Green with Envy?

Jeremy and I have been working hard on Jeremy's green card lately. A couple of weeks ago, we finally sent of all the forms (which gave us both an incredible lightness), along with a huge collection of recent pay checks. Meanwhile, we underwent another rather stressful process of making sure that all our taxes and income files were complete, up-to-date, and giving Uncle Sam all the money he needs from us - an important process, since we had to report all our income and assets on the green card forms. Meanwhile, we got confirmation that our paperwork had been received and is being processed as we speak - as well as some money back from fees that we apparently didn't need to pay!

After some internet research, we learned some great news: the center which is processing our forms is one of the fastest in the country, and should give us the green card itself within three months of their receiving the forms. This should put us somewhere around Christmas, which hopefully won't delay the process, and may make us change some of our plans during Jeremy's Christmas break - but would be a great Christmas present!

Meanwhile, life as usual continues. We're currently trying to solve Charlie's poison breath problems; his adult teeth are coming in, which makes it really hard to brush them - it just makes his gums bleed. So, we bought a dental treat and a teeth cleaning toy, which will hopefully let Charlie give us kisses without leaving us smelling like horrible, horrible doggy breath.

Also, Jeremy's birthday is tomorrow (Happy Birthday!) and mine is on Monday, so we're looking forward to a birthday date. Jeremy and I have been longing to go to an Ethiopian restaurant over in Easttown Grand Rapids - but have felt too guilty spending money on eating out - so we're using our birthdays as an excuse to go out to eat and buy the Planet Earth series DVDs, both of which we've been wanting to do for a long time (and the DVDs were on a HUGE sale...) Meanwhile, we're looking forward to a brunch with Jeremy's parents, grandma, and uncle (who is coming from Malaysia to pick up his grandma and bring her back home) soon, as well as Jeremy's parents' gift to us - dinner at probably the most high-end restaurant in Grand Rapids.

Anyway, that's the latest news from here! Unfortunately, I don't have a ton of fantastic pictures to share...so I'll spare you more shots of Charlie. :) When I have some cool ones, I'll let you know.