Birthday!

I had the best birthday on Saturday. My parents are in town. We hung out, did some shopping during the day. Then late afternoon we headed over the valley to see an old friend of mine, Chantal. I've only seen her once in the last 15 years and my parents hadn't seen her in longer. It was fun to hang out with her and introduce her to my hubby, who hadn't met her at all. We've known each other since 3rd grade so even without staying in the best of touch, it's so wild how it feels like time doesn't matter and we're right at home after all these years.

Then we went to Julie's - I know a lot of you know Julie - as I refer to her as blogger royalty, which I'm not sure she digs. But it's true! Anyway, Julie and her kids (her husband was out of town at a wedding) were incredibly kind and invited us over for the evening. When we got there, they had decorated on TOP of all their really cool Halloween decor, a birthday extravaganza for me. And Julie had a "happy birthday" flashing light magnetized pin that she forced me to wear all night...I didn't mind! It was so much fun. She is awesome and her kids rock and it was so cool to hang with them. Julie showed my parents the videos Marshall had made of them picking up their daughter, Marlie, from Ethiopia and some other cool travel videos/montages. Haven & Seamus had a face-making contest with Anil and Marlie was just adorable as always knocking everyone out with her smile. It was such a great birthday!!

AND we got our finalized homestudy in the mail on Friday (or I guess technically yesterday morning) - I was expecting it to come on Monday so that was a little gift on our doorstep! That means it also arrived to our placement agency and USCIS today, all notarized and official. Sweet! One tiny step closer to the tiny one we are waiting for...