Man, November went by so quickly, I can't believe it's almost over! Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving - we did - thank you to Joan and Tom for providing a feast of epic proportions...it was wonderful. We bought our new tree on Friday morning - we braved the Black Friday rush in the hopes that we would get a killer deal, and we did. We put it up on Sunday and got it all fluffed out, and it looks awesome, but it is HUGE!! We definitely could have gone with a skinnier tree for the size of our living room, but c'est la vie. I'm almost done with the Christmas cards; they'll go out on December first, so be on the lookout :)

We went to get our ink fingerprints for the FBI on the 20th, and the officer that fingerprinted us looked so much like our friend Stoney, I almost had to ask if they were related! He was really nice, by which I mean he laughed at our stupid jokes and gave us a 50% discount on our prints. Y'all know how much I love a discount! He said that his brother and sister-in-law adopted three times from Russia, so he was very interested in us and he asked us quite a few questions about what kind of adoption we were doing and what our timeline was. He made it an enjoyable experience and the new ink washes off quite easily, so we didn't look like convicts the next day!

We had another class tonight, called Making Connections. The focus of the first half of the class was connecting with other adoptive parents and the second half was about being matched with birthparents. We met another nice couple, Karla and Vincent, who live close to us, and are going through the same program as we are. We got their information so we can keep in touch.

On Friday, I start my new job and then I have a meeting with our counselor right afterwards. We have each had to cancel this meeting once, so this time, I am bound and determined to get in there and get this accomplished! We are going to talk about my autobiography - my childhood and my family, etc...you'd think I would be a little nervous, but I'm really looking forward to it!

Our last required class is this Saturday, December 2nd at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, and it's called Parenting a Child at Risk. I am so excited to finally finish our required classes; it felt like such a huge prospect when we started, and now it's almost over. It's sort of bittersweet, because we have met such awesome people and learned so much, but I will be so glad to on to the next steps. We still have to finish our online classes (one for me, two for Jer), but they are quick, so I'm not sweating that and we're going to take a class about infant care, but it's not required. After that, we only have our Dear Birthparents letter and our profile and we are officially "paper pregnant". Woo!