to get it completed- but we both have our doubts. See, in Africa we actually refer to time as "African time" which means any time later than scheduled. Though there are some pastors we work with who are breaking this cycle and really working on being more timely.
Back to the fingerprinting. We will get it done. Hopefully we can shoot for this coming Tuesday afternoon. After we get fingerprinted at the Embassy we will then send them off (somewhere in the US) to get approval.
We also didn't have the following that we needed (b/c it wasn't on the first sheet we were given (I think it was more for the I-600- which is no longer used): Health Insurance copies, Life Insurance copies, proof of financial status (meaning we need more stuff from the US about our tax documents), and Lab work about HIV. But now we know and we think we can get all of this taken care of. No big deal, right? I'm a bit less hyped up about it today. Yesterday on our 30min drive from Little Angels we barely said a word. Every now and then Chris would say "It's going to be fine. It's not a big deal. We're going to get everything we need." Chris made a great analogy as he usually does after I asked him this question: Chris, does it feel a kind of surreal to you? Do you wonder if this will ever actually happen? Technically we have only been at this adoption thing for 2 months, but in our minds we have been doing this for 3 years. It has been 3 years we have talked about adopting. Chris' analogy: Do you know how in the Scooby Doo cartoons when Scooby would go to run and his legs would go super fast- yet he wasn't going anywhere? That is what we feel like some times. It feels like we're running and we're out of breath, but we aren't going anywhere.
Not all of this is on Little Angels- it's my own fault for not learning more about it before just assuming. I should have done more research and found out more.

Again, I am sounding a bit down- but we are both hopeful and we remind ourselves time and time again: God's timing, not ours.

Our prayer request:
Things would go quickly and smoothly with the homestudy.
We would get ALL the needed paperwork to complete the homestudy so we can apply for grants, and put together our dossier when we come back to NC.