No More Paperwork!

I kept Jameson home from school on Valentines Day since I knew it was going to be a red dye fest in his classroom.  He was more than happy to go to McDonald's for breakfast and watch a red box with Mom instead of going to school.  I even got him some chocolate treats to replace the red dye valentines candy he would have gotten at school. This may be a tradition for us until he finally grows out of his sensitivity to red dye.  I wish I could say it all went perfectly, however, but in the days following Valentines Day he got quite a bit of contraband candy from his friends and we still had a rough few days.

These two boys are double trouble. I don't know who took this picture, but when I saw it on my camera it made me smile.

AJ loves to play with playdough but it doesn't last very long in his care. He opens it up, smooshes all of the colors together and then has a hard time getting it back in containers so he can use it again.

About 2 months after AJ arrived home we received his Certificate of Citizenship in the mail with this picture of him on it.  It was taken before we went to Ethiopia to get him so we had never seen it.

With his CoC and his adoption decree from Ethiopia I went to the courthouse and filed to have his adoption recognized in our state and legally change his name.  After the judge signed off on his name change the court sent an order to the state vital records office and they issued him a court ordered delayed certificate of live birth which will be the birth certificate he will use throughout his life.  Once we had his birth certificate we applied for a social security card which took forever and was initially issued in his old name. After a visit to the Social Security office over an hour away we got things worked out and this last week we finally received his social security card in his new legal name.  On Friday I finished the last bit of paperwork I will ever have to do for his adoption.  Because we changed his name we need the government to re-issue his Certificate of Citizenship with his new name so that all of his paperwork will match and he won't run into immigration problems when he is older.  After almost 5 years of running all over town getting documents, having everything notarized and then doing it all over again the next year I am finally done!! Yeah, it's a good feeling.  The amount of paperwork involved in international adoptions is INSANE!  

I had to take AJ to get passport pictures to send in with his new CoC form and in true AJ fashion once the camera came out he started pulling faces and laughing. We tried and tried to have him look into the camera with a neutral expression but he was having none of it.  The guy finally got one of him with a little grin and we went with it.

He has grown up a lot considering these 2 pictures were taken less than a year apart.

When you don't follow weather forecasts big winter storms come out of nowhere.  When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no idea that the biggest storm of the year was coming. 

When Adam left for church this morning it hadn't started snowing yet, when he got home he had over a foot of snow on the roof of his car and there is no sign of the snow stopping anytime soon. Apparently the local farmers have a lot of faith because this storm is going to be a doozy when all is said and done.