I am now 40 years old!!

Well-as you can tell by the post I (Jennifer) celebrated a monumental milestone by turning 40 this past week. I can remember asking my mom things when I was young, like maybe 6 or 7 years old, and always saying things like "Mom, back in the olden days did you...." Now my mom was 25 years old when I was born so that made her around 31-33 years of age when I asked her these types of questions. I thought she was soooooo old at the time. Now I think I must have been losing my mind-she was just a baby herself when her and my dad had me! And I don't feel like I am 40-but I guess the numbers don't lie.

I took a few days off from work to celebrate my birthday and play catch up on some things. We spent the weekend before my birthday going to Lakeland to visit with my parents. On Saturday, my folks, Patrick, myself and my sister and her husband all piled in our van and drove about 50 minutes into Myakka City, Florida to see the ranch where the Lippizan stallions live when not touring. This is also their training facility. So on Thursday and Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings they put on a show (ours lasted about 1 hour 20 minutes) and go through some of the horses most famous moves and performances. This was all free and very cool! Those horses are beautiful and they tell you all about them throughout the show. Check out their website: www.hlipizzans.com. If you have a free Saturday morning (or Thursday/Friday afternoon) this is a great day trip to take.

Then on Tuesday Patrick and I went to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. I don't think I have been to the Magic Kingdom for over 15 years. It was just as fun as ever. The weather was warm and beautiful and the crowds were very manageable. We really did not have to wait in line anywhere other than to get some food at lunch. Since I got in on a "birthday" ticket they gave me a button to wear that had my name and Happy Birthday on it-after about the 6th person told me Happy Birthday that day, Patrick said he was going to stand in line with someone else because he didn't know how many more times he could hear that in one day! Ha-forget about it! Remember we went to the Panama Canal for his birthday so he was just going to have to tough it out with the birthday wishes from the Disney cast!

The rest of the week was spent going to a few medical appointments, both for myself and the dog. And just basically relaxing and doing what I felt like doing, but not really having to do anything at all if I didn't feel like it. All in all it was a great week. But all good things have to come to an end so I went back to work on Friday, and this was my weekend to work as well.

The CCAA was closed last week for the Chinese New Year, so referrals should be coming in the next 7-10 days. The last batch of referrals went to March 2, 2006. Again, we are log in date March 14, 2006. We sent our updated paperwork to USCIS last week and I was able to confirm the documents made it to Chicago on Monday, January 26th. This is paperwork that had to be updated due to our loooooong wait for a referral. We hope and pray that this paperwork is processed and our fingerprints are done (for the 3rd time now) before we get "the call." We are sweating a little that we will get a referral and then have to plead to immigration to process our paperwork so that we can travel. Hopefully, none of the above will happen and we will get our immigration approval long before "the call" happens. I have faith that everything, and I do mean everything, will happen in the time frame that God says it will happen.

I'll keep you posted on the referral news and what the cut off date is for referrals this month. We are closer than we have ever been but still have no idea how long it is going to take to get to March 14, 2006 log in dates.

Until next time