Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Movie Review - The Incredibles 11/11/2004

As promised, here are my thoughts on this movie. First, and not to anyone’s surprise, it was a lot of fun. The animation was excellent, the characters interesting - especially for super-heroes - and the plot was much more developed than I had expected. All of that said, I still felt a tad disappointed. I’m not sure I could nail down why. Most likely it simply has to do with expectations. Whenever my expectations are raised, I almost always feel a bit let down. The exceptions to this rule have been the Matrix movies (though it must be acknowledged that the 2nd and third never did live up to the complexity or depth of the original) and the Lord of the Rings movies, and I had the highest expectations for those than I’ve ever had for any movie.

I think largely I was just not quite prepared for the volume of action and suspense. I know that sounds silly since it was animated, but much of it moved at the same pace as the X-Men or Spider-Man movies. There was lots of chasing, fighting, dodging, flying, etc. I had it in my head that this was going to be fun and relaxing. It was fun, but not so relaxing, and I was pretty tired when it was over. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, as I actually enjoy a good action flick. I think I just wasn’t expecting it with this being a Pixar movie. I expected something a little more entertaining and a little less frenetic. I will grant, though, upon reflection, that Finding Nemo had a fairly fast pace as well.

The other minor issue I had was the lack of the trailer scenes in the actual movie. The hysterical trailer scene from well over a year ago where Mr. Incredible is trying to fit himself into his old suit is actually not in the movie. I had presumed that they were showing us in the trailer a small portion of a longer, even funnier scene. Not so, it was just to get us in the door, and that bothers me a bit. All in all, I would be lying to say I didn’t have a good time. I did, and I do recommend that people see the movie, but it just didn’t capture me like some of their other movies have.

I thoroughly enjoyed the short they showed just prior to the movie called “Boundin’”. Very cute!

Pixar is an amazing company, and I’ve made a point of seeing all of their movies thus far. The next one (and the last under the Disney umbrella), Cars, doesn’t look at all interesting, though. Hopefully, they’ll do something to make it more appealing between now and its release next year.

Going to the movies :-) 11/10/2004

We’re going to the movies tonight for the first time in quite awhile. We simply must see The Incredibles!!

It almost makes me nervous to see a movie that has gotten such rave reviews. It seems I’m almost always most pleased when I go with lowered expectations. We’ll see.

A review is forthcoming…

Adoption Process - Week 13 11/5/2004

I believe the Washington word for it is Red Tape (5 points to the first person to respond with the origin of that phrase)

Our Homestudy was completed last week and submitted for certification without our knowledge. We knew it was going to happen but had been told that they would tell us as soon as it had been submitted. Instead, they (being our Arizona Homestudy agency) waited until it was already certified to inform us. We were not at all upset by this surprise!

The above event was the “switch” that kicked into gear the next round of paperwork for our Dossier. There are certain elements of the Dossier that you do not want to have “early” dates on them. So we had been told to hold off on signing a significant portion of documents until now. So this week was full of much editing, signing, notarizing, and the like. We prepared, signed, and sent off to our Ukraine agency, the following items (not all for the dossier, but all important):

• Petition to Adopt - our formal request to Ukraine to allow us to adopt one of their orphans
• Letter of Obligation - a list of promises we make regarding the child we intend to adopt, most notably to maintain his or her Ukrainian citizenship through age 18 and to provide annual status reports on his/her progress
• Power of Attorney statements - in case either of us has to leave Ukraine in an emergency the other can complete the adoption on behalf of the other
• Color copies of our passports - this one is scary because both of us look pretty bad in our passport photos (Steve’s is downright creepy!)
• Also Known As (AKA) Statements - pretty self-explanatory
• Copy of the Homestudy to go in the Dossier
• Copy of the Certification to go in the Dossier
• All of the above were notarized right on the document or else a notary cover sheet had to be made and included
• Payment for Phase II! One of the few times in life it felt good to write a check!

At this point we are waiting on only 3 items for our Dossier to be complete:

• Our USCIS Approval in the form of an I-171H. This should come next week. The Arizona USCIS representative was waiting on a copy of the Homestudy and Certification in order to finish processing this document. The USCIS approval is the U.S.’s way of acknowledging that we will soon be bringing an immigrant into the country who will be automatically granted citizenship upon entry.
• State Criminal Clearances - These were already sent to the Judge who was going to issue the written statements but somehow this task got overlooked when he processed our Certification. Hopefully they got taken care of towards the end of the week and will be received early next week.
• Notarized cover letter to accompany the Agency license for the folks that did our Homestudy. This item must come from our Homestudy Agency.

I’m hopeful our Dossier will be complete soon!

Oh last thing, tonight we finally got the chair rail installed in LT’s room. Steve is caulking the seams now and we’ll paint it tomorrow or Sunday. Hang in there, pictures soon…

Time Warp

We had quite a surprise this week when a relative of mine (1st cousin to my maternal grandmother (my Mom’s mom) showed up in Phoenix (en route across the country on a 9 month trek), tracked us down via an Aunt (my Mom’s sister) in Colorado, and came over to the house for coffee! Hal as we all know him is quite a character and very knowledgeable about the Laybourn side of the family. I know more about my Mom’s Dad’s side of the family, so it was nice to learn a bit about my grandmother’s family. He and another relative had done a lot of geneological research and have even written a book about their findings.

As we discussed various relations and looked at some pictures he’d assembled in a neat little booklet I heard of distant relatives I’d never heard of before. This is when the coolest part happened - we mentioned that we were in the process of adopting internationally. He immediately began to tell of another relative (distant to me but a relative no less) who had just completed an international adoption. He was trying to remember where they had gone, and I told him we were going to Ukraine. “That’s it!”, he said, “Ukraine!” Not only was he right, but they have a cool little website that tells of their adventures. They only returned on July 29 with their beautiful 15-month old son, Connor. Sometimes it amazes me how the internet can link us to our own history as well as our future at the same time. Coooool…

BTW, Hal, we’re really glad you stopped by! Via con Dios!

Hurdle Number 1 is behind us!! 11/1/2004

I just got the call from our Homestudy agency social worker informing me that our Homestudy was submitted last week, and we have already been certified by the Judge! This is the first huge hurdle in the process, and now the paperchase - and the lengthy wait - begins in earnest.

WooooooHoooooo!!!