praise time and tagged again

First of all, the diuretics or change in chemo seem to be helping my mom get rid of some of her fluid, so that is a big praise!! My family had a great Thanksgiving together. We had my parents, aunt and uncle and my brother and his wife and their son over for dinner. Jake and Landon came up with some fun additions to our dinner. First, they made handprint turkeys for everyone's place card. Then on the back they put a Thanksgiving trivia question and stumped some of the adults with questions like "What was the Mayflower Compact?" (an agreement among the Pilgrims that they would vote on all decisions and the majority would rule basically) and "In what year did the first Thanksgiving take place?" (1621) Then, this month we have been gradually making a wreath with little paper leaves on which we write what we are thankful for. So they cut out extra leaves and everyone around the table wrote something they are thankful for. We put the leaves back into the turkey can (coffee can made into a turkey by Mr. Creative Jake) and then everyone chose a leaf from the turkey, read it out loud and tried to guess who wrote it.

In other thankful news, we sent our I800A form and homestudy to CIS and are now awaiting biometrics appointments and final approval so we can send our dossier to China. In English, or for those who don't speak adoption-ese, that means we have officially gotten the ball rolling over here in the US to get permission to adopt an orphan from overseas. They have to approve our homestudy and give us fingerprinting appointments. We need this fianl approval to get the last piece of paper we need for our huge pile of papers to be sent to China. This will be the third time we have been digitally fingerprinted by the FBI in the past 4 years. Seriously! Just know there is nothing hidden about us whatsoever, if you have ever wondered if we lead a secret life. We don't. We have also gotten everything off to our agency and are officially "waiting for a match" and we are thinking we will have a little picture in early 2009! Still likely won't travel until about fall of 2009 though.

And the tag (from Jen again)--
The Rules:
1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open it to page 56
3. Find the 5th sentence
4.Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with instructions
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the most intellectual - Pick the CLOSEST

Okay, The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease..."Any of Tory Hayden's powerful books about the psychologically damaged children she has worked with through the years..."

I tag Abbie, Sharla and Lovell.