The Ups and Downs

It has been an emotional few days in the Rambeck household.  On Friday we received the news we've been waiting for.  Unfortunately, it was devastating news.  We did not get a 2011 visa for Simon.  This means we will likely travel at the end of February. That also means almost 10 more months of waiting. People are still working to try get more families 2011 visas, but we were told not to expect that to happen. And so, we move forward.

After going to bed early Friday and sleeping for over 12 hours, Steve informed me that we can't sleep until Feb. so we sucked it up and went on with our plans for the weekend.  We had heard about the Festival of Nations in St. Paul.  It's a pretty big deal. http://festivalofnations.com  We ate food from Korea, India, Norway, Finland, France, Nigeria, Taiwan...maybe more that I just can't think of.  They also had different shows from different countries.  We saw a Korean kid's dance. I would have posted the video I took, but I can't get it to work.

Then there was Mother's Day.  Steve did a wonderful job of making that day as good as it possibly could have been, and frankly he was working against a lot. I got several nice gifts and we went to brunch.  So major props to Steve. I will always remember my first Mother's day as a good day and not a sad day.

Monday was fairly uneventful, but today we got a nice surprise. We received a new picture of Simon from the adoption agency.  These are the standard pics that the agency takes and one we had been waiting for before we got the CD of pics from Simon's foster mother.  The quality isn't great because they scanned it, but the originals are on their way to us. This kid cracks me up with all his facial expressions! We are so blessed to have such a happy little guy.

Also- if you didn't recognize the items around him from a previous post, he is surrounded by things we sent him in his 1st care package!  I love him in the polka-dots!  He is also holding the album of photos of us that we sent him.  Could his foster mother be any more thoughtful? I feel like she is taking care of us in addition to Simon.