Friday

This week has gone by ridiculously slowly for some reason. I'm really happy that it's finally Friday! Life is pretty boring around here right now. The kids are still on track break, so I'm mostly just trying to keep them entertained. I'm really looking forward to next week because Shawn only has to work for two days and then he's off for the rest of the week for Thanksgiving. It's always more fun around here when he's home! We'll hopefully be doing some fun family activities together next week.

Tomorrow afternoon Shawn and I are going to see Harry Potter, which I'm super excited about! We've seen every Harry Potter in the theater on opening weekend and I've been worried that we were going to have to miss this one because we still don't really leave Clarissa much, but my good friend offered to swap babysitting so that we could go. Clarissa loves to play at her house and my friend is amazing with her so I feel comfortable leaving her for a few hours. This will actually be the first movie that we've seen in the theater since Clarissa came home last year, and it will actually be our first time leaving her for longer than an hour. Shawn and I haven't been out on a real date in over a year. It's definitely time.

The other thing we've been working on this week is getting all the paperwork together to apply for Clarissa's certificate of citizenship. When Clarissa was legally adopted by us she automatically became an American citizen but we still have to file this big annoying packet of paperwork with USCIS to have her status officially changed. It's not something that necessarily needed to be done right away and it's expensive and complicated so we've really been dragging our feet about it.

We'd still be dragging our feet about it except that we got a notice letting us know that the cost to file the paperwork is going up almost $200 next week. That was enough to kick us into gear, so this week we've been getting all that information together. We had to fill out pages of information and submit copies of documents such as her green card, Korean birth certificate, decree of adoption, etc. and then we had to march on down to the Department of Homeland Security for the third time since we started the adoption process and turn it in and pay them a ridiculous amount of money. It was kind of a hassle and I'm really glad that we've offically made our last trip to the DOHS. Every time we go there it costs us hundreds of dollars. I really don't understand why it costs so much to file government paperwork.

So Clarissa has been home over a year and we really still aren't done with the paperwork. Now that her COC has been filed we still have to get her a social security number and a passport and then once we get her COC in the mail we have to send a copy of it to the adoption agency so that we can get back a finalization deposit we paid them. THEN we will officially be done with adoption paperwork. I swear I think I've filled out more paperwork in the past two years than most people do in their entire lives. TOTALLY worth it, but still a pain.

In other Clarissa news, she's talking up a storm. We can't always understand her, but she sure likes to tell us long stories in toddler talk! She sits on my lap and with a very serious expression on her face she goes on and on about something that appears to be very important. I don't know what it is, but I really enjoy having conversations with her. :) She is loving having the boys home. Josh and Matthew are such fantastic brothers. They're so cute with her and I really enjoy watching them interact with her.

Life is pretty good these days. I feel like my blog is boring because there's not anything especially exciting happening around here, but after the last few crazy years getting through this adoption process no excitement is a good thing!